Steve Snelling is a jazz pianist and singer-songwriter with a playful pop sensibility. He writes songs for grownups – think Joni Mitchell meets Michael Franks.
Having lived in a wide compass of altitudes—literally and metaphorically—I’ve come to appreciate the opportunity for beauty in all things. With a classical background, steeped in jazz, folk and pop, having fallen in love with American songwriting of all styles, and tempered in hundreds of ensembles, I’m grateful to share my musical and life experience with others. Please give my new release a listen, and drop me a note in the contact page. I always write back. – ss
Honoring Our Jazz Roots
Written in 1947 by Johnny Frigo (Frigo magnanimously co-credited bandmates Herb Ellis, and Lou Carter), this beautiful and slightly melancholy ballad speaks to me in a way I find mildly ironic. The lyric seems to be decrying love/romance as a path fraught with peril, with both a warning and a defiant claim of non-participation in such folly. But the melody and harmony belie a yearning and lack of connection in a kind of sour grapes way. The first known recording of Detour Ahead was by Woody Herman and His Orchestra – Vocal by Mary Ann McCall (July 14, 1949), and it has been covered innumerable times as a gem of the jazz standards idiom. – ss