The recently reactivated Dublin-based Livia Records is looking forward to issuing further albums featuring the late, great Irish guitarist, Louis Stewart, following an enthusiastic response internationally to its first two releases.
Dermot Rogers, a music enthusiast who hosts a stylistically wide-ranging weekly programme on Dublin City FM, hit upon the idea of relaunching the label when he became aware that Stewart’s recorded legacy was in danger of being consigned to history.
“I had no ambitions of running a record company but I used to go and see Louis when he played in Dublin and I thought, there will be people out there who either don’t know his work or who wished they had his records,” says Rogers. “And since no-one else seemed to be doing anything with Louis’ catalogue, I decided that I’d get involved.”
Livia Records was founded by Gerald Davis, a Dublin-based artist, art gallery proprietor, literary scholar and music lover, in 1977. He released Louis Stewart’s solo guitar album, Out on His Own, the same year. At the time Stewart was playing in saxophonist Ronnie Scott’s quintet and featuring regularly in Scott’s London jazz club. He had already played with Scott’s fellow saxophonist and partner in the Jazz Couriers, the endlessly creative Tubby Hayes.
Stewart would go on to enjoy a career that included work with jazz legends Benny Goodman, George Shearing and Stephane Grappelli and recordings that included an album, I Thought About You, recorded with the great American bass and drums team, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins and English pianist John Taylor.
Rogers has plans to make more of Stewart’s albums from Livia’s vaults available. First, though, he had to secure permission from the family of Gerald Davis, who died in 2005, to access the Livia catalogue. He tracked down Davis’ son, Les, in Christchurch, New Zealand and was given Les’ blessing.
A remastered Out on His Own became the first release of the new Livia era in February this year. It has now been followed by a previously unreleased, and little known, duo recording by Stewart and his friend and mentor, pianist Noel Kelehan, Some Other Blues.
This album is the only known recording by the two musicians, who thrilled Irish audiences throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and is regarded as the Holy Grail of Irish jazz. Like Out on His Own, it was recorded in 1977, when Stewart was fitting in Dublin gigs with Kelehan on visits home from London.
Kelehan went on to become a busy composer, arranger and conductor for Irish broadcaster RTE. This reduced the time he had available for playing jazz, but Some Other Blues finds both him and Stewart at the peak of their abilities. The former head of jazz for Sony Music UK and Europe has described the album’s opening track, Yesterdays, as “phenomenal.”
Some Other Blues features eight standards, including the title track by John Coltrane, and a ballad written by Kelehan, I Only Have Time to Say I Love You. The CD includes a 12-page booklet with liner notes by former Louis Stewart bass guitarist and educator Ronan Guilfoyle, and a trove of previously unseen photographs.
“Both Out on His Own and Some Other Blues have had great reviews,” says Rogers. “They’ve also been featured on radio in the US, Canada, France, Belgium, and Australia, as well as in the UK and Ireland, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Louis was Ireland’s first world class jazz musician and the fact that he formed mutual admiration societies with fellow guitar marvels, Joe Pass, Jim Hall and Martin Taylor, is testament to his brilliance. He died in 2016 but I’d like to think that we can introduce him to generations of new fans through the albums we have released and plan to release. It’s nothing more than he deserves.”
Adam Roberts
Radio Summerhall Arts 