When I was a kid, I watched my father, a tenor saxophonist and singer, go off most weekends to play. Sure, there was a time before me (as if) where my dad played nightly at choice jazz clubs throughout Philadelphia, South Jersey and the surrounding areas with him and his fellow musician cronies proud that the (eventually legendary) likes of Pep’s and the Showboat would host his interpretive brand of cool West Coast jazz with a smidgen of East Coast grit thrown into its smooth, salty mix.
More often than not, however, throughout my youth, my father, his drummer, a guitarist and an organist who doubled on accordion, and eventually the Cordovox — yes, the accordion’s electro-acoustic answer to the electric guitar for those particularly psychedelic moments — played local bars (or taprooms) where live music was de rigueur as opposed to the specialty jazz shops that were, quite frankly, then in their dwindling phase.
Places where jazz organ combos still ruled the roost long after the taut musical trend sadly went to seed for a time. Places where it wasn’t necessarily or singularly “jazz” that one played, but rather this hearty blend of jazz, AM pop, rock (which meant longer sideburns, but luckily no facial hair for my dad), R&B (as soulful as a handful of Italian guys could get) and country (but country in the same way that Dean Martin recorded when he did those westerns with John Wayne).
Were there Beatles, Bacharach and Motown songs in the mix of Getz and Mulligan? Yes. The Stones and Ray Charles? Definitely. The Who and James Brown? I don’t know about that. I do recall my dad singing “You Really Got Me” and “How Sweet It Is,” but not tons.
Jazz in places such as this was rich and round, the solos sweet and smooth and back to the head before they knew they left the station, and always respectful of the melody. My sax playing father loved Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan and, later, Scott Hamilton.
For my money, what my dad and his buddies did was what I’d like to think of as blue-collar jazz — something workmanlike, mixing up all of its musics pugnaciously for the sake of entertaining crowds on weekends; crowds who, like them during the week, had 7-to-7 jobs in construction, contracting and other brands of physical labor.
(I’d also like to add that my father never drank or smoked, hated the smell of cigarettes on his multitude of tuxedos — but of course — and happily accepted his devoted audiences’ gifts of drinks, but always had the barkeep pour ginger ale so that it looked like booze. Also, having witnessed my father in action, playing music, on many a late-night gig, I can say that he was a favorite of the ladies who wore their bouffants and flips proudly, and their miniskirts short.)
Leaders in the Field
I bring up this blue-collar jazz thing in the wake of new albums in March by two longtime guitarists, Stew Cutler and Noah Pierre, respectively, Undercover (Mostly) and Inwards. Both men like to mix it up beyond their sainted jazz with the rough-edged inclusion of blues and rock in their sound, and vocals that are pleasingly smooth without being too chilled. And yet jazz by any other name, with any other collar, still starches sweetly.
A New York native, Cutler has been around the block for decades doing sessions for the likes of Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge and Eddie Floyd in his time. He’s also been a part of vocalist Fontella Bass’s latter-day recordings with her onetime husband Lester Bowie, and has been paired with downtown favorites such as Wayne Horvitz and Elliott Sharp, for the sake of weird angularity.
Cutler’s own albums such as Undercover (Mostly) have that cutting blues bar feel, especially on “Fi-Fi-Fo-Fum,” the Steely Dan-ish vibe on “Long Time Joe” and the times when Cutler graces his records with the breathy blowsiness of his harmonica. Yet on a song such as his all-guitar-alone cover of “Betcha By Golly, Wow” — Thom Bell and Linda Creed’s harmony-driven R&B song for The Stylistics — Cutler’s sensitive playing has great, delicious largesse in its capture of jazz’s spirits.
DMV native Noah Pierre hasn’t been around as long but sounds as deeply aged and resonantly refined as Cutler, along with similarly playing host to some fusion-Shorter-Zawinul feels and occasional crushing rock rhythms. While Cutler’s 2026 album concentrates (Mostly) on covers, Pierre’s new Inwards focuses on the writing side of his brain, with flinty, breezy, brass-filled acid jazz tracks such as “Chess” with its wealth of plush, layered guitars, and “Covert,” a zig-zagging instrumental with all the Indian summer sunshining rain of a positive Weather Report.
Both Cutler and Pierre have a solid-state crew of steady worker-bee fellow musicians who ably toil, long and hard, alongside their foremen. And my guess is, everyone here — Undercover (Mostly) and Inwards — is working overtime.
Enjoy the fruits of such blue-collar jazz labor, and think of my dad if you might. JT