MATT HOLBORN
"For Stuff"
coming April 16th 2025
Squawking Single - Out February 13th
Ghost of a Chance Single - Out March 14th
Listen to the whole album
Stuff Smith is the unsung grandfather of jazz violin. A master of swing and a composer and improviser with an unmistakable sound. This album is my tribute to his music and the lasting effect he has had on me and our little world of jazz violin.
Excerpt of Liner notes by Anthony Barnett
Matt Holborn’s For Stuff is a wonderful tribute. It’s almost possible to envisage these pieces as previously unknown Stuff Smith takes, for they are as fresh as possible while paying non-imitative homage to how Stuff himself played. Each time Smith performed the “same” tune, it was never truly the same.
There are only two actual Smith compositions in this set: “Desert Sands,” in which it might be said guitarist Honey Boulton is heard playing somewhere between Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis, both of whom Stuff recorded the tune with in 1957, and “Stop Look.”
Yet traces of Smith can be heard elsewhere too: notably, Matt’s “Yune’ June” is pretty much a contrafact of “Ain’t She Sweet” (Ager, Yellen), recorded a couple of times by Smith in Europe. Smith also recorded Victor Young’s “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You” (lyrics by Ned Washington and Bing Crosby).
I’ve always considered “Desert Sands” to be a major signature of Smith’s, and it pains me to recall how, at a club just outside Copenhagen, when Smith asked me what I would like him to play, I called for “Take the ‘A’ Train” when I could have called for “Desert Sands.” One of several retrospectively important questions I failed to ask him was why he never played this wonderful composition again after his permanent move to Europe in 1965...
...Matt Holborn’s For Stuff is a warm, affectionate, and original tribute. Stop Look? Listen.
Anthony Barnett