July 16, 2024

JUMPIN’ JACK HUTTON & FRIENDS UPSTAGED BY PROTEGE GRANDSON KAI

GRAVENHURST — Jack was jumpin’ Friday.

Literally.

The Bala ragtime pianist is the hare to Joe Biden’s tortoise.

And if Donald Trump were within earshot of the Opera House, he would have heard ‘… Hutton and Friends’ tear up the stage “one more time.”

Not bad for a nonagenarian.

“91 and done?”

Not in your life, say his loyal fans, who come back year after year (since his first sold out gig July 26, 2003) to listen to some of the sweetest music this side heaven. Which many of them are closer to.

Jack’s eyebrows are — of course — still there; and his eyesight may not be what it once was with reading chord progressions harder now.

But his audiences would never know, because he can still cover the keyboard-end-to end with 88 black and white runs waving and cresting as if water skiing across Lake Muskoka.

As if a kid 75 years younger.

Or more like his 16-year-old grandson, Kai Hutton, a pianist and multi-instrumentalist who upstaged gramps and has become as much a part these so-looked-forward-to annual nights the past few years as they are to Hutton and his musician friends.

Kai opened both halves of the summer showcase — first with a riveting rendition of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. And then Turkish March, a piece the teen wrote based on Mozart he winds up in a rousing boogie-woogie bass line finish.

“That’s when he becomes Jack,” said his mom proud Sue Hutton.

A grandfather couldn’t be prouder. A real chip off the block. Hutton Sr. encouraged the crowd to give the bashful, but beaming mop-topper a deserving standing ovation. One even the rest of the band stood and applauded. High praise from fellow musicians four, five and almost six times older.

**A proud grandpa, Jack Hutton was upstaged by his 16-year-old grandson, Kai Hutton, a staple on the Opera House stage now. Could a young Hutton and friends one day replace Jack?**

Together with Will Wilson on banjo and guitar, Ross Woolridge (“Canada’s Benny Goodman”), Bob Muir on trombone and Ralph Johnson playing an 1850 stand-up bass, the quintet was as entertaining as 2023 and 29 and the years before.

The concert that ran overtime (as usual — and that’s not including the traditional short jam afterwards) was filled with “hidden gems and buried treasures.”

**A spry Jack Hutton never missed a beat while pounding away on the 88 keys — three shy of his age.**

It featured Jack’s rollicking stride piano playing of Fat’s Waller’s Honeysuckle Rose and Ain’t Misbehavin.’ Clarinet Marmalade (“a Nawlins anthem”) and a medley of Duke Ellington hits including Sophisticated Lady, It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing, Billy Strayhorn’s Satin Doll — and for this reviewer the evening’s best number, Duke and Barney Bigard’s gentle and gorgeous Mood Indigo, with Woolridge twisting his liquorice stick ringing the most out of his reed.

A show-stopper was Toronto composer Ruth Lowe’s I’ll Never Smile Again, recorded by Tommy Dorsey and made a hit by crooner Frank Sinatra.

The Sheik of Araby (“… with no pants on.”) was hugely humourously popular sing-along.

And finally Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again, an appropriate way to end and with a subtle nod and reminder about “one more time” next year.

“If they want us back,” said Jack.

If so, he’ll be jump at the chance.