One More Time: The Chess Years

A bit of a comedian with his sound effects and scat vocals, Stewart was someone who the variety shows of the Seventies subsisted on — talented, up for anything, and a touch goofy. And there was a time when the comic and the sincere were not that far apart, and one did not cancel out the other. The mood is upbeat, like a slightly less hip Motown, and Stewart enters every track at full tilt. He absolutely murders “Summertime,” and turns it into a kind of heartbroken gallop. This lane is his alone, nothing else quite like this. Positive gentleman blues, or something close to that.