2009.10.26
CD reviews we couldn't fit into Saturday's paper
ROSANNE CASH
"The List"
(Manhattan)
The title of Rosanne Cash’s new album refers to a list of "100 Essential Country Songs" that her father, Johnny, gave her on her 18th birthday. This album contains her renditions of a dozen of them, although, as she has noted, the selections really cover a broad range of roots music.
Hank Snow’s "I’m Moving On" — slowed down, bass-heavy, and horn-accented — gets a radical makeover that works. Generally, however, the arrangements by Cash’s producer-husband, John Leventhal, stick closer to the originals while still managing in most cases to make familiar material sound fresh.
Bruce Springsteen doesn’t click with Cash on "Sea of Heartbreak," but Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy, and Rufus Wainwright fare better in their harmonizing cameos. Curiously, Cash sings such selections as "Long Black Veil" and "Girl From the North Country" from the original male point of view, putting some emotional distance between singer and song that you don’t get in, say, "Heartaches by the Number" or "She’s Got You."
— N.C.
GERALD WILSON ORCHESTRA
"Detroit"
(Mack Avenue)
At 91, Gerald Wilson has worked with everyone from Duke Ellington and Count Basie to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Redd Foxx’s NBC shows. Here he gets a commission from the Detroit International Jazz Festival to write a six-part suite that is outsized good for a cat of any age.
Wilson, who lived in Detroit in the 1930s, titles the CD after the hard-luck metropolis even though he has lived for decades in Los Angeles and remains hard to pin down geographically. He uses a "New York band" with trumpeter Jon Faddis and guest flutist Hubert Laws and an "L.A. band" with his son Anthony on guitar.
The result is one long, sensuous dive into a master’s mind. This stuff courses with hard bop but flows easily, and never a nasty moment comes to the fore. Life has edited this man into a monument, one that’s unpretentious, radiating stuff that sounds good.
No doubt "The Detroit River" doesn’t flow as fast as this blues, while "Before Motown" jumps with a Latin tinge. Temple professor and trumpeter Terrell Stafford makes inviting work of "Aram," a sprightly, horn-heavy ditty that’s not part of the suite.
— Karl Stark, The Philadelphia Inquirer
TESSA SOUTER
"Obsession" (Motema)
Singer Tessa Souter packs a smoky wallop. The London-born chanteuse with Trinidadian bloodlines and a San Francisco base comes with an unusual cocktail of influences. Singer Mark Murphy helped mentor her.
The best thing is that Souter sounds different. She does "Afro Blue" not to acknowledge servile guilt to an old songbook but to be expressive and take a different slant. She dips a lot into pop, but it’s for slick choices like Nick Drake’s "Riverman" (which recalls Andy Bey’s great version). It’s also in the service of a sleek vibe such as the meditative "Usha’s Wedding," though that ditty ultimately disappoints.
Even a rock tune as familiar as Cream’s "White Room" sounds distinctly Souterian, which is no small feat. Dori Caymmi’s title track is a light tune that could use more bite. But Kenny Barron’s "Crystal Rain" is full of passion, while "Love Theme for Spartacus" by Alex North, a brief and daring duet with guitarist Jason Ennis, reminds me that there really is a love song buried in there.
— K.S.
