JazzWax

Keith, Tony and Bill

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed Keith Richards and Steve Jordan on their 1988 song, Take It So Hard, off Keith's first solo album, Talk Is Cheap (go here). The interview was for my "Anatomy of a Song" column. I interviewed Keith once before, when we talked about the writing and recording of Street Fighting Man. As rockers go, Keith is about as hip and verbally interesting as they get. Always fun. Talk Is Cheap will be re-issues with bonus tracks today here.
Also in the WSJ, I interviewed Tony Hale of the HBO series, Veep, for my "House Call" column (good here). The final season (seventh) starts on Sunday. Many surprising twists and turns in our conversation, particularly how he met his wife. [Tony Hale at his Los Angeles home.PHOTO: JESSICA SAMPLE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]

Here's a bunch of scenes from season #1 of Veep, with Tony as Gary and Julia-Louis Dreyfus as Vice President Selina Meyer...

SiriusXM. On Thursday, I'll be on SiriusXM's Feedback with co-hosts Nik Carter and Lori Majewski to talk about my "Anatomy of a Song" column with Keith Richards and Steve Jordan. Feedback is on channel 106 on the Volume network.

Bill Evans in England. Resonance Records will issue Bill Evans in England on April 13 as a limited edition two-LP album on Record Day. Then on April 19, the album will be released as a two-CD set and digital download. The album features previously unreleased music by the Bill Evans Trio—with Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums—live at London's Ronnie Scott's in December 1969. The release will include an extensive book with rare photos by Jean-Pierre Leloir and essays by me, French filmmaker Leon Terjanian and interviews by Zev Feldman with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell. For more info, go here. 

Here's a promo video for the album...

Ed Bickert. Brad Wheeler of the Toronto Globe & Mail wrote a touching tribute to the late guitarist Ed Bickert and was kind enough to quote me. Go here.

Deodato. Following my post on Eumir Deodato last week, arranger and trumpeter Marty Sheller sent along the following note. Dig Marty's beautiful flutes:

"Hi Marc, Thanks for those cuts by Deodato. They reminded me of a song by Deodato that I arranged for George Benson…”Jackie, All." For some reason, producer Creed Taylor used only two choruses of the song (the melody statement) and then faded it out. But that’s enough to hear what a beautiful song it is. Here's the song...

Oddball album cover of the week. 

What a strange series of images. Let's imagine the color one features a teen who just received a note from a beau she can't stand. He's written that he's coming home for a visit and can't wait to see her. Moving counter clockwise: "What a drag," "Why did I break up with my old boyfriend?" "What should I do?" And "I know, I just won't answer the phone."

Bill Perkins + J.C. Heard

In late 1963, as gigs and recording work slowed in New York for drummer J.C. Heard, he began to listen more intently to his brother-in-law, bassist Al McKibbon. If you want more work, McKibbon said, come out to Los Angeles. A seasoned protege of Papa Jo Jones, Heard had played with many of the top big bands and recorded behind virtually every major jazz leader since 1939. In the 1940s and '50s, he could play swing, bop, blues and everything else in between. [Photo of J.C. Heard above by Francis Wolff]

After moving to L.A. at the start of '64, Heard was introduced to bassist Howard Rumsey by McKibbon. Rumsey managed the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. The Lighthouse had been the gateway to employment for almost every jazz transplant from New York since the dawn of the 1950s. Newly arrived, Heard likely had to "work off his card," which in L.A. meant full-time residence for six months before he could be issued an L.A. union card. [Photo above of Howard Rumsey]

The card was necessary to work in the record and film studios and earn real money. So Rumsey did what he had done for musicians for more than 10 years. He hired Heard to lead a group at the Lighthouse.

Heard formed a quintet comprised of Bill Perkins (ts, bar), Frank Strazzeri (p), Jim Hughart (b), Heard (d) and Joe Pass (g). In February 1964, when the band played at the Lighthouse, Rumsey had tape rolling. The result is J.C. Heard-Bill Perkins Quintet Featuring Joe Pass: Live at the Lighthouse 1964 recently issued by Fresh Sound.

