Red Beans And Weiss - Chuck Weiss's House Speciality

Chuck E. Weiss Red Beans And Weiss [NEW & SEALED vinyl LP record]
$18.50 - includes shipping!!*
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A longtime (and, at this point in his storied career, a lifetime) standard name on just about all of Los Angeles's downtown jazz club marquees, Chuck E. Weiss finds himself tucked in with ANTI Records for his fifth studio album Red Beans And Weiss.  No doubt a good word was put in by his associate, one Mr. Tom Waits, who has seen release of his own albums on the label for the last fifteen years. Having made numerous references to Weiss on a number of albums from Small Change to Rain Dogs, anyone aware of Mr. Waits's lineage also likely knows the name Weiss. The two co-inhabited LA's legendary Tropicana Hotel in the 70's, ran amok with the off center Ben Frank's crowd back in the same days (there's a coupon for a free breakfast there in the gatefold of the LP... no expiration on it either. Insert tongue in cheek), and in testament to Chuck's reputation on the scene, the late great Willie Dixon once called this "little jew boy with the big ol' head, the best damn musician in this town - this country even!"

Red Beans sees Weiss sounding significantly more relaxed, musically experimental and lyrically playful  than on his previous efforts - though it's been over half a decade since his last.  One would expect some change between albums for any other musician with that much time in between, but for Weiss, with his penchant for being so insistently insistent on all things nostalgic, it comes as a surprise to hear this album so undocked from its predecessors.  Not that the difference isn't a good one - it's quite good actually, as this effort by and large, contains a collection of Chuck Weiss's most enhancing work.  The rollicking pseudo-Primus sounding "Boston Blackie" is currently the only radio single from RedBeans, though as is often the case, it falls short of representing the album as a whole.  And that's just as well, because truly any song chosen from this, with so much individual character in each of them, just wouldn't do justice to its entirety, or allow the listener any chance at assuming its contents.  From the opening percussion of the cutely repetitive, hilariously titular "Tupelo Joe", on into the the smooth jazz whispered biography of "Shushie" (Weiss's own neighborhood stray cat), Red Beans And Weiss, right from the start, revels in its own idiosyncrasy, and urges a certain curiosity for the artist's characters... as well as for the artist himself. In example, "The Knucklehead Stuff" is a haphazard sung-spoken R&B rap that puts Weiss immediately among the elite who can pull off too cool to be concerned with being cool. This is furthered on the B Side track "Oo Poo Pa Do In The Rebop", an irreverent wink at jazz dance bebop, and in "Willie's In The Pee Pee House", which is about exactly what you'd expect it to be: guy named Willie, aside from being a general miscreant, has a tendency to slip into the women's restroom to get himself off. "Some may call him Herbert, I just call him pervert," Weiss sings in his sloppy Howlin' Wolf meets Beefheart falsetto, "Willie's in the pee pee house again!" 

While Red Beans And Weiss did have a rather long gestation period, the album is a worthwhile addition to not only the artist's chronology, but to the annals of music history in general.  The circumspect might withhold from calling this a future classic, but to name it as one of those Trout Mask Replica type albums that a generationally accruing cult audience would put on their "top x" list of eccentric necessities - yeah, Red Beans And Weiss will undoubtedly be that.