This is a Recording

Travelin' Light is the fourth and last album jazz singer and pianist Shirley Horn recorded in the '60s, before taking time away from the limelight to devote to family life. Thereafter she performed only occasionally in and around her home city of Washington D.C., until the first stirrings of a career revival in the late '70s. Her early records had been well-reviewed and earned admiration from her peers (no less a figure than Miles Davis singled out her debut LP Embers and Ashes in some rare public praise), but they had sold poorly. I first heard of her via YouTube, having searched for versions of a song I'd taken a shine to called ' You're Blasé '. At length I got around to tracking down a copy of the album it had appeared on, i.e. this one. Specifically I bought a mid-'90s French-made CD re-issue. While not terribly rare, it's uncommon enough that it took me a while before I found an affordable copy. I think I ended up paying something in the ...

No more than dimly aware of his music, I hadn't known of Chet Baker's outings as a vocalist until about four or five years ago. Then, in a classic case of the so-called Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, I suddenly seemed to hear and read about it from multiple sources within the space of a few months. Having much enjoyed some of the tracks from Chet Baker Sings , I obtained it on CD, as part of a four-disc set of Eight Classic Albums which also included two other records with some of Chet's crooning on them: Grey December and Embraceable You . Then, last year, I happened to find a vinyl copy in the wild - specifically a mid-'80s Spanish re-issue in excellent condition that, according to Discogs, is worth rather more than the few pounds I paid for it. The record brings together the contents of a 10" album recorded and released in 1954 (the original Chet Baker Sings ) with a further half dozen numbers recorded in 1956 for the initial 12" issue. The music is mellow, a...

Having fallen for the late, lamented Jaimie Branch's wonderful album Fly or Die II , I wondered if there might be anything else on the same label - International Anthem - that I'd also enjoy. Via YouTube I began listening to Irreversible Entanglements, and, while the music was a little freer than I typically take my jazz, I was hooked by the video for the track 'No Más', and had soon acquired the Who Sent You? album on CD. Irreversible Entanglements are a quintet with four instrumentalists (Keir Neuringer - saxophone; Aquiles Navarro - trumpet; Luke Stewart - bass; Tcheser Holmes - drums) and a vocalist (Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother). Ayewa recites rather than sings her words, yet the rhythmic quality of her delivery enhances the music as well as providing the message. Who Sent You? released in 2020, is their second album. There are five tracks over the disc's forty-three minutes. The first half of the second number, which gives the album its name, is another hig...

Another of the albums I've re-acquired on vinyl that I formerly owned on cassette is this compilation of some of Sweet Honey in the Rock's best tracks as of 1987. I feel fairly sure I bought it relatively soon after its release. Theirs was among the several kinds of music that Andy Kershaw would play on his Radio 1 show - there's a fair chance I heard of them from him. They're an a capella vocal quintet with a sixth member who provides sign-language interpretations of their songs. At Discogs this is categorised as "Gospel/Soul". There's more here of the socially-conscious, political & inspirational than the outright religious: they're preaching a kind of semi-secular gospel on this record, though their singing must surely derive much of its quality and heft from devotional roots. My favourite tracks here include the rousingly righteous 'Ella's Song' & 'Study War No More', and softer-edged numbers like the title track and ...

Ella Swings Brighly With Nelson is one of half a dozen records on my shelves issued by the "World Record Club", a mail-order label set up in the UK in the mid-'50s. The records themselves (mostly) sound good, but the sleeve designs depart from the original ones in ways that don't improve them. The Verve issues of this album feature a photograph of Ms Fitzgerald & Mr Riddle, wheras here we have a rather muddily impressionistic drawing/painting of the singer. By 1961, as Alun Morgan's sleevenotes state, both Ella and Nelson were widely renowned and much in demand. They had already worked together on The George and Ira Gershwin Song Book in '59. This record is one of a pair arising from sessions in '61 that were released the following year, the other being Ella Swings Gently With Nelson . It's an album that isn't perhaps either headliner's finest work, but it's still a very good one, and makes for enjoyable listening. The sorrowful lyric...

