Jazz Review : Joe Houston’s Two-Pronged Blues Attack

Joe Houston has worn many hats. He started out in the late 1940s as a jazz-based tenor saxman and made his biggest mark in the ‘50s as a rock ‘n’ roller with the instrumental hit “All Night Long.” Now the Austin, Tex., native (who lives in Long Beach) is focusing strictly on the blues, and singing as much as he’s playing the horn.

Which is all right, since Houston--who played Friday in the Club Zot sports bar at the Hyatt Regency Irvine--has a rich tenor voice with a rumbling timbre that recalls one of his former bosses, the late Big Joe Turner.

On the small Zot stage, Houston looked like a nightclub veteran in his white suit, white Ivy League cap, black shirt, two-tone shoes and dark glasses. Singing, he often grabbed the mike and shook his body a la James Brown; when he played his saxes (working out on both alto and tenor, though not simultaneously), he tended to stand still and just blow, sending forth long, wailing tones.

After several numbers by his backup band, the Defrosters, he came on with the slow, definitely in-the-groove Muddy Waters classic “Mannish Boy,” stretching out some lyrics like a long piece of licorice, biting others off at the quick.

When he soloed on tenor, the first thing one noticed was the way its gritty sound complemented his voice--buzzing, biting into one’s ear in a way that sometimes recalled Coleman Hawkins and Gene Ammons.

Houston offered a compendium of rhythmic and bluesy phrases, some from the swing era, some with a be-bop tinge. There were vaulting chords, three- and four-note statements juxtaposed into tidy packages, and repeated single notes that stood straight in a row. He tossed in the occasional pry-it-off-the-ceiling squeal, but mostly his improvising was solid, compact and invigorating.

On the subsequent medium-plus-tempo “Hi Ho Silver,” he mixed it up a bit, delivering crowd-pleasing honks and wails along with rapid-fire, avant-garde-style gushes that might have been played by Albert Ayler. The slow “Rusty Dusty Blues,” done originally by Jimmy Rushing with the Count Basie Orchestra in the ‘40s, found Houston playing alto with a broad sound, spare Charlie Parker-type lines as well as stock-in-trade bluesy utterances. A brief run through Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” closed the set.

If there were any drawbacks, they were that Houston came on late and played too little. The workmanlike Defrosters (Mike Malone on keyboards and harmonica, Rob Hansen on guitar, Kathy Voss on drums and Mark St. John on bass) played four tunes before Houston hit the stage, and though the band was bolstered by Hansen’s long, ringing lines and Malone’s pithy harmonica work, Houston was the headliner, and it was Houston whom the people had come to hear.

* Joe Houston and the Defrosters play Saturdays from 3 to 7 p.m. at Belmont Station, 5300 E. 2nd St., Long Beach (no cover; [310] 438-2026); Saturdays at 10 p.m. at Club Cohiba, 110 Broadway, Long Beach ($7; [310] 437-7700), and Sundays at the Clipper Sports Bar, 3325 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach (no cover; call for times: [310] 597-0014).