Mose Allison was a unique artist who was an entire musical genre unto himself. He has been described, variously, as a blues artist who plays jazz piano or a jazz pianist who sings the blues. Mose Allison passed away on November 15^th. He was 89 years old.

Allison told the Los Angeles Times in 1990, “I’m a man without a category.” He was right. He put his own unique stamp on everything he recorded. This included interpretations of material written by everyone from Duke Ellington to Percy Mayfield as well songs written by straight ahead blues men such as Sonny Boy Williamson 2, Jimmy Rogers and Willie Dixon. By the time Allison was done with the song, it would never be quite the same.

However, it is his own originals which made him a star. His lyrics reflected a combination of a worldly vision and a sardonic wit delivered with a laconic, wry, southern drawl. He delivered this irresistible cocktail, which was met with near universal approval amongst fans and critics alike.

Born on November 11, 1927, in Tippo, Mississippi, Allison’s first exposure to music came by way of Louis Jordan. He also sites Nat Cole, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong as important musical influences.

He began playing piano at the age of five and never really looked back. After attending the University of Mississippi and a short stint in the Army, Allison continued his education at Louisiana State University, where he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in Philosophy in 1952.  His deft use of language and his philosophically driven instincts were just two of the main ingredients which helped to make Allison an American musical treasure.

In 1956, Allison moved to New York to continue a career that had begun in the juke joints of the south. There he started playing piano with jazz giants Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Phil Woods, Zoot Sims and others.

His first album under his own name was entitled Back Country Suites and was released on the Prestige label in 1957. He soon formed his own trio and became a veracious live performer and recording artist. Allison’s big breakthrough came in 1963 when Prestige released an album which featured nothing but Allison’s vocal material.  

Up to that point, Allison had made ten full length albums for Prestige, Columbia and then Atlantic, where he enjoyed his greatest success. He continued to make one well received album after another on the Atlantic label for the next ten years.

It was during this period that I first became aware of the music of Mose Allison. I would listen to jazz music on my dad’s car radio when we were commuting home from his office in downtown Los Angeles. In those days, Los Angeles was like most major cities in that it had a commercial jazz station which serviced the community. Like a lot of kids, I wasn’t particularly interested in jazz, but when a Mose Allison song came on the radio...I paid attention. He always evoked a vague notion of sophisticated urbanity that filled my imagination. I pictured Allison to be a dapper black man. I had seen Nat Cole and Ray Charles on television and I pictured Allison to look something like these elegant gentlemen.

As I eventually came to find out, Mose Allison wasn’t an African-American at all, not that this mattered to me one way or the other. As I got older and continued to enjoy his music, I read somewhere that Jet Magazine wanted him to appear on their cover. This gave me a slight chuckle. All I knew was Mose Allison was the coolest cat on the planet. I wondered what it would be like to share the same space and breathe the same air with somebody so smart, hip and talented.

I suppose if you live long enough and have the good fortune to be at the right place, at the right time, one could meet the coolest cat on the planet. This happened to me a couple of times in recent years. The first time I saw Allison perform was at the famed and now long defunct Jazz Bakery near Los Angeles in Culver City in 2001. ‘The Bakery’, as it was universally referred to, was an L.A. jazz institution and Mose Allison’s highly anticipated show which took place at that intimate venue was a tough ticket.

Allison gave a solo piano performance in front of a packed house of fifty people in the small recital hall. He trotted out many of his 150 original tunes and several of his iconic interpretations penned by others. His piano playing was superb and his singing voice in top form.

During a break a mutual friend introduced me to this musical titan. So there I was shooting the breeze with Mose Allison and a small group of maybe five or six people which included my fellow Los Angelino, Bonnie Raitt. For a few moments I was standing at ground zero of the capital of cool.

Ten years later, practically to the day, I saw Allison at the performing arts center on the campus of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Now 83 years old, Allison was not in top form. While he could still play the piano with the wonderful rhythmic sensibilities and improvisational flair his audiences grew to admire, he couldn’t remember many of his own lyrics which he had sang for decades.

Early on in the performance he apologized, got up and went to his dressing room. He came back carrying a large three ring binder. He set the bible of songs on the music stand and flipped through the book between songs. He would choose one and count it off to his two piece rhythm section. They took the attendees at this college campus on California’s Central Coast to Allison in Wonderland. Having that reference seemed to steady him and he was right back on track.

His performance was well received and the 1,200 people who packed the Harman Hall that evening did not go home disappointed. However, it did signal that his live performing days were drawing to a close.

A few years ago he announced that he was retiring from the road. His last CD was a live performance which was recorded in Fairfax, California, in 2006. The CD is appropriately entitled, American Legend Live in California and was released in 2015.

Through the years, the songs of Mose Allison were recorded by famous rock musicians, making his trips to the mailbox somewhat fruitful. He was nicknamed the William Faulkner of jazz. Maybe it should have been the William Faulkner of the blues. It doesn’t matter as that sobriquet has more to do with both men being from Mississippi than anything else. Despite the erudite image Allison cultivated through his music, his southern roots are never very far from the surface. Maybe he should have been known as the Truman Capote of jazz.

One of his most famous tunes, Parchman Farm, drew sharp criticism for being written and performed by a white man, when an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of that infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary’s inhabitants are African-Americans. Allison stopped performing the song years ago, with its lyrics, ‘I’m puttin’ that cotton in an eleven foot sack with a twelve gauge shotgun at my back.’ When asked why, he said it had to do with mechanized farming technology. “They don’t use eleven foot sacks anymore.” Perhaps more to the point Allison also noted, “It’s not funny.”

That’s okay, because Allison had plenty of songs in his repertoire that were funny. Often reflecting a satirical world view, tunes like Your Mind is on Vacation with the great follow up lyric, ‘and your mouth is working overtime’, Stop This World and If You’re Going to the City are cautionary tales which are delivered from the perspective of a wise sage.

What makes these biting missives work is Allison’s smooth, syrupy, southern drawl which toggled between an almost spoken word delivery and a plaintive knowing croon. He came across with a kind of understated air of confidence. He got his message over without any of the vocal gymnastics or fiery impassioned pleas of urgency that often accompany jazz and blues singers.

Allison, a Long time New York resident who lived on Long Island for decades, retired to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, a few years ago with his wife of 67 years, Audrey. He is survived by her and their four children.

It is almost unimaginable to think that the likes of a Mose Allison will ever pass our way again.

- David Mac