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Creative Carmen

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 03/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I can see some Carmen fans passing this one up--too early, her "commercial" period, another pretty voice bathed in overly lush strings. Surprise! Carmen is every bit as creative and "free" with this material as she is on her later jazz trio dates. The arrangements, moreover, are tasteful and thinly textured, allowing the featured performer the room she requires to explore and experiment with time, melody, and elocution.



Not everyone's going to be knocked out by this album. Ella, for example, remains far truer to the composer's intentions when she sings the Songbook series. By contrast, McRae can make an adventure out of every note, rarely landing or staying dead-center on a pitch. Some of her devices--the upward glissando toward a target pitch, for example--I've always found tiresome, but more often than not she delivers musically and emotionally throughout this collection, taking chances but rewarding the listener with commensurate gains on songs that might otherwise be overly familiar to some of us. And although she's absolutely clear and distinct in her elocution, she doesn't overemphasize and exaggerate words as would sometimes be the case on her later recordings when a failing breathstream practically necessitated "punching out" discrete, disconnected notes rather than linking the phrases. Her interpretation of Rodgers and Hart's "Isn't It Romantic" is fairly straight, yet I've never heard a more inviting performance of the tune.



This is definitely a collection for Carmen McRae lovers. (Hint: Some of the price listings in the non-Amazon section make this recording all the more irresistible.)"