Fred Hersch & Esperanza Spalding – “But Not For Me” 2023 from Alive at the Village Vanguard. Spalding has been one of the most consistently inventive jazz-based popular performers to come along in the last couple decades. Hersch is one of the most underrated of all jazz pianists. Put them together, and you come up with this irresistible record of vocal and piano duets. This Gershwin song opens the album and sets the stage. Spalding is playing off Ella Fitzgerald’s memory, here, though she is never imitating. She swings hard, and after singing the two verses relatively straight, she starts wildly swooping across intervals, and deconstructs the lyrics, winning deserved laughs from the audience when she complains about the middle English words hi-ho, alas, and lack-a-day. Then, holy moley, her scatting! Before this album, I’d never heard Spalding do an old-fashioned straight jazz performance, but she is a master at it. After this, Hersch rises to the challenge with some incandescent improvisations on the tune. Truly a remarkable performance.
Norah Jones – “Young Blood” 2009 from The Fall. Johnny Cash fell into a burning ring of fire, but Norah Jones and her lover set five whole boroughs aflame. This anxious bundle of nervous energy goes by at a fast clip, driven by guitars, bass, and drums, with Jones mixing and matching metaphors including werewolves, revolvers, clocks, chickens, matches, killing fathers, and tearing books. Don’t try to make too much sense of it, just absorb the matter-of-fact delivery in which she uses all her artistry to make these words feel like desire’s truest expression. Or is it about trying to refuse that desire, to avoid the blowing up of another relationship? “Our fears are only what we tell them to be.”
Bobby Womack – “Superstar” 1975 from I Don’t Know What the World Is Coming To. Bobby Womack still doesn’t get the respect he deserved. Or maybe that’s not right – everybody who knows his music at all respects him, but not enough people know who he was. Starting out as a Sam Cooke protégé – his group the Valentinos recorded for Cooke’s SAR label, and he played guitar often behind Cooke – Womack became a consistently good soul songwriter whose career spanned decades until his death in 2014. This album is one I’ve seen in used record bins my whole record store life. It’s not one of his most popular, but it does show off his vocal skills. “Superstar” sits perfectly at the intersection of soul and country music circa the mid-seventies. Womack’s guitar and a pedal steel set the table, then vie with shimmering harp figures and a solid r&b bass and drums groove. And his vocals – he wasn’t a smooth singer, but his grit could mellow out, as it does here, until he starts delivering the shouted growls he could have trademarked. Set against some sweet female backing vocals, the contrast is spectacular.
Justin Townes Earle – “Don’t Drink the Water” 2019 from The Saint of Lost Causes. Justin Townes Earle released 8 full-length albums and an EP in the 13 years before he died of an accidental overdose at age 38 a year after this final record. He was the son of Steve Earle, though his father wasn’t around his family until Justin was in his late teens. Justin was one heck of a songwriter, and a really talented singer. This song is full of anger at the oil companies who were causing death and destruction by fracking in the mountains. In the song, a fast-moving blues, Earle sings about people dying, and the expert in a law suit attributing it to an “act of God.” I never noticed before, but Earle’s phrasing on this song reminds me a little of Dion, which is a great thing in my book. The accumulation of detail, fear, and understated anger makes this a particularly effective protest song.
Barry White – “Hung Up On Your Love” 1979 from The Message Is Love. Anticipation is the key. For over four minutes, White holds court over what most disco producers of the time would have used for a mere intro to a song. The heavily syncopated hi-hat and pulsing bass drum dominates the rhythm, with a heavily reverberating wood block sound emphasizing certain beats. Strings slash then slide, guitar interjections come in, and White sings an intro setting the scene before telling of the ways his lover has him mesmerized. Heck, this whole track has me mesmerized. “You’re erotic and yet you’re so discrete / Girl you give my body so much heat / You fascinate, stimulate, and captivate / You keep me wanting more more.” It’s almost like a disco/funk/Gregorian chant of ecstasy. The whole track stays at this level of foreplay – if you want release, you’ll have to pick another song on the album. The horns – I forgot to mention when they came into the picture, not to mention the piano – end the performance with a curt three note resolution which honestly only makes me want to start the song over.