It could be the pop songs of the day, a veritable jazz standard, or a classy soul tune, whatever Nancy Wilson touched, became angelic. After almost 60 years in the business and dozens and dozens of timeless recordings, she left this world yesterday at age 81 after a long illness. She died at her home…
Not a lot of really interesting new records out lately, so I’m filling the gaps in my vinyl collection with the help of the brilliant Discogs online marketplace. I recently found two Lani Hall LPs there after reading James Gavin’s profile of the singer in the December JazzTimes magazine: the 1975 “Hello It’s Me” and…
Entertainment Cruise Productions has organized various music cruises since 2001, such as The Jazz Cruise, The Smooth Jazz Cruise, or The Playboy Jazz Cruise. The next Jazz Cruise starts on January 26th in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for a 7-day trip with stops in Nassau, The Bahamas, Cozumel and Costa Maya in Mexico, and Key West…
German singer Max Mutzke has come up with a pretty ambitious project: On his latest album “Colors”, he covers hip-hop tunes and turns them all into veritable soul stompers. And it works for most of the tracks. Take for example the Grandmaster Flash classic “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”, with its irresistible 60s soul approach…
Gina has a new friend or toy for a day or two. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
Now that it’s getting colder, we often think about last summer which seemed to be endless with Gina being outside all day and living a happy dog’s life. One of the albums I completely overlooked during the busy summer months is the latest by singer Karrin Allyson, “Some Of That Sunshine”, with the title track…
Gina is currently on vacation on the isle of Juist. She is enjoying the motor-free environment and tries to tease the horses and seagulls. She’s also digging lots of deep holes into the sand on the beach.
In my review of the Northsea Jazz Festival 2015, I wrote about Roy Hargrove’s performance: “A fitting finale for me was the hot and cool, the fast and the furious Roy Hargrove Quintet mastering everything from hardbop grittiness to some preppy Golson/Farmer stuff and grooving, loping attacks. I still hope that he is not planning…
She has worked with Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Donna Summer, P.Diddy, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Michael Jackson, Cher, and many others and released the album “Sunny One Day” in 2007. Now she comes up with “Life”, an album of standards old and new plus original compositions – just about the perfect repertoire for an admirable album. The…
What a relief. And a joy. Dee Bell starts off her new album “Lins, Lennox & Life” with the wonderful Ivan Lins composition “By Chance (Acaso)”, a hopeful, soothing tune which is perfectly sung by the unobtrusive and calming voice of the Indiana-born singer. She easily won me over by the way she phrases the…