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Loverly Liner Notes written by

Will Friedwald an American author and ascap award winning music critic

Here’s how I would define the word “playful”: sing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” and, when you get to the end of the
second line, “with one enormous…,” then wait as long as humanly possible before you get to the word “chair.” In all
the millions of times I’ve heard that classic show tune, it never occurred to me that “Loverly” might contain a sexual
double-entendre. Mind you that Julie Davis knows well that she doesn’t have to actually do anything to lead us to this
conclusion, other than simply inserting a pause, to start our minds racing. In fact, it’s the not doing anything that does
the trick. Like the best singers, she knows what to do and what not to do, and in this case, simply by delaying a word,
she knows that our heads will do all the work for her. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of seeing her work in person, other
than in online videos, and while I don’t doubt that she uses her visual attributes (costume, body language, gestures)
very wisely as well, but even in the strictly-aural medium of recording she can get our minds racing on the subject of
all sorts of “enormous” things.

I had never heard Davis & Dow before receiving this CD in the mail, but the immediate thing that I liked about them
was their sense of humor: so much of contemporary jazz, both singers and instrumentalists (cabaret as well as jazz,
as a matter of fact), tend to be as serious as your life: but Davis & Dow knew what Nat King Cole, Fats Waller, Louis
Armstrong and so many others of the great generations knew, that a sense of humor is closely related to a sense of
rhythm, and in these great icons of the mid-20th century, they are but two sides to the same kind. Both Davis and Dow
perform “You’re My Thrill” seductively enough, accenting its undertow of undulatingly erotic qualities – this is as good
a place as any to point out Kelly Dow’s gypsy-style guitar work, and how he executes a manouche version of a tango.
(Likewise, on “Caravan,” Mr. Dow has got us convinced that, the lyric to the contrary, this is hardly a “desert caravan”
but one of the Romany variety.) On “You’re My Thrill,” I can’t help but smile when I hear Ms. Davis play not only with
the lyrics and the melody but the very sound of her voice, which she makes sound like Billie Holiday one second and
Shirley Bassey the next, as if she were hopping between a Southern accent and a British accent.

“Honey Pie” is a perfect piece of more contemporary material for the team, being a Beatles song written and sung by
Paul McCartney with his tongue deeply in his cheek and a smile on his face. On The White Album, McCartney and producer
George Martin went to the trouble of doctoring the track to make it sound like an unrestored relic from the ‘20s:
how many rock-era songs actually have a verse that sets up the chorus. More recently, McCartney said in an interview
that “Little White Lies” was a favorite song of both himself and John Lennon when they were teenagers, and if ever
there was a Beatles song with a Walter Donaldson influence, this is it. Davis & Dow, contrastingly, also treat it like an
authentic ‘20s song, by reinterpreting it, even jamming on it, as if it were “Little White Lies” or “My Blue Heaven.”
Davis and Dow Loverly

There’s a stop-time section near the end that’s especially authentic to The Jazz Age, and a cymbal crash that could have
come off a vintage dance band disc; the ending is one of several spots where Davis and Dow blend together, exchanging
phrases and joining in harmonies, as if they were Grappelly and Reinhardt.

There’s no better place for playing, musically or otherwise, than the beach, and it seems perfectly natural for a pair of
South Floridians to show a fascination for “Dancing In The Sand” with “Mr. Sandman.” Obviously, if delta bluesmen can
sing about cotton fields and New Yorkers can sing their lullabies of Broadway and Birdland (out of towners may wonder
why there are all these lullabies for the city that never sleeps) then Florida jazzers can sing a song on the sand. (At some
point, I should very like to see D & D repeat these two tunes as part of a whole album of sandy songs, including “Moon
and Sand,” “Sand In My Shoes,” “Sands of Time,” “Japanese Sandman,” not to mention “Sand By Me.”) “Dancing” is a
catchy, Brazilian-inspired original, and “Mr. Sandman” is just as creative, reinventing the late ‘50s hit with Hot Club of
France-style interplay (and a clever intro, referencing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” before two guitars render the opening
lines in counterpoint). Davis doesn’t need to mess with the melody to personalize it. Much as I like the Chordettes
(the name always suggested a musical education system for an all-girl’s kindergarten), I never found myself actually
patting my foot and snapping my fingers to “Mr. Sandman” before. D & D’s treatment of “Underneath The Apple Tree”
makes me regret that I hadn’t paid much attention to Michael Franks over the years; his “Popsicle Toes” always left
me somewhat cold (ha!) but “Apple Tree” fits perfectly into their trajectory of serious musicianship and playful subject
matter. After the well-known “Caravan” (how nice it is to hear that classic tune employed as anything other than a
two-hour drum solo!), the team treats us to a pair of lesser-known works by well-known composers: Irving Berlin’s
“Reaching For The Moon” shows why he was one of the great American masters of the waltz (take that, Franz Lehar!),
and the piece effectively showcases violinist Federico Britos; “Azure” is an underdone Ellington tune that D & D set to
an exotic rhythm pattern so as to convey the proper sense of drifting, dreaming in an azure mood. “Dedicated to You” is
early Sammy Cahn & Saul Chaplin (not to mention Hy Zaret of “Unchained Melody” fame) from the period when Sammy
primarily wrote for swing bands and black performers. Cleverly, this is one of two swing era tunes from the early Ella
Fitzgerald book (the other is “Stairway to The Stars”) that Davis & Dow chose to do as the in the most intimate manner
imaginable, and not necessarily by employing the obvious method of slowing the tempo down to somewhere to the
point where snails seem to be racing by. Here I was particularly struck by not only how playful the music of Davis & Dow
is, but how extremely musical. Then again, I could say that about the whole album.

Will Friedwald is an American author and ascap award winning music critic

1 That Old black Magic

2 My Favorite Things

3 Django/I Love Paris

4 Fever

5 Take Five

6 West Coast Blues

7 Passion Flower

8 Caravan

9 What are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?

10 Stella By Starlight

11 Miss Otis Regrets

12 Midnight Sun

13 On Green Dolphin Street

14 Deja Vu

15 It Don't Mean A Thing(If It Ain't Got That Swing)

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Loverly Davis and Dow

Naked Davis And Dow

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A collection of classical Spanish music

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