Admittedly, a jazz ukulele album sounds like a novelty at best and at worst like some kind of mutant perversity -- until one hears
Lyle Ritz play the uke, that is. At two different sessions in September of 1957,
Ritz, a jazz bassist, went into a Verve studio with bassist
Red Mitchell, drummer
Gene Estes, and flutist
Don Shelton, and laid down 13 sides -- 11 of them canonical jazz and standard tunes that are simply breathtaking for their swing as much as their gentility.
Shelton, who appears on half the sides, lays out a sharp line on
Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" that is answered in counterpoint by
Ritz in both chordal and single-string runs. The complex chord voicings on
Rodgers & Hart's "Have You Met Miss Jones" offer such color and texture that one can forget that this was written specifically for piano. And
Ritz's solos touch on guitarists from
Django Reinhardt to
Tiny Grimes to
Wes Montgomery. Other standouts are
Ritz's two originals, "Ritz Cracker," a bop tune, and "Sweet Joan." The versions of "Moonlight in Vermont," "Little Girl Blue," and "I'm Beginning to See the Light" are all revelatory for their wonderfully realized harmonic palette. This is a gorgeous record, one that bears not only encountering, but repeated listening.