Here's the story behind the recording from Fresh Sound's Jordi Pujol:

The tape was recorded by Howard Rumsey. He  gave it to Perkins, who sold it to me years later. The titles on the reel box were handwritten by Perk. Heard wanted a saxophonist in the group, and Perk, who was heavily involved in studio work at the time, wanted to play jazz at the club, so he joined the group. For some reason, this group led by Heard lasted only a few weeks. As far as I know, Heard spent very little time out west in L.A. [Photo above of Bill Perkins by Ray Avery/CTSImages.com]

Many years ago, I transferred the recording to DAT [digital audio tape] in preparation for its release on CD. But after Perk died in 2003, I stopped the project, and the years went by. Last year, I re-listened to the DAT and still liked it very much. So I decided to release it.

The tracks are Oliver Nelson's Bob's Blues, Billy Strayhorn's Passion Flower, Oliver Nelson's Don't Stand Up, Frank Foster's Blues in Hoss's Flat, the standard There Will Never Be Another You, Neal Hefti's Cute, Heard's J.C.'s Tune, the standard Sometime Ago and Heard's Mambo-Bop. [Photo above of Lester Young, left, and J.C. Heard at the "Great Day in Harlem" photo shoot in 1958 for Esquire magazine; photographed by bassist Milt Hinton]

Here are the album highlights...

• According to Heard's voice on the album, Nelson wrote Don't Stand Up specifically for him. It's a superb rollicking swinger.
• Joe Pass, who most often is heard on recordings leading his own groups, sounds fabulous here as a sideman. His leadership career had just begun in '63.
• Perkins on baritone saxophone is rather interesting and his attack is quite different from his traditional instrument, the tenor. Why he bothered with the baritone on this date is unknown.
• Cute is faster than you'd expect, and Pass's solo is quite a ride. Despite the tempo, the song's brightness is retained.
• Pass is terrific on Sometime Ago.
• Mambo-Bop provides a fascinating example of Heard's drumming skills. 

It's hard to know why Heard didn't stick around on the West Coast. In all likelihood, studio work for him either wasn't plentiful enough or was too tedious and lacking in artistic freedom.

J.C. Heard died in 1988.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find J.C. Heard-Bill Perkins Quintet Featuring Joe Pass: Live at the Lighthouse 1964 (Fresh Sound) here.

The album also is available at Spotify.

JazzWax clips: Here's Don't Stand Up....

5 Japanese Big Bands

When many American big-band singers toured Japan and Australia in the early 1960s, musical directors brought along the arrangements rather than 18 to 21 musicians. In some cases it was cheaper. In other situations, countries and unions had regulations that insisted that artists hire their own musicians for the job. Like Australia, Japan had top-notch big-band players then and today, the nation still does. Here are five videos featuring terrific Japanese bands:

Here's Anita O'Day in 1963...

Here are the Four Freshmen in 1964...

Here are the Four Freshmen again...

And more recently, here's flutist Ali Ryerson with the Japan Jazz Flute Big Band...

Here's Bill Watrous and the Masaru Uchibori Big Band...

And here's BFJO Takasago, a Japanese all-female jazz band, ...

Perfect Album; Plays for Bird

It's hard to pick a perfect Sonny Rollins album. So many of them are great. They all have distinct personalities, and nearly all are monumental expressions and achievements. So I made my decision based on feel. I know Sonny. We frequently have long phone conversations. I can hear on albums when he wasn't in a good mood, when he was ferociously competitive, when he was upbeat or unhappy, and so on. [Photo above of Sonny Rollins by Chuck Stewart]

The album I chose for this series is Rollins Plays for Bird, which featured Sonny remarkably at ease and emotionally at rest. This doesn't mean the tiger within the artist wasn't awake, just that he was filled with memories and love for his mentor, Charlie "Bird" Parker, who had died March 12, 1955. This album was recorded in October 1956 for Prestige and was the first Charlie Parker tribute album. Its recording predates Teddy Charles's Word From Bird by several weeks.

The players are Sonny Rollins (ts), Kenny Dorham (tp), Wade Legge (p), George Morrow (b) and Max Roach (d). Dorham and Roach both played extensively with Parker. Legge recorded with Dizzy Gillespie in the 1950s, and Morrow at the time was with the Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet. An interesting overlap of bop and hard-bop. [Photos above, from top, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Dorham and Max Roach in 1956]

The album opens with a lengthy medley. Sonny starts with a Parker's Mood citation that leads into I Remember You. Dorham plays My Melancholy Baby, the rhythm section plays Old Folks, Sonny plays They Can't Take That Away From Me, Dorham plays Just Friends, the rhythm section plays My Little Suede Shoes, and Dorham and Sonny play Star Eyes. The balance of the album is comprised of Sonny's Kids Know, played by Sonny and Dorham, and I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face, played solely by Sonny. A bonus track on a CD issue featured Sonny and Dorham playing The House I Live In from the session that didn't fit on the original vinyl. [Photo above of Kenny Dorham]

The pacing, the joy, the sadness and the feel of the solos are all perfect. In this regard, the album functions as a eulogy for Bird (above), a private musical memorial that became public once the album was released in 1957.

