A Christmas swing revival
Pianist Steve Lucky and singer-guitarist Carmen Getit, the co-stars of the hard-swinging San Francisco band the Rhumba Bums, have been booked to provide entertainment this festive season at the Half Note Jazz Club, beginning this Friday through December 28. Lucky, a veteran of the blues circuits of Detroit and New York, and Getit, a fine guitarist influenced by the work of T-Bone Walker, and their band play frenetically and are a humorous and colorful act in performance. As Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums, the outfit has produced two albums to date, beginning with 1998’s debut «Come Out Swingin,» which critics hailed as one of the «best retro swings of the 1990s.» Also on the venue’s agenda for the festive season is another revivalist figure, Quinn Lemley, who takes her cue from old-school Hollywood starlets and has prepared a musical based on Rita Hayworth to be accompanied by standards from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Lemley will be returning to Athens after well-received shows in the recent past for performances at the Half Note between December 29 and January 8. She will be followed by the veteran jazz figure Lou Donaldson between January 9 and January 15. His soul, acid-jazz, and funk compositions helped steer younger generations when the styles surged in popularity in the late 1980s, particularly on UK dance circuits. Donaldson, a saxophonist who has produced prolifically and has worked with various legendary figures, among them Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, and Horace Silver, will be joined by regular partner Dr Lonnie Smith, a master of the Hammond organ with a prominent past of his own which included working with Miles Davis as well as pioneering jazz fusion projects in the 1970s. Smith dazzled local audiences with scintillating dexterity on Donaldson’s previous visit to the Athens club two years ago.
