On "River is Waiting, " the John Fogerty-penned song that opens Irma Thomas' new "Simply Grand" CD, her vocalisation is as radiant as the lyrics: "The river is waiting, come get up up/A new day is coming, come rise up/We'll be sailing at first light, come gather/Set our course for the crossing together." She continues, "Gonna leave all my sorrows behind me, lift my face to a new day, I'm rising."
Three eld after Hurricane Katrina's floodwater devastated her home, night club and city, Thomas is clearly looking for to the future. At this degree of her career, 40-plus years removed from her best-known songs, she is well-established as an specially classy elder stateswoman of New Orleans rhythm & blues.
Her alto has big more luxurious with historic period and see. And her relentlessly overconfident attitude has persevered through a litany of hard times. That her 2006 album, "After the Rain, " won her first-ever Grammy was unfermented vindication.
For "Simply Grand, " Scott Billington, Thomas' longtime producer at Rounder Records, orchestrated a blueprint that is the opposite of orchestrated. Arrangements ar simple. Horns, a staple of cycle & blue devils records, are absent. Only acoustic instruments are secondhand. The stress is on Thomas and the xII assorted pianists she is paired with across the 14 tracks.
Some show more of themselves than others. On "River is Waiting, " Henry Butler makes a nifty small saloon-style solo detour, shadowed by Alfred "Uganda" Roberts' congas. A string quadruple dresses up Burt Bacharach's lush "What Can I Do, " with pianist David Torkanowsky, upright bassist James Singleton and drummer Raymond Weber laying down the foundation. The contributions of Singleton, a resolutely new jazzman, are especially vital.
Southwest Louisiana songwriter and keyboardist David Egan accompanies her on his "Underground Stream." Behind the hearty chorus, Weber and Roberts mold in bicycle-built-for-two. Jazz-pop genius Norah Jones takes a backseat on her possess "Thinking About You, " supplying her trademark piano as Thomas sings on top.
Louis Jordan's "Early in the Morning" doesn't fit as comfortably, disdain pianist Tom McDermott's lunge and parry and a sly reference to Thomas' now-defunct Broad Street nine the Lion's Den. For a woman purportedly mourning a man who has moved on, she enunciates a bit too deliberately.
So, too, on "Be You," a antecedently unrecorded song that Dr. John and Doc Pomus originally wrote with Etta James in mind. Another duo picnic with Dr. John, "If I Had Any Sense I'd Go Back," is also surprisingly underwhelming.
By contrast, she and keyboardist John Medeski of avant-jazz funk trio Medeski, Martin & Wood receive a darn on the old Allen Toussaint composition "Somebody Told You," which Thomas first recorded in 1962. It's impossible to tell which of the pair is having more than fun.
If there is a fault to "Simply Grand," it is that Thomas tends to inhabit a relatively good range. When she loses herself completely -- as during her legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe tribute in the Blues Tent during the 2005 Jazzfest -- the results can be incendiary.
That, however, was non what this session was about. She comes nighest as she absolutely nails the slow-burn "Cold Rain." The Torkanowsky-Singleton-Weber triumvirate and backing vocalists Elaine Foster, Erica Falls and Charles Elam III bring the church behind her as she ratchets up to a big finish.
And less is non necessarily less. Her internal, after-hours vocals -- she sustains syllables in all the right places -- on "This Bitter Earth" could be the prettiest performance she's ever committed to record. She is simpatico with the delicate architecture erected by jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis, his son Jason on understated percussion, and bassist Peter Harris.
To close "Simply Grand," Thomas joins Randy Newman on his ballad "I Think It's Going to Rain Today." As Newman sketches in the shadows around her, she sings, "Broken windows and empty hallways/Pale dead moon in a sky streaked with gray/Human kindness is flooded, and I think it's going to rain today." It is bittersweet and lovely, a long, slow and cheering exhale.
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Listen to music from "Simply Grand."
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