by Nick DeRiso Taking on Nina Simone, a singer of dusky persuasiveness, might be foolhardy enough. Remaking this song, a Top 20 pop hit off Simone’s celebrated 1958 debut Little Girl Blue seemed like the worst idea of all. But Canadian singer Kellylee Evans finds a new light, even ifRead More

What kind of a year was it for music? It was so good that very often, I had a tough time figuring out what to listen to next. The proper cliché to be applied is “an embarrassment of riches.” Not only was it a great year for music, it wasRead More

by Mark Saleski One way to define a categorical number line of female jazz vocalists would be to put artists like Ella Fitzgerald (full of insistent smolder, fire & brimstone) at one end, and balance that with voices of pure subtlety at the other — Billie Holiday, Shirley Horn, andRead More

Cassandra Wilson, who consistently defies convention as this restless chanteuse, doesn’t disappoint with Silver Pony — issued today on Blue Note as the long-awaited part-in studio, part-live followup to her celebrated Loverly. She has the vocal phrasing, the dusky intellect, of Charlie Parker and the elastic intuition of Betty Carter.Read More

Here’s a free mp3 download of Cassandra Wilson’s “Silver Moon,” a tune featuring saxophonist Ravi Coltrane from the forthcoming Blue Note recording Silver Pony. A hybrid live/studio album set for release on Nov. 9, Silver Pony features live songs from a European tour and studio work done at New Orleans’Read More

by Nick DeRiso Billie Holiday’s voice, fragile and thin at the end, belied the strong-willed fighter she always was. This record, dotted with tunes she’d once owned two decades before as a bubbly bird in front of big bands, makes the argument for her. By the mid-1950s, the hard-living HolidayRead More

“The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album” remains, for me, one of the three or four most engrossing vocal jazz recordings — along with Sinatra’s Jobim collaboration, Ella performing with Satchmo and Nat “King” Cole’s “After Midnight.” But what made the initial Bennett/Evans project, and its follow up — 1976’s “Together Again”Read More

by Nick DeRiso  To think, we almost never heard Carmen McRae sing these songs. Even though she was an early acolyte of Billie Holiday, McRae was at first better known as a pianist. (In fact, upon meeting her, Holiday was said to be so impressed that she recorded McRae’s “DreamRead More

Cassandra Wilson, unlike so many, never turns a cover tune into a math problem — trying to get it too note perfect, or make it add up. Instead, her hypnotic, sensuous contralto transforms other people’s work, often giving it a power and meaning never dreamt of before. That’s writ largeRead More

Irma Thomas, whose Louisiana legend of a voice has darkened into a more expressive place, is taking a similar career tack. The new “Simply Grand,” in fact, finds Thomas moving deeper into the emotional underpinnings of her best work at a time when safer environs would probably be more profitable.Read More