Cadence Magazine Review- My Craziest Dream

Cadence Magazine
JUNE 2004 ISSUE
www.cadencebuilding.com

Abbie Gardner has a strong throaty voice that’s reminiscent of Wesla Whitfield’s. On My Craziest Dream, which appears to be her debut, she uses it to render evergreens from the 1920s and 1930s with a crew of guys who play like they were around when this music was the cat’s pajamas. I assume the pianist Herb Gardner is her father, but her starring role has nothing to do with nepotism. She has the chops to carry this off. She delivers these songs enthusiastically as if they were new. She takes them head on, on their own terms, and embodies their insouciant spirit. Pianist Gardner supports her with four-square stride piano and reedman Dan Levinson offers up solos that never stray from the truisms of traditional swing, yet never sound archaic. This sounds like music that would be perfectly at home in some local watering hole, the musical equivalent of homecooked comfort food.

Tacked onto the end of the session are two pieces featuring originals written and sung by Herb Gardner. They mine the same stylistic territory musically, but the subject matter is more personal. “Staten Island” is a rollicking Broadway-like celebration of “Staten Island,” complete with rat-a-ma-tat drum solo climax. “Gunshots and Sirens” is better, a humorous tribute to the city life. Gardner claims he’d rather put up with “gunshots and sirens” instead of “deer in the woods carrying Lyme disease.” It’s all good fun, and I expect goes over well live. I know this CD whets my appetite to hear the Gardners and company in the flesh.