Macy Blackman & The Mighty Fines - I Didn't Want to Do It (2013) Lossless

The pianist Macy Blackman, a long-time music educator and piano expert, has been an active performer since the 1960s, specializing in jazz and rhythm and blues, in particular the R&B music of New Orleans. He recently released his third album with his band The Mighty Fines. The 14 tracks on I Didn’t Want To Do It supply everything necessary for a rollicking good time except the partygoers.

The rock-solid Mighty Fines are Jack Dorsey or Adam Goodhue (drums), Bing Nathan (bass), Ken Jacobs (baritone saxophone–delicious!), and Nancy Wright (tenor saxophone, vocals), supporting Blackman (piano), whose singing is excellent and interesting. In contrast to the Mighty Fines’ lively and infectious music, Blackman’s vocal style is pretty far from excitable—not deliberate, exactly; languid perhaps comes closer. Although I have no sense that Blackman is trying to imitate the great Professor Longhair, and any similarity lies more in feeling and attitude than in sonic resemblance, his resonant timbre and playful, yet somehow grave, quality do recall Fess. That is no small asset for anyone singing Crescent City music...

That sense of fun is at the heart of what most of us think of when it comes to the R&B of New Orleans, and Macy Blackman and The Mighty Fines convey it perfectly. I Didn’t Want To Do It goes further, showing rarer aspects of New Orleans music: Saturday night and Sunday morning, romance and heartbreak, high seriousness and low clowning, all skillfully played and sung.