Since 2023, Livia Records have meticulously restored and re-released three Louis Stewart albums: Some Other Blues, Out On His Own and Louis the First. Now they’ve released a rarity that will surely have jazz-guitar fans salivating: a cleaned-up and previously unavailable live recording of the great Irish guitarist playing with legendary US guitarist Jim Hall, the only time these two giants recorded together.
The occasion was a Dublin concert on Boxing Day (St Stephen’s Day in Ireland) in 1982. What a Christmas gift for the lucky few who heard it; as Philip Watson (Bill Frisell’s biographer) explains in the CD’s 16-page booklet, the venue was a small sports/community hall that held only around 200 people. And what good fortune for us that sound engineer Seán Mac Erlaine exploited his digital wizardry to turn a ‘pretty rough’ recording (single mic on each guitarist’s amp going straight to quarter-inch tape on a reel-to-reel recorder) into something with remarkably high fidelity – and good separation between Stewart (left channel) and Hall (right channel).
That stereo separation’s key, because Stewart and Hall play with such mutual understanding that at times one could be forgiven for thinking it’s the same person overdubbed, especially when they’re swapping roles between soloing and rhythm-guitar accompaniment. But there’s playful sparring too: for example, a canon on the John Lewis tune ‘2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West’ where Stewart chases Hall’s lead on the melody; clever counterpointing on ‘How Deep is the Ocean’; and heavy strumming and riffing on ‘St Thomas’, at one point Stewart using what sounds like a slap technique to create a rhythmic pok-a-pok while Hall dances on top with the melody, followed by someone (Stewart?) tapping a beer bottle rhythmically, to the amused delight of the audience.
Hall plays alone on three numbers: ‘All the Things You Are’, ‘My Funny Valentine’ and ‘In a Sentimental Mood’. Being the master chef that he is, he cooks these old chestnuts into signature dishes: in particular, his take on ‘My Funny Valentine’ is startlingly original, shifting gracefully between heavy strumming, snatches of melody, rich voicings, and strong bass lines, at times almost sounding like two players.
Hall announces ‘St Thomas’ as the last tune. Putting it midpoint on the album and ending with Hall’s solo ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ (which ends in silence) mutes the sense of a live concert, compared with the audience’s riotous enthusiasm for that joyous calypso on which Stewart and Hall are having so much fun together. Overall, though, there’s so much to enjoy that a quiet ending doesn’t matter.
