It is, most assuredly, too early for Christmas music — but not for a lip-smacking, second-line reinvention like this. Irvin Mayfield’s effervescent “O Tannenbaum / O Christmas Tree” will shake your stockings off the mantel.
Mayfield, a trumpeter, bandleader and proprietor of beloved New Orleans jazz haunts, easily could have snoozed his way through this. He wouldn’t have been the first to thusly cash in, and he certainly wouldn’t have been the last. Instead, recording live on Bourbon Street with his Jazz Playhouse Revue, Mayfield gives a badly needed goose to one of the season’s most tread-bare standards — like adding a dash of the area’s famous Slap Ya Mama seasoning to any lifeless dish.
Elsewhere on the forthcoming A New Orleans Creole Christmas, due November 11, 2014, via Basin Street Records, Mayfield promises similarly flavorful fusions of side-street groove and Yuletide reminiscence — with unexpected highlights that include “Winter Wonderland,” “Silent Night,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Christmas Time is Here,” the last featuring Michael Watson on vocals.
The holidays never sounded so spicy.
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