Tobin Mueller – Seafood Gumbo

This newly mastered track is not available anywhere else, only on YouTube video. Composer Tobin Mueller has combined two different session of “Seafood Gumbo” into a single version. This first is led by L.A. jazz singer Angela Hope, who also wrote the lyrics, harkening back to the classic standards of the 1930s and 1940s. Her vocals are old-school and her lyrics full of bygone era sexual innuendo. “He loves me in the kitchen, shakin’ my pot and pans,” she sings, with just the right amount of sultry sass. The second recording, done a year later, features the alto sax of Woody Mankowski and pushes the feel of the piece into the post-swing bop era, giving the tune a contemporary flare. Mueller adeptly combines the two recordings to make it seem like Ms. Hope is singing with the latter quartet (instead of the earlier trio). Seamless and extremely entertaining. If this song had been written 50 years earlier, it would be a standard in the American Songbook. The separate original version of each recording form the first and last tracks of the Mueller-Mankowski album “The Muller’s Wheel”.

Mueller-Mankowski have collaborated on four albums: Rain Bather (2009), The Muller’s Wheel (2012), Come In Funky (2014) featuring Ron Carter, and most recently the critically acclaimed 2-volume collection Standard Deviations (2018). The first three consist of all original material; the last are contemporary arrangements of the great standards of jazz and, perhaps, standards out as the best of these. Check them all out, however. Hours of listening enjoyment and surprise.

“Consistently intriguing and colorful, spirited and unpredictable. Mueller’s vivid imagination … is well worth exploring.”
– Scott Yanow, jazz journalist/historian

“An amazing jazz amalgam… that captures Mueller’s genius ability to dance in and out of motifs and themes… expansive, beautiful and awesome…”
– John LaMantia, contributing critic for Downbeat Magazine

Find Tobin Mueller Online
https://www.tobinmueller.com
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https://www.twitter.com/tobinmueller
https://www.instagram.com/tobinmuellerjazz
https://tobinmueller.hearnow.com