JazzWax: Here's the entire Rollins Plays for Bird....

Others in my "perfect album" series:

• Johnny Richards — Something Else
• Maynard Ferguson — A Message From Newport
• Herb Pomeroy — Band in Boston
• Oscar Pettiford — Oscar Pettiford Orchestra in Hi-Fi, Vol 1.
• Horace Silver — Horace-Scope
• Paul Desmond/Jim Hall — Glad to Be Unhappy
• Frank Wess — Frank Wess Quintet
• Leon Spencer — Louisiana Slim

Deodato: Os Catedráticos 73

In 1972, around the time that Eumir Deodato was recording Prelude, an album for CTI that would become a massive hit, the Brazilian arranger and keyboardist also was recording Os Catedráticos 73 in Rio de Janeiro and New York. The album was a gentler and more lyrical, samba-rich ride than the fusion-y Prelude and something of a hedge. The glorious album has just been remastered and reissued by the U.K.'s Far Out Recordings.

By the time these two albums were released in 1973, most record buyers in the U.S. thought he was a newly minted Latin-jazz artist who had just emerged from Brazil. The truth is Deodato already made a mark for himself in Brazil, where he had pioneered a robust and jaunty form of samba since 1964. But it wasn't until Prelude's release that Deodato became a household name worldwide. Packaged in a famously glossy emerald-green gatefold cover with the photo of a tree in shadow by Pete Turner, the album featured Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001). The long and somewhat tedious song won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and went to #2 in the pop charts in the U.S.

By contrast, Os Catedráticos 73 is a charming album with more bossa and samba seasoning. In all likelihood, the album was recorded and released in Brazil either as a way to gird against Prelude bombing with older Brazilian record buyers or because CTI didn't have Brazilian distribution yet.

In addition to Os Catedráticos 73's hook-laced tracks, Deodato recorded slightly slower versions of Carly & Carole from Prelude and Skyscrapers from Deodato 2, which came out in 1973 on the heels of Prelude. He also played the organ instead of the Fender Rhodes on a bunch of tracks, such as Down the Hill, Soccer Game and Flap, giving these songs a lemony, Walter Wanderley feel. The bossa ballads—The White Puma and The Bird—also are fragrantly arranged and played.

Os Catedráticos 73 is one of Deodato's least known albums in the U.S. and among his finest. The reissue has been remastered and pressed to 180g vinyl along with CD and digital versions. If you dig this album, jump back in time to Deodato's Impulso! from 1964. It's a killer hard-samba organ recording.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Eumir Deodato's Os Catedraticos 73 here.

JazzWax clip: Here's the entire Os Catedraticos 73 album from Far Out Recordings...

Bonus: Here's Deodato's entire Impulso! from 1964...

Irene Kral: Steveireneo!, 1959

Irene Kral recorded quite a few good albums but four great ones. My favorites by the singer and sister of Roy Kral (of Jackie and Roy fame) include her very first tracks on Maynard Ferguson's Boy With Lots of Brass (1957), on which she sang Imagination, The Song Is You, I Hadn't Anyone Til You and Moonlight in Vermont. She would marry Ferguson trumpeter Joe Burnett a year later. I also love the two albums she recorded with extraordinary pianist Alan Broadbent—Where Is Love? (1974) and Gentle Rain (1977). [Photo above of Irene Kral with daughters Jodi, left and Melissa, from Being Irene Kral's Daughter by Jodi Burnett]

My fourth favorite Kral album is Steveireneo! from 1959. On the album, Kral was backed by a tentet of top New York musicians: Joe Newman (tp) Urbie Green (tb) Eddie Caine (as,fl) Zoot Sims (ts) Danny Bank (bar) Hank Jones (p) Jimmy Raney (g) Chet Amsterdam (b) Charlie Persip (d) and Joe Venuto (perc). Al Cohn wrote the arrangements and conducted.

