Enjoy classic swing in one of two unusual configurations: two tenor guitars, upright bass and vocals OR piano in place of one of the tenor guitars. Phil Flanigan evokes the great Charlie Christian in his tenor guitar solos; Hanna Richardson plays flawless time on the second tenor guitar and sings with warmth, verve and wit. Jared Mulcahy’s sound and confidence on the upright bass belie his youth. Flanigan, also an upright bassist, is a veteran of Benny Goodman’s band and a founding member of the Scott Hamilton Quintet. Hanna’s approach to a song is at once warm and cool—warm of timbre, cool, casual and relaxed in delivery. Classic, swinging American music from the great popular and jazz songwriters of the thirties and forties. The group sound has the intimacy, delicacy, yet fullness of chamber music. And that indefinable thing called ‘swing,’ which was so much a part of the era, is at the root of everything they do.
Hanna and Phil’s recordings have garnered three SAMMYs (Syracuse Area Music Award):
2004 SAMMY: Best Jazz Recording
2005 SAMMY: Best Jazz Recording with Vocal
2008 SAMMY: Best Jazz Recording
The Tenor Madness Story
Say the word “tenor” in a jazz context and people immediately think of the tenor sax. But another tenor entirely, one that’s less well-known—the tenor guitar—is the foundation of a new group called Tenor Madness.
Phil Flanigan, Jared Mulcahy, Hanna Richardson. Tenor Madness! Photo: John Dowling
Think guitar, but with four strings instead of six, and with a slightly higher timbre so that it stays well out the way, sonically, of an upright bass. That’s the tenor guitar. The legendary Eddie Condon was a tenor guitar player; so was Tiny Grimes.
Tenor Madness is two tenor guitar players–Hanna Richardson and Phil Flanigan–and a bassist, Jared Mulcahy. Occasionally, Phil returns to the bass, and piano is substituted for the second tenor guitar (most recently with the wonderful French pianist Stefan Vasnier). Hanna sings, wonderfully. Their sound is a musical marriage based on a real one—Phil and Hanna are husband and wife. (They met, believe it or not, when both were in elementary school in Geneva, NY in 1965. After continually running into each other and sitting in on each other’s sessions for thirty-six years, they decided to wed in 2001.)
Tenor Madness w/ Stefan Vasnier, piano Photo: John Herr
About Hanna’s singing with Phil, Roger Crane wrote on allaboutjazz.com, “Twenty-year old single-malt Scotch, Debra Winger’s grin, farmhouses by the sea…and now Hanna Richardson’s lovely voice. Sometimes life is good. Like only the best, Hanna, Phil and their group remind me once again why music is worth living for.” Hanna’s approach to a song is at once warm and cool—warm of timbre, cool, casual and relaxed in delivery.
“What we play,” says Phil, “is classic, swinging American music. A lot of our book comes from the great popular and jazz songwriters of the thirties and forties, who really did create a new kind of American classical music.” The group sound has the intimacy, delicacy, yet fullness of chamber music. And that indefinable thing called ‘swing,’ which was so much a part of the era, is at the root of everything they do.
Speaking of roots, Tenor Madness is definitely a part of the family tree of American swing. Phil played upright bass a lot with Benny Goodman in the latter decades of Goodman’s life. And the great jazz guitarist Charlie Christian, who played with Goodman from 1939 to 1941, exerted an influence over the way swing guitar is played that lasts to this day. Although Christian played 6-string (not tenor) guitar, Phil’s connection to him through Goodman is a formative factor in the Tenor Madness sound.
As for tenor guitar, Phil had his first (indirect) encounter with the instrument while playing at Eddie Condon’s club in New York City in the 1970s and 80s (Condon had passed on, but the spirit of his great tenor guitar playing was alive and well in the place), and his first direct encounter with tenor guitar when playing upright bass with Tiny Grimes around the same time. Grimes himself was a disciple of Charlie Christian, translating the earlier guitarist’s influence for the 4-string instrument.
And that led to Tenor Madness. As Hanna tells it, “I used to play mandolin, and when Phil and I first got reunited, we tried doing some mandolin and bass stuff but of course it was ridiculous, with one very high and one very low. One day Phil had the inspiration that if I could play mandolin, I could play tenor guitar.
“Phil started figuring chords out on the tenor and then transmitting what he figured out to me. I’ve always had a good sense of rhythm and could finger stuff and strum well, so that wasn’t the issue — just knowing where to put my fingers to get the chords we needed! I actually abandoned the thing for about 6 months, then went back again…this went on for about a year and gradually I retained more and got more confident.”
Jared first came into the picture as one of Phil’s bass students. “Even as a very young player, he had a sound and concept,” says Phil. “He got really good really fast. I was enjoying playing the tenor guitars we started collecting and one day decided to call in Jared to play bass so I could play tenor.”
Tenor Madness has also featured special guests, such as the superb French pianist Stefan Vasnier, who can be seen here playing “What Have You Got That Gets Me”:
Between Phil, Hanna and Jared, they’ve played with Rosemary Clooney, Maxine Sullivan, Benny Goodman, Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Rowles, Tommy Flanagan, Ruby Braff, Roy Eldridge, Vic Dickenson, Connie Kay, Jimmy McPartland, Wild Bill Davison, John Bunch, Scott Hamilton, Dick Wellstood, Jo Jones, Tiny Grimes, Hank Jones, Sonny Greer, Bob Wilber, Johnny Griffin, Kenny Davern, Warren Vache, Howard Alden, Eddie Higgins, and Ira Sullivan. A veritable who’s who in jazz history.
Hanna and Phil can be heard on CDs on the Arbors Jazz and La-La labels; Phil, a stellar figure in the world of upright bass, can be heard in accompaniment on more than seventy CDs on the Concord, Chiaroscuro, Famous Door, Harbinger, Musicmasters, Rounder, Arbors Jazz, and other labels.
