I may have known at some point that the world famous illusionist and humorist Penn Jillette was also a double bass player but if so, I’d forgotten that little fact until now. But here he is holding down the low end in a jazz trio fronted by the guy who’s the pianist and musical director of the Penn & Teller show’s house band – that’d be Mike Jones, an acclaimed straightahead pianist and graduate of Berklee, a devotee of the styles of Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum. The third leg of the stool is Jeff Hamilton, a revered mainstream jazz drummer, co-founder of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and collaborator with the likes of Monty Alexander, Diana Krall, Ray Brown, and Michael Bublé.
So what’s Jillette doing playing with these guys? In 2002 when he hired Jones as musical director, Jillette had recently picked up the double bass (at age 48) and stipulated that the opening set of the Penn & Teller show woud be a Jones-Jillette duet. So he’s honed his chops on stage, and the two recorded a duet album in 2018, and Hamilton talked them into playing as a trio after he saw them perform at a Penn & Teller show. Jillette more than holds his own with his bandmates – no fireworks, but this isn’t that kind of album.
What it is, is a collection of stone cold classic jazz, the kind you’ll hear in a supper club or a small dark basement space. Three guys having a great time working out on these standards and the occasional original that’s very much in the standard vein. Such a program! It opens with the Gershwins’ “S’Wonderful,” works through “Watch What Happens,” “On Green Dolphin Street,” “Perdido” and more before winding up with Jones’s original “Blues For Burns.” “Perdido” is one of those ditties that will get stuck in your head for the rest of the day, unless “What A Difference A Day Makes” gets there first. This is a very nice take on that song, with something close to pyrotechnics from Jones and a brief solo from Hamilton. There’s also a nifty straightahead cover of Jobim’s “Girl From Ipanema” with Jillette carrying the head on bass – cool arrangement. “Watch What Happens” catches the swagger of The Chairman, whose vocal version is probably definitive; this one feels like it’d fit right in with a magic show in Vegas, oddly enough. Their “Gone With The Wind” is a toe-tapper, too.
The upbeat mood is set upfront by the cover art by The Simpsons animator David Silverman, depicting Jillette having a bit of butter-fingered a freak-out; and the title, which apparently is a reference to a line frequently uttered in Three Stooges movies when Messrs Howard, Fine, and Howard showed up to a job for which they were spectacularly unsuited. Are You Sure You Three Guys Know What You’re Doing? is a showcase for just how much fun jazz music can be in the right hands. No joke, this is a delightful album.
(Capri Records, 2023)