All 12 songs were written or co-written by Steve Allen: Too Late the Spring (written with Alan Shulman), Run (Don't Walk) (written with Hank Jones), The Best Time of the Day (written with Chubby Jackson), Yes (written with Pete Rugolo, Herman Saunders and Lloyd Luhham), There He Goes, And Even Then, Houseboat (written with George Duning), Cool Blue (written with Neal Hefti), What Is a Woman, Spring Is Where You Are, Impossible and Pleasant Dreams. All of the songs are relaxed and thoughtfully crafted.

The material was perfect for Kral, who gave the catchy songs a hip, sophisticated feel. As for the album title, it was a clever play on the catchphrase salutation conceived by comedian Louis Nye (above), a regular on Steve Allen's TV shows. Nye routinely played Gordon Hathaway, a pretentious, upper-crusty suburban advertising executive who routinely greeted Allen on the show with "Hi-ho, Steverino!"

But the Steveireneo! album title wasn't appreciated by everyone at the time, the cover's designer, Paul Bacon, told me back in 2010:

JazzWax: Did a jazz artist ever hate an album cover you designed?
Paul Bacon: I did a cover for Steve Allen and Irene Kral in 1959. It was for United Artists, not Riverside or Blue Note. They gave me the record to listen to and told me who was on it. I thought it was a smart album. I called it Steveireneo!—as a play on "Steverino," Allen's nickname. I thought it was clever. [Photo above of Paul Bacon in 2002 by Hank O'Neal]

JW: What did Allen say?
PB: I was in an elevator soon after the album came out and Steve Allen was in there. Someone in the elevator said to him, “Hey, I saw your new album." Steve said, “I know. Isn’t that terrible?”

JW: What did you do?
PB: I sneaked out on the next floor [laughs].

Interestingly, Nye had met Allen on an elevator as well and never thought he'd hear from him again.

Irene Kral died in 1978; Steve Allen died in 2000; and Louis Nye died in 2005.

To read my JazzWax interview with Paul Bacon, start here.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Steveireneo! coupled with Kral's The Band and I (Fresh Sound) here.

JazzWax clips: Here's Steve Allen's Impossible...

Impossible

And here's Alan Shulman and Steve Allen's Too Late the Spring...

Too Late the Spring

For more on Irene Kral, go here.

A special thanks to Dennis Galloway.

Ronnie, Meredith and Dorothy

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). We talked about life in the suburbs of Connecticut, the wild animal that caused her to move from a house to a condo and the reason she started to cry during our touching interview. [Photo above courtesy of Ronnie Spector]

Here's Ronnie and sister Estelle, left, and cousin Nedra, in November 1965 in the jukebox film The Big T.N.T. Show, singing their biggest hit, Be My Baby, and Shout!...

Meredith d'Ambrosio called the day I posted on her 1981 album, Another Time. I love talking to Meredith. She'aok so wonderfully sensitive. We talked about a wide range of things, including the album [photo above of Meredith and her late pianist-husband Eddie Higgins]. Here's what Meredith said about the album:

"The piano I played was a dream. It was a concert-grand Grotrian. At the time, there were only three in the country. Christopher Lyndon, in whose Boston home we recorded the album, had bought his Grotrian in West Germany. Wil Morton, the founder of Shiah Records, knew Christopher. Wil was one of the best producer-engineers around. He placed mics inside the Grotrian and covered the entire piano with a heavy blanket. It was the most mellifluous piano I’ve ever played. I wanted a Grotrian but it was too costly. The one I have now sounds like one. It's a seven-foot Yamaha.

"I intended to record Another Time as a tribute to composer Alec Wilder. Instead, I chose a handful of Wilder songs that were little known or hadn't been recorded before. Then I added other songs that seemed to match. I wanted all of the songs to have a consistently wise feel. It didn't take long to come up with the balance. I had such a large repertoire then. The reason there are 18 songs on the album instead of 12 is that they were all relatively short. I'm not a piano player, so I didn't take solos. I simply accompanied myself with chords. I would have liked to have recorded 25.

"Another Time was presented to Songwriters Hall of Fame in June 1982, where I performed several of the songs. Jackie and Roy performed that night as well. The album was voted one of the best 10 albums by Japan's Swing Journal in 1983. My favorite song on the album? You Are There."

Note: Meredith's Another Time can be found at iTunes as a download.

Session platform. My good friend, Fred Seibert of Frederator and formerly of MTV, sent along a link to a fabulous aggregator site that specializes in articles on session musicians. [Photo above of the Wrecking Crew] Go here.

