//

The Smiths and Sinatra-inspired jazz singer Alexander Stewart has signed a sub-publishing deal with German label Herzog records, the singer’s manager Peter Conway has confirmed. “The deal comes at a time when Stewart’s presence in Germany is rapidly growing thanks to a new partnership PCM set up with German agency Handshake Booking,” the official version intones. But what is about Stewart that sets him apart? Well, Stewart can live up to the challenge of a standard such as ‘Angel Eyes’ and the marker laid down by above all Frank Sinatra on the Matt Dennis song, while capable of intelligently interpreting The Smiths and original songs with equanimity. Stewart can turn an unlikely Blondie song ‘Call Me’ into something that bit unexpected or really get moving on ‘No Moon At All’, or deeply understand the wry humour in a song such as Paul Simon’s ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’. In 2011 the singer Ian Shaw has dubbed “the Mancroonian” launched his debut album All Or Nothing At All with a lively Soho jazz club gig at the Pizza Express Jazz Club warding off the stygian gloom in the club with the lustre of Sam Sparro’s ‘Black And Gold’, a pop hit from three years earlier backed by a band of four horns, the superb altoist Nathaniel Facey, doggedly old school tenorist Frank Griffith, rising trumpet star Freddie Gavita, and lively trombonist Winston (brother of Dennis) Rollins from the Jools Holland Rhythm and Blues Orchestra plus pianist Alex Webb, the album’s producer Andrew Cleyndert on bass, and Rhythmica’s Andy Chapman on drums. Where Stewart can really excel is in his take on The Smiths, not likely jazz material at all, capturing unslavishly Morrissey’s rousing lugubriousness on ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ much better than Slow Moving Millie’s boring version of the song that appeared later in the year on the John Lewis TV Christmas ad. Stewart’s unique approach is to segue into ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ giving it a bit of authentic northern exposure. MB

Stewart plays a charity gig in Ealing on Saturday http://streetchildworldcup.org/take-action/get-involved-2/jazz-on-the-broadway-18-may/ and a festival gig in Germany on Sunday www.duesseldorfer-jazzrally.de