Grab your hat and your party shoes, pack a suitcase for a classic train ride, and get ready for Cat & The Hounds’ trip to the 1920s. Arranger, producer, cornetist, and C-melody sax player Colin Hancock has created a bubble of joy where you can imagine an evening with a territory Creole jazz band. Regional touring musicians were creating the sound people lived and danced by while the new recording industry scooped up the big names and left working musicians to mentor the next generation of geniuses. Hancock and Paul Kahn’s liner notes are a must-read for the depth of tradition represented here, which is easy to forget as you start to tap your feet and just enjoy, which is an equally happy way to celebrate this wonderful work.
With a cry of “all aboard,” Jerron Paxton’s harmonica starts the engines on the first track, “Panama Limited Blues” (J. Mayo Williams). Enter legendary vocalist Catherine Russell. She swings with a tone that is always right on the money. Her voice shifts between bright with a shine on it, or cool and mellow; she can slide enticingly between notes or land with a light touch. Russell is collaborative but definitely out front—she wows at every turn and makes it all sound so easy. Her path has taken her from a backing vocalist to the biggest names in rock, to a solo career, and then back to her family roots in traditional jazz. This has earned her a Grammy for her work on the soundtrack of Boardwalk Empire—and, representing an even earlier stage in jazz history—she was featured in the Wynton Marsalis-produced film, Bolden.
“Cake Walkin’ Babies (from Home)” (Clarence Williams, Chris Smith, Henry Troy), perhaps most famous now from Bessie Smith’s version, is catchy and syncopated with an articulate clarinet solo by Evan Christopher. Including it here touches on the complexity of a dance craze with layers of resistance, parody, appropriation, and reappropriation. “Elevator Papa, Switchboard Mama” (Andy Razaf, James P. Johnson) is the comic relief, featuring Russell and Paxton sparring with double-entendre banter. On a more serious note, as the liner notes discuss, it’s also a snapshot of some of the job descriptions of an emerging black middle class.
Catherine Russell(Photo: Aidan Grant)
“Carolina Shout” (James P. Johnson) puts pianist Jon Thomas in the spotlight, and is a litmus test for stride piano. I appreciated the danceable tempo, as this tune is now sometimes done at blistering speeds and loses some of its charm. Here, they have opted for a chatty call-and-response arrangement, with the piano trading off the melody with Hancock on cornet, and featuring riffs and countermelodies for Dion Tucker on trombone, Evan Christopher on clarinet, and Paxton now playing banjo; and anchored by the lively rhythm section of drummer Ahmad Johnson, and Kerry Lewis on tuba. The lineup is from all over the country, with Lewis most directly representing New Orleans as a member of the Preservation Hall Musical Collective. Vince Giordano adds dimensionality to the arrangements, guesting on bass sax on “West Indies Blues” (Edgar Dowell, Clarence Williams, Spencer Williams), and “You’ve Got Everything a Sweet Mama Needs But Me” (Lemuel Fowler).
The beautiful recording—created at the oldest continually-operating studio in NYC, Sear Sound—has production values that are warm and true to many of the vintage acoustic qualities, while being clean, clear, and bringing contemporary sensibilities to bear as well. The technical accomplishments and historical grounding of this album are more than just a reconstruction of a “lost” era of live music. The last tune, “Sweet Man” (Maceo Pinkard), features Russell casually singing “TNT, gasoline, even nitroglycerine, ain’t got the kick of kisses I get now…from my honey!”—a reference which reminds the listener that this is explosive, passionate work: not dusty artifact, but living art.
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Produced and arranged by Colin Hancock; Scott Asen, exec producer; Paul Kahn, associate producer; released 8/15/25 on Turtle Bay Records.
Penelope Thomas is a performer, writer, and communications consultant. Credits include lead vocals for two albums with prog rock band FauveMuseum; background vocals with Shellen Lubin, and US & UK tours of Mikel Rouse’s 'The End of Cinematics.' She’s read poet Anne Carson’s work at The Whitney Museum and played leads in HBO Women in Comedy Festival-selected film Pretty Dead and the upcoming indie film, "The Interview." She studied voice with Norma Garbo, music theory with bassist Mark Wade, LoVetri Somatic Voicework through Baldwin Wallace University, and acting with Deena Levy. She taught in the New School’s Sweat musical theatre intensive. With a degree in Cultural Studies & Anthropology and a background in contemporary dance, Penelope loves thinking and writing about performance—connecting the dots between styles and genres and supporting the connection between artists and audiences.