Dorothy Dandridge. Following my post last week on Dorothy Dandridge, Aurin Primack, whose father was co-owner of the old Birdland, sent along a photo taken at the club in 1954 or '55. The photo above features Dorothy Dandridge, right, with Sarah Vaughn and boxer Kid Gavilan. "Dorothy's sister, Vivian, was there that night, but not in the photo," Aurin writes.

Jim Hall. Last week, Jim Eigo of Jazz Promo Services sent along a link to the audio of a Free Music Store concert on New York's WBAI-FM in 1971. The concert featured guitarist Jim Hall performing with pianist Benny Aronov and bassist Ron Carter. The music on the audio stream is fabulous. For other concerts, scroll up on the page and you'll see them at the bottom. Go here.

Smart TV. From time to time, I get to watch a bit of TV, usually on Saturday nights. I'm always on the prowl for stuff that's really great. A week ago, I caught the Smithsonian Channel's series, America in Color. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the series is broken into hour-long decades and features smart history narrated by Liev Schreiber and newly discovered color film throughout. I binged the series from 6 p.m. to midnight covering all five decades. Astonishing stuff. [Photo above of Jerry Lee Lewis and Sam Philips at Sun Studios from the series] For more information, go here.  

Weekend movie. In the wake of the successful James Bond series in the 1960s, dozens of cheesy movies tried to ride the secret-agent/women in bikinis wave. Here's a rare one from Britain—Deadlier Than the Male (1967), directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Elke Sommer...

What the heck: Before the Beach Boys, there were the Four Freshmen. In fact, Brian Wilson modeled himself on the style of Bob Flanigan (the tall one who sings high and plays trombone). Here are the Freshmen in  the late 1950s performing Day By Day from their Five Trombones album on Capitol in 1955...

Oddball album cover of the week.

By 1966, advertisers had begun to realize that a sizable youth market meant millions in revenue. Pepsi was one of the first brands to appeal to kids and young adults with its Pepsi Generation campaign. Today, this cover is a test. If you looked first at her smile, his upward glance and the bottle of Pepsi, you listen to digital music. But if your eyes went first to the LP and you yearn to clean her waxy hand prints off the disc, then you still love vinyl.

Meredith and Marian in 1994

In 1994, singer-pianist Meredith d'Ambrosio was a guest on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz program on NPR. As always, there were solo pieces by both artists and then a couple of duets. But on Alone Together, Meredith demonstrated her "paraphrasing" vocal style on which which she sings a solo using words, not notes. As she told Marian, her fingers tended to fall over each other when soloing and didn't seem able to accomplish what her brain wanted them to do. So Meredith soloed with words instead of notes. [Photo above of Meredith d'Ambrosio in Mashpee, Mass., in 1988, courtesy of Meredith d'Ambrosio]

Here's Meredith on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz...

Bonus: To read my JazzWax interview with Marian McPartland, start here.

Perfect Album: Louisiana Slim

One of my favorite 1970s Hammond organists is Leon Spencer. Along with Melvin Sparks (g) Idris Muhammad (d) and Buddy Caldwell (cga), Spencer was a virtual house organist for Prestige during that decade. In addition to recording behind Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons, Spencer was on several Blue Note albums by Lou Donaldson.

In between, Spencer recorded a handful of leadership albums for Prestige. His finest, Louisiana Slim, is perfect on every score. Recorded in 1971 and produced by Bob Porter, the band featured Leon Spencer (org), Virgil Jones (tp), Grover Washington, Jr. (ts/fl), Melvin Sparks (g), Idris Muhammad (d) and Buddy Caldwell (cong). The tracks are Louisiana Slim, covers of Marvin Gaye's Mercy, Mercy Me and the Carpenters' (They Long to Be) Close to You, and Our Love Will Never Die and The Trouble With Love. Other than the two pop covers, the other three are by Spencer.

Mercy, Mercy Me is one of the finest and hippest covers of the soul anthem. Close to You swings hard, and you might not know what song it is unless told. And the Spencer originals all have enormous feel and groove. Bob Porter understood this music so well. It was a great move to include the two pop hits and a stroke of genius to let Our Love Will Never Die and The Trouble With Love stretch out to occupy the entire second side. Bob's production was flawless and he pulled the absolutely best work out of these musicians.

