Memory Lane isn't always a thoroughfare trodden with unblemished fondness by singer Georgie Fame.
At this final stop on his latest UK tour, he recalled the time he had to sack half his band and the way songwriters like him were ripped off by copyright theft. Little changes.
His heyday 1960s would seem like an aeon ago if only his singing and playing weren't still fresh and evocative. At 66, he said, quoting someone else, he'll 'bop till he drops'.
This flesh-and-blood gig also featured his sons, guitarist Tristan and drummer James, and was an autobiographical skim of what has been a colourful life, with time found to feature Tristan in Jimi Hendrix mode and James as a Cajun rhythm specialist.
In those early days Georgie was a fair mimic and here he played Lloyd Price's Lawdy Miss Clawdy at the piano to prove he hasn't lost his touch. But he is too original an R&B performer, especially on his battle-scarred but trusty Hammond organ, to allow mimicry to prevail over influences such as Ray Charles, Louis Jordan, Booker T, Dr John and Mose Allison, all of whose material was featured or acknowledged.
Jazz credentials were underlined in J B Brooks’s You Came a Long Way from St Louis, sung in the shadow of the Peggy Lee version and a piano-accompanied Rockin’ Chair, in which the Hoagy Carmichael favourite moved in fast-forward fashion.
Georgie’s departure will hopefully be long-delayed, despite the lowering tone of Allison’s Was, a penultimate tear-jerking waltz banished by an upbeat encore. Yeh, yeh!
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