The Exciting Joe Williams is among the best of several big band jazz records I've acquired in recent months. It's one of those LPs which just sounds fantastic from the moment the needle hits it, despite getting off to what is, to my mind, a slightly shaky start, thanks to an inadvisably upbeat, jazz-hands waving version of 'Ol' Man River'. The second song, 'This is the Life', however, is much more like it, and puts things on a surer footing that's then maintained throughout. On 'This is the Life', among other numbers, Williams' smooth and strong baritone sounds somewhat Sinatra-like, and his delivery has a similarly (and justifiably) confident swagger about it. Frank may have had the edge when interpreting a slow ballad, but on uptempo numbers, Joe was at least as good.  Other favourites of mine on the record are 'Come In Out Of The Rain', 'Gypsy In My Soul', and, especially 'Last Love, Last Kiss, Goodbye'. The last-n...

Saxophonist and composer Shabaka Hutchings evidently likes to keep himself busy as the leader of The Comet is Coming, and, until very recently, of Sons Of Kemet; not to mention his work as a soloist and sideman. Out of the music of his I've heard, my favourite thus far is this album We Are Sent Here By History by Shabaka And The Ancestors, the second record from the band who, apart from Hutchings himself, are based in South Africa. I acquired it last year, on CD. The two obvious focal points of the music are Huthchings' lead tenor sax and clarinet, and poet Siyabonga Mthembu's compelling chants and recitations, delivered in English, Zulu and Xhosa. Also immediately impressive is Ariel Zamonsky’s work on the double bass, but the whole band blends together beautifully. The disc gets off to a powerful start with the ten-minute opener 'They Who Must Die'. The musicians are more than capable of delicate virtuosity, but meanwhile not above playing with simpler blunt forc...

After I'd accumulated a couple of dozen excellent LPs by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Nat 'King' Cole and Frank Sinatra, it occurred to me to wonder who else had been signing in similar styles in the '50s and '60s whose names were less well-remembered. I went looking on-line and thereby found my way to singers I ought to have heard of, like Nancy Wilson , and to more obscure performers such as Ethel Ennis and Dakota Staton . Staton was blessed with a clear & bright voice capable of near-operatic power. She comes across as an ebullient performer. Her diction was excellent, even if, to my taste, she was sometimes prone to over-enunciate and over-act a lyric. I suspect that, given the opportunity, she could have shone in musical theatre. Crazy He Calls Me is one of no fewer than three LPs Capitol Records released under her name in 1959. Unlike the others it's a compilation of newly-recorded tracks and of material pre-dating her '57 breakth...

Although Caroline Shaw's composition 'Partita for 8 Voices' made waves when it won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, I didn't hear it until a few years afterwards. When I did, it made an immediate impression and I ordered a copy of the present CD, which at that point contained the only available recording of the piece. The album's eponymous title is that of the vocal ensemble for whom the 'Partita' was created, and of which Shaw is also a member. Perplexingly, the 'Partita' is presented out-of-sequence on the disc, and to hear it in its proper order involves listening to tracks 9, 11, 5 and 1 respectively: to my mind a bad and easily-avoidable decision. Perhaps it was ordered that way to guide the listener to pay more attention to the other pieces on the album, variously composed by William Brittelle, Judd Greenstein, Caleb Burhans, Sarah Kirkland Snider & Merrill Garbus, all unfamilar names to me except the last - some of whose work as tUnE-yAr...

Valve Bone Woe was touted as Chrissie Hynde's jazz album when it was released in 2019, but jazz is only one of its ingredients. There are are some jazz classics (Mingus's 'Meditation on a Pair of Wirecutters' and Coltrane's 'Naima') on which Hynde takes a back-seat, letting the big band behind her take it away; and there are selections from the Great American Songbook like 'I Get Along Without You Very Well' and 'Hello Young Lovers'; but there are also '60s songs such as Brian Wilson's 'Caroline, No' and Nick Drake's 'River Man'. It's located then, somewhere near the junction of jazz, mid-century pop and easy listening. Hynde's voice isn't as strong as most of the old-school jazz-singers', and some of the songs show up its limitations (her take on 'Wild is the Wind', for example), but it's fluid and characterful and generally it sounds great. The excellent arrangements and production a...

Sitting at the table writing a letter one Friday evening I heard something on the radio that made me put down my pen and pay close attention. It was 'Love Song' by jaimie branch, one of a few tracks from the album Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise that Iggy Pop, no less, had played on his weekly BBC radio show. After watching some clips of branch and her band on-line I wasted little time ordering a copy of the album on CD. Of all the recent jazz or jazz-infused recordings I've heard, this is the one I like best. Branch plays trumpet, and contributes vocals on two of the tracks. Conventionally enough, her quartet also includes a bassist (Jason Ajemian) and a drummer (Chad Taylor). Much less conventionally, there is also a cellist (Lester St. Louis). Though the group is based in New York, the album was recorded in London.  There is the eerily low-key 'Birds of Paradise'. There are the hypnotic grooves of 'Simple Silver Surfer' and 'Nuevo Roquero Estére...

This 2011 CD brings together two albums O'Day recorded on the Verve label in 1960 and '61: Waiter, Make Mine Blues and Trav'lin' Light . I'd learned about the former in the course of some YouTube expeditions undertaken during the first Covid lockdowns and was keen to hear it in full. Then, on listening to the CD as a whole, I came to understand why Trav'lin' Light was given top billing: it is the stronger album of the two. The 1961 Trav'lin' Light album was a tribute to the then recently-deceased Billie Holiday, with all the songs on it having been mainstays of her repertoire. O'Day's voice can't match the emotive strength of Holiday's, but it does have a damaged, careworn quality that suits the material very well. On half the songs she's backed by a sextet featuring Ben Webster on tenor sax and Barney Kessel on guitar; while Johnny Mandel's orchestra provide the accompaniment on the remainder. On Waiter, Make Mine Blues , ...

In an era rich with exquisite voices, Ethel Ennis' was one of the finest. Praised by Sinatra as 'my kind of singer', and congratulated on the release of her debut album by fellow-Baltimorean Billie Holliday, she could have been a major star. Her recording career was, however, sporadic, and, after a stint touring Europe with Benny Goodman, she apparently took a dislike to life on the road, seldom performing outside her home city thereafter. This self-titled LP is a budget re-issue of her 1955 debut album Lullabies for Losers with the track-listing re-ordered, and with one song ('Love For Sale') omitted. The songs on Lullabies for Losers were recorded in a single session with a four-piece band - uncredited here, but listed elsewhere as Hank Jones (piano), Eddie Briggs (guitar), Abie Baker (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums). Despite the re-jigged running order, with the tracks all sharing a common nocturnal mood and the same air of necessary spontaneity, the re-issue st...

Masakatsu Takagi is a pianist, composer and film-maker who has accumulated an extensive discography  over the last twenty-one years. My only window overlooking that body of work is Private/Public , a live album comprising highlights from a series of concerts given in Tokyo in October 2006, and released the following spring. I aquired it during my phase of ordering CDs from amazon.co.jp. I'd previously obtained discs by the singer UA and the percussion duo OLAibi, both contributors to the ensemble here, and I'd probably found this album when searching for other recordings of theirs. The music is mellow and melodic, arguably a kind of contemporary easy-listening. One might call some of it chamber-pop. Some tracks resemble soundtrack cues, and, indeed, a couple of the pieces were apparently composed for use in TV commercials. There are classical music flavours too, with the vocals in a few of the songs backed by piano and string quartet. The opening track, 'Ceremony' begi...

This hybrid SACD brings together four pieces by the contemporary Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. I first heard his music on the radio, by way of a BBC Radio 3 'Proms' concert broadcast in the summer of 2015 which included a performance of 'Beast Sampler', the opening piece on the disc. Hillborg apparently characterises a symphony orchestra as a 'sound animal', and, in this work - a sort of collage of orchestral colours and textures - he conjures up a hair-raising succession of sonic creatures. The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductor Sakari Oramo bring them expertly to life. After the opening track's exuberance, the short piece that follows, 'O dessa ögon' is a model of frosty elegance, featuring Hannah Holgersson's soprano soaring ever higher over the RPSO's strings. I find I prefer those two pieces over the others. 'Cold Heat' is another showcase for Hillborg's orchestral prowess, but one that I enjoy a little...

This deluxe production has excellence right through it: Sinatra near his peak; Basie and his band; Quincy Jones conducting & arranging. The recording quality is first-rate too, and puts the listener right in the room that "has that peculiar air about it that only successful clubs have: a combination of cigarette smoke, overheated air, smouldering dust, Lysol Clorox cleaned linen, even the silverware smells different from home silverware" to quote Stan Cornyn's notes in the gatefold. As well as instantly-recognisable songs like 'Come Fly With Me' and 'It Was a Very Good Year', there are also a few brief, but thrilling Basie instrumentals, and a pair of Sinatra's monologues - one longer ('The Tea Break'); one shorter ('A Few Last Words'). Collectively these do heighten the sense of a single evening's entertainment, but would it have been any less of a record had the monologues been omitted? Nat 'King' Cole's At The San...

I don't know why I should have been so surprised that a Mr. & Mrs. Dearie named their daughter Blossom, and that no, it wasn't a nickname or stage-name, but I was. What we have here is a 1996 compilation, no. 51 in a series of Verve Jazz Masters releases, which brings together a selection of material recorded between 1956-60 and previously dispersed over half a dozen LPs. I found it in my local charity shop in a boxful of light jazz and easy listening CDs, all with a yellowish nicotine patina and a faint residual aroma of tobacco smoke. Dearie's is a disarmingly small and girlish-sounding voice, but she makes of it a versatile instrument despite its limited power. An accomplished pianist, she accompanies herself on all but one of the tracks included here, joined by musicians such as Kenny Burrell, Ray Brown and Jo Jones. What stands out most are her thoughtful and effective arrangements, notably taking old chestnuts like 'Tea for Two' and 'Surrey With the F...

"Marian Montgomery sings happy, upbeat, swingin' love songs that proclaim Lovin' is Livin' and Livin' is Lovin:" so begin the sleevenotes to this 1964 album, the singer's third and last for Capitol Records. How much say, if any, she would have had in selecting this repertoire I don't know, but she acquits herself well in it, even if there are other singers with a surer touch on simperingly salacious numbers like 'Teach Me Tonight' and 'Do It Again'. On songs like 'I Wanna Be Loved' and the closing track 'Love is an Old Maid's Dream' she seems surer-footed. Her voice is beautifully rich contralto with a husky timbre. The arrangements are nicely varied - some are blues-flavoured and others latin-inflected, but the prevailing theme is of swinging big-band jazz. Here and there perhaps it wouldn't have hurt for the tempo to have been a little less brisk. It's not an outstanding album, but a very enjoyable one when...

London-born pianist George Shearing and his quintet recorded a number of albums in collaboration with guest vocalists on which accompaniments were mixed with instrumentals. Among these was The Swingin's Mutual (1961) where the featured singer was Nancy Wilson, at that point a rising star with two albums under her belt. Shearing and his band (piano, vibes, guitar, bass & drums) had a restrained and elegant sound, with Wilson's voice exuding a cool sophistication that complemented it very well. Often heard as an instumental, 'On Green Dolphin Street' is sung here, with its lacklustre lyrics (which hardly matter, given the quality of its melody) delivered beautifully. Shearing's own 'Lullaby of Birdland', meanwhile, is among the instrumental numbers. Wilson's next album was a similar collaboration, this time with Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley and his quintet, which, to my taste, has the edge on this one, if only by the narrowest of margins ...

Sassy Sings is a 1966 compilation LP collecting tracks by the great Sarah Vaughan recorded in 1946 and '47. Given those dates, it's not surprising that the sound quality isn't the best. 'September Song', which in all likelihood would have sounded exquisite to those lucky few present at the time, presents those of us in posterity with a need to make allowances for something that sounds like it was taped in a subway tunnel. The closing track - 'The One I Love (Belongs To Somebody Else)' - gives one the impression that the microphones were in a room across the hall from the one where the musicians were playing. The recording quality of some of the other tracks isn't so bad, but the fidelity is never high. Moreover, my copy of the record is hardly in pristine condition, and the pops & crackles from it don't help matters. Despite all that, some of the tremendous amount of light & warmth in these performances does still frequently shine through. V...