Since
Patricