The first two posthumous
Jeff Healey
albums,
Mess of Blues
(which appeared only days after his death in 2008) and
Songs from the Road
(2009), focused on his blues-rock guitar playing, the basis of his renown, even though he had spent much of the last decade of his life performing and recording in the early jazz styles of the first three decades of the 20th century, and often playing the trumpet.
Last Call
, a studio recording drawn from sessions held in February 2007, returns to the jazz format of previous albums
Among Friends
,
Adventures in Jazzland
, and
It's Tight Like That
. But instead of playing with his band the
Jazz Wizards
Healey
is accompanied by only two fellow musicians, pianist/clarinetist
Ross Wooldridge
of that group, and violinist
Drew Jurecka
. That is, they accompany him when he has any accompaniment at all. Sometimes,
is alone, or rather, he is the only musician, even if there are multiple instruments. The closing track,
"Some of These Days,"
features two guitars, trumpet, and vocals, but they're all
, overdubbing himself. Annotator
Colin Bray
, another member of the
, attests to
's love of early jazz, as demonstrated by his extensive collection of 78 rpm records, and, like its predecessors in this vein,
clearly is a labor of love by an aficionado intent on replicating the sound of a musical style he reveres. Nor is it without accomplishment. When
and
Jurecka
dig into the guitar/violin duet
"The Wildcat,"
they sound for all the world like
Django Reinhardt
Stephane Grappelli
, which is exactly what they are aiming for.
is a less impressive trumpet player, although he manages to approximate the '20s style he's after. He is also an adequate vocalist, but not really a stylist capable of putting his own stamp on the songs of, say,
Hoagy Carmichael
(
"Hong Kong Blues"
), or
Bing Crosby
"Pennies from Heaven"
). So, like
's other jazz albums,
is something more than a busman's holiday, but something less than a major artistic statement. ~ William Ruhlmann