Don Wise
Genuine Snake
Horn O'Copia Records

by William Michael Smith

The CD player in my wife's urban assault vehicle recently went kaput, so for the past few weeks she's been riding around listening to cassettes. I'm the world's greatest procrastinator and she didn't seem too terribly bothered to be listening to old cassettes of Joe Ely and Stevie Ray and Robert Cray -- until I made the mistake of playing Don Wise's new CD, Genuine Snake, for her this morning. As soon as she caught the lines "Mary, Mary, quite contrary/Left her Lincoln double parked/So Wooly Bully and Tooti Frutti came to move it/But the sucker wouldn't start," the whole equation changed at our house.

Hattie called Mattie
She called her sugar daddy
But you know he don't get up till after dark
He called his bookie, a cat named Cookie
Who had it stripped and sold for parts

He's no movie star pretty boy, but one look at Don Wise says "Cool Cat." Wise was playing saxophone in Lubbock 15 years ago when he got a call from a guy looking for a horn blower who could 1) play and 2) travel. Reckoning he could do both, Wise got on Delbert McClinton's tour bus. After 15 years he says, "The only way they are going to get me out of that band is to put a stake through my heart."

But Wise, who resides in Knoxville these days, did get off the bus long enough to congregate in Lubbock at Wally Moyers' Studio 84 with some of his musical buddies and record one of the coolest, tightest, groovin'-est blues records I've heard in ages. The sound is equal parts Memphis, Chicago, and Texas, the grooves are deep and macho, the horn tracks brassy, swinging and icy cool, and the vocals are beyond hip. But what really grabs a listener about Genuine Snake is the loose-as-a-goose, well-oiled, good-time vibe that Wise and his funky soulmates bring to the production. There is a complete lack of stiffness, no feeling that this is a "recording session." Whether it's the bluesy swing of "Lots of Flame (But No Heat)" with its hipster Mose Allison ironies, the Otis Redding Stax soul sound of "No Longer A Part of Your Dreams" that could fit on any McClinton record, the classy cover of Sam Cooke's "Lonely Island," or the swampy voodoo jazz funk of "Louisiana Moon," Wise and his ensemble demonstrate the highest professionalism and the easy facility of battle-hardened A-list players. Genuine Snake has the feel of a 3 a.m. jam session after the doors are locked and the crowd has gone.

Although he is the lead vocalist on the Leiber-Stoller tune "Shoppin' For Clothes," for the most part Wise has stuck to playing his horn and producing, allowing him to spread the singing across a variety of vocal stylists from the sultry Teresa James to Big Joe Maher, Gary Bunton, Steve Bassett, and bassist George Hawkins, Jr., whose mellow, dexterous voice recalls both Redding and Robert Cray. Wise's horn section partner in the McClinton band, trumpeter Terry Townson, contributes the absolutely flawless horn arrangements that are the unobtrusive high point of the album. Veteran of numerous blues combos Kevin McKendree supplies the organ funk and guitarists Todd Sharp and Steve Williams lay on the necessary blues hot licks with complete authenticity. With Hawkins, drummer Lynn Williams provides a tight but expansive backbeat.

What really makes this set special is that Wise has made a total blues ensemble record. He gets his horn chops in, but this is not a "Don Wise front-and-center" recording by any means. Wise The Producer knows when he needs Wise The Horn Player and what he needs from him. Wise certainly gets his moments, as on the '50s style instrumental title track where he coolly tears it up with Sharp and McKendree on a number that will remind those old enough to remember of the great Bill Black's Combo hits like "Dry Bones" or of Boots Randolph's solo efforts. But at other times, it is appropriate for Wise to lay back and snap his fingers to the rhythm and just dig the tune. Or maybe mix himself a highball and seek higher inspiration for the next horn fill while the singers take the spotlight. A consummate pro, Wise knows when to play and when to lay back.

Wise wrote about half the songs on the album and it doesn't take much concentration to understand Mr. Wise is no slouch at the craft. The album cover features a pair of blue snakeskin loafers (Genuine Snake) with gold buckles that could be nothing but the shoes of a blues man, and Wise's "He Had The Shoes" captures in its lyric and its syncopated funk all the ultra-hipster ethos that goes with being a blues horn player.

He was standing by the door
In a suit and Panama hat
He just motioned with his eyes
And she just walked over and sat
He was already curin' her blues,
He had the shoes.

Red ones, blue ones, yellow, tan and beige,
Alligator, patent leather, genuine snake
You got to like a man that likes a good shoe
'Cause a man with class knows how to deal with the blues

On "The New Is Me and You," Wise explores another infectious groove that could be related to Sly and the Family Stone with its layered shoobie-doo harmonies and Wise's wicked sax runs.

Why don't we get our friends together
Say the drinks are on me
There's something that I want them to do
For me and you
I will buy the ring
And you can tell them what to bring
Something old something borrowed
Something blue
The new is me and you

Wise seems to have made a serious study of Mose Allison's ability to turn a phrase inside out and come away with pleasing new twist on a cliché, and his "You Come First At Last" is a fine example of Allisonian composition coupled to another groove that would fit on a McClinton (or Otis Redding) album.

While I sat there quietly drinking
You just sat there privately thinking
When love is gone, where does it go?
It ain't here no more and it's too long gone
I let you go for too long a time
And then I think of you
And I change my mind
I won't relive the past
You come first at last

While "Louisiana Moon" is an intricate, jazzy mood piece, most of the album is filled with the same kind of funky, goodtime blues one finds on a Delbert McClinton record. This shouldn't come as a surprise given that Wise produced McClinton's outstanding 1989 "Live From Austin," which resulted in McClinton's first Grammy nomination. Wise's sax solos on that album were of such stellar quality that they have since been included in John Laughter's textbook, Contemporary Saxophone.

My wife doesn't mess around with singer-songwriters. Cry in your beer country singers or pretentious, noodling rock guitar players try her patience sorely. Song whisperers and the quiet sensitive message types beware of the woman's finger because she can hit "eject" before the first chorus comes around without the slightest twinge of conscience. But she's been in there playing cards and listening to Don Wise all afternoon. So I reckon if I want to have any peace around here, I'd best be at the electronics shop when they open in the morning and get a new CD player installed in the Battle Wagon.

Of course, once she's got that player, I'll probably never hear Genuine Snake again ­ unless I'm riding with her.

* Genuine Snake is Don Wise's third critically acclaimed funky blues album, and they are all available at www.donwise.com. The photo of the blue shoes is worth the time it takes for a cybervisit.



Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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