Jose James - Yesterday I Had The Blues: The Music Of Billie Holiday (2015) {Blue Note}
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Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Modern Jazz Vocals / Modern Jazz
José James has a
reputation as a 21st century musical renaissance man. He's issued a
remarkably consistent series of records that blur the lines between
soul, funk, dance music, jazz, and rock. In addition, in 2010, he
released For All We Know, a fine collection of jazz standards in duet
with Belgian pianist Jef Neve. It is from this place that James releases
Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday. In his liner
essay he cites Holiday as the artist who made him aspire to be a jazz
singer. Accompanied by pianist Jason Moran, drummer Eric Harland, and
bassist John Patitucci, James delivers a program of beauty and restraint
for the centennial of her birth. James, who has the ability to
accomplish startling vocalese and scat techniques, brings none it.
He offers these
songs with nuance, subtlety, and grace, allowing his considerable
discipline to inform his readings. He doesn't imitate Holiday -- because
no one could, though many have tried -- but instead showcases how she
opened herself to the songs themselves, and imbued them not only with
sophistication but the cavernous honesty of emotional experience. "Good
Morning Heartache" is elegantly paced and sparsely articulated. It
emerges from the shadows just enough to reveal how deep these blues go
and James responds to them with his own inimitable phrasing. In "Body
and Soul," passion simmers with longing and disconsolate heartache as
Moran layers his chords with gentle fills. They anchor James, keeping
him from slipping beneath the weight of the emotional waves. In return,
he allows the material to speak through him with slight skillful
improvisational touches. In "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," this fine
band flexes its muscles. Moran sprints through harmonically inventive
runs atop Patitucci's frenetic comping as Harland adds elastic
syncopation to bop. James doesn't enter until halfway through and glides
through the lyric, creating contrast -- without limiting the swing. The
slow, simmering "Lover Man" builds and dissipates tension several times
in coming from the blues' deep well. On "God Bless the Child," the
pianist opts for a Fender Rhodes. James uses this change to the song's
advantage. He finds the seam in the lyric -- just as Holiday did -- and
allows it to carry him inside the gorgeous melody, and everything gels.
"Strange Fruit" is a song covered and badly interpreted so many times
it's nearly painful to hear any version but Holiday's. Until now.
Accompanied only by trancelike handclaps and a chorale of (his own)
hummed backing vocals in four-part gospel harmony, James imbues his
haunted reading with moral authority and harrowing impact. James'
phrasing is chilling. His accusation, like Holiday's before him, comes
through the painful bewilderment of delivering the lyric, not
overdramatization of it. On Yesterday I Had the Blues, James stays
exceptionally close to the spirit of Holiday's work. He does so without
embalming her music as a museum piece or smothering his own voice,
thereby adding a real contribution to her legacy. This is his most
intimate, powerful, and masterful date. |
Personnel:
José James - vocals
Jason Moran - piano, Fender Rhodes
John Patitucci - bass
Eric Harland - drums
tracklist:
01 - Good Morning Heartache
02 - Body And Soul
03 - Fine And Mellow
04 - I Thought About You
05 - What A Little Moonlight Can Do
06 - Tenderly
07 - Lover Man
08 - God Bless The Child
09 - Strange Fruit
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Thnx ruskaval. I don't know James but his band is first call
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