ReVoice, the wide ranging jazz vocals-themed festival run by singer Georgia Mancio in association with the Pizza Express Jazz Club, was well underway on Saturday night after the return on opening night of Gregory Porter. The marvellous Gregory, newly signed to Universal and a very hot property with a busy schedule as everyone wants to hear him, nonetheless keeping up his close association with the Dean Street club, arrived a little late and as the sold out evening featured two houses, the staff had to turn around the club within minutes to get everyone in and fired up again. For fans who couldn’t be there Porter is on the great David Murray’s new album due in early-2013 and Murray told me recently he very much enjoyed working with the big man, so expect some chemistry as one of the most significant tenor saxophonists since John Coltrane teams up with the jazz singer of the year.
So second night, and a very busy club, with something of a party vibe, more of which later. The format of the festival, which moves across to the larger Union Chapel in Islington later in the week for Tuck & Patti and Raul Midón, is for Mancio, intrepidly multitasking, to open each night with different playing partners. Last night she appeared in duo with vibes player Jim Hart of Cloudmakers, reassuring the cooing audience that the black rosette on her right shoulder was a “fashion statement", and that “I’m not a Tory". These things are important.
The brief set worked well. Georgia is good singing in Portuguese and interpreting Jobim, although ‘Laura’ in more prosaic English was the pick of the set for me. Hart plays vibes like they are a piano and what I mean by that is you’re not drowning in the aftertaste of the note, a problem sometimes with this most subtle but occasionally soporific of instruments. 
So, on to the main act, and singer Jamie Davis who’s also on tonight. He’s best known for his work with the Basie orchestra, and grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, and without beating around the bush too much, he’s an old school deep baritone who likes to croon. People say he sounds like Joe Williams, and so I spent a bit of the afternoon earlier reacquainting myself with Williams thanks to a 1980s vinyl pressing of the old Roulette album Sing Along With Basie. OK, on Joe’s contribution to ‘Going to Chicago Blues’, maybe, that kind of song, it’s why people make the big Joe link. Whatever, it’s OK to be compared to people sometimes. Davis is definitely old school and a shock to young people not acquainted with KC-type swing, and later I thought about the first time I was in Pizza Express Jazz Club when it was a smaller place before the expansion in the 1990s. Harry Sweets Edison was on the stand and he did ‘Centrepiece’, and that theme song of his took him to the bar after the first half. It was as natural as breathing, and Davis is like that. He also says “Oh baby" a lot and was backed by the brittle but effective Leon Greening on piano, the perfect double bass accompaniment of Malcolm Creese, think Milt Hinton in his heyday, the reliable tinkling swing of Steve Brown at the kit, and highly simpático tenor sax of Alex Garnett. Davis got the crowd going on Stevie Wonder’s 1976 megahit ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’, was knowledgeable on ‘How High The Moon’, and extraordinarily found time to leave the band to its own devices to play a little fast-flowing feature called ‘Limehouse Blues’ (Limehouse as in the Tunnel), as he grabbed a beer from the bar, signed fans’ autographs, had his picture taken with a couple of young women, and returned to the stage, to much excitement. At the end you somewhat reluctantly went home. A swinging time was had by all.
Stephen Graham
Jamie Davis, top, and Georgia Mancio