I came to the album in 1971 through Mercy, Mercy Me, when the track became Batt Johnson's midnight theme on WRVR-FM, New York's major jazz station then. After I bought the album, I flipped and eventually wore out three copies.

Leon Spencer died in 2012; WRVR-FM died in 1980.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Leon Spencer's Louisiana Slim here.

JazzWax clip: Here's the entire album...

Others in my "perfect album" series:

• Johnny Richards — Something Else
• Maynard Ferguson — A Message From Newport
• Herb Pomeroy — Band in Boston
• Oscar Pettiford — Oscar Pettiford Orchestra in Hi-Fi, Vol 1.
• Horace Silver — Horace-Scope
• Paul Desmond/Jim Hall — Glad to Be Unhappy
• Frank Wess — Frank Wess Quintet

Meredith d'Ambrosio in 1981

One of my regrets about my college years in Boston during the 1970s is not going to see Meredith d'Ambrosio perform around town. Back then, I was either at the Harvard "Coop" buying jazz LPs, at Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop at night during the week and at discos on the weekends. Soon after I started JazzWax in 2007, I made up for lost time, and Meredith and I have been pals ever since. Yesterday, I spent much of the afternoon with Meredith's Another Time.

Recorded in 1981 at the Beacon Hill home of Christopher Lyndon, a journalist, author and radio personality, the album featured Meredith singing and accompanying herself on the piano. The album was released on LP on the Shiah label and then on CD in 1989. Sunnyside Records reissued the album in 1990 and it's now available at iTunes.

Meredith's singing and piano are gorgeous on Another Time. Her playing is so sensitive and articulate in the Bill Evans tradition, and her song choices on the 18-track album are precious:

• Alec Wilder and Loonis McGlohon's All of Us In It Together
• Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke's Aren't You Glad You're You?
• Wilder's It's So Peaceful in the Country
• Wilder and Marshall Barer's Rain, Rain (Don't Go 'Way)
• Dave Frishberg's Dear Bix
• John Latouche and Jerome Moross's Lazy Afternoon
• Wilder and McGlohon's Where's the Child I Used to Hold?
• June Carroll and Arthur Siegel's Love Is a Simple Thing
• Dave Frishberg and Johnny Mandel's You Are There
• Wilder, William Engvick and Marty Palitz's While We're Young
• Fran Landesman and Bob Dorough's Small Day Tomorrow
• Wilder and Thad Jones's A Child Is Born
• Bob Dowd and Meredith's The Piano Player (A Thousand and One Saloons)
• Larry Morey and Frank Churchill's Some Day My Prince Will Come
• Wilder's Such a Lonely Girl Am I
• Frishberg's Wheelers and Dealers
• George and Ira Gershwin's I Was Doin' All Right
• And Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael's Skylark

Listen to the chords Meredith uses to open You Are There. Like the chiming of introspective bells. Or the lullaby quality of Love Is a Simple Thing. Or her soft voice and insanely great chord changes on her own The Piano Player (A Thousand and One Saloons). Or the jewelry-box quality of the opening chords of Such a Lonely Girl Am I. Or the rarely heard intro to I Was Doin' All Right. And a Skylark that rivals Over the Rainbow. Another time, indeed.

When Meredith sings, I'm transported back to the gentle Boston I knew decades ago: The start of snow at dusk on Beacon Hill, the reflective majesty of the John Hancock Tower, the splendor of McKim, Mead and White's Boston Public Library, the grace of the old Copley Square Hotel and its Merry-Go-Round bar, the now-shuttered music and instrument shops in the theater district, the long-lost Ken's Deli at Copley, the windup toy sound of the trollies, the taste of Italian pastry in the North End, the shouts of vendors at Quincy Market, Boston Gardens in the spring and the wind-swept, Brutalist expanse of the Christian Science Plaza and reflecting pool on Huntington Avenue. 

When you start playing Meredith's album, you, too will find yourself back in Boston, even if you've never been.

Happy birthday, Meredith.

To read my five-part interview with Meredith, start here.

JazzWax tracks: Sadly, CDs of Another Time are going for more than $200 at Amazon. And it's not at Spotify. However, the album is at Apple's iTunes store along with her other albums, or here.

JazzWax clips: Here's Love Is a Simple Thing...

Here's It's So Peaceful in the Country...

And here's Rain, Rain (Don't Go 'Way)...

Bonus: From my collection, here's You Are There. It's an astonishing rendition...

You Are There