Sax legend swings through a lifetime of jazz
BROOKLINE -- You won't find alto saxophonist Al Gallodoro in jazz history books, yet he is considered by many musicians to be one of the greatest saxophone virtuosos ever. He began playing professionally in 1926, when the saxophone was just emerging from being a novelty. Starting in vaudeville, he later played in the dance orchestras of Isham Jones and Paul Whiteman. Gallodoro has also performed under the batons of Arthur Fiedler, Arturo Toscanini, and Leonard Bernstein. He is a living repository of American music.
Friday night, at Brookline Tai Chi, Gallodoro appeared with the local rhythm section of guitarist Steve Fell, bassist Jef Charland, and drummer Luther Gray. The audience, arrayed on folding chairs, couches, and floor mats strewn throughout the airy space, consisted mostly of admiring reed players, several families with children, and one elderly gentleman clutching a stack of weathered LPs for Gallodoro's signature.
At 93, the white-bearded Gallodoro resembles a stooped garden gnome. But when he puts his saxophone to his lips, he sounds like a giant. His playing is grounded in the '30s, recalling the nuanced, gliding lines of Johnny Hodges and the suave undulations of Benny Carter. At times he harkened back to the staccato figurations of the '20s, while at others he leapt forward to bebop phraseology.
Gallodoro kept his solos short and sweet. Often, as on his rendition of Jones's "It Had To Be You," he phrased the first chorus as a singer might, squeezing the juice out of each note before going on to the next. For the second chorus, he would decorate the melody with fluttering double-time passages, tricky arpeggios, and seemingly effortless leaps into the altissimo register. "I never met these guys before," Gallodoro said of his pick-up band. It showed occasionally, but more often the quartet cohered admirably. Fell soloed inventively throughout, and Gallodoro often nodded his approval and once even doffed his hat. Charland contributed swinging support and three cogent, melodic solos. Gray's drumming was alternately rambunctious and gently sustaining. Veteran Cambridge drummer Harold Layne sat in impressively for the beginning of the second set, especially so on "The Girl From Ipanema," one of the evening's highlights, not least for its tender, murmuring Gallodoro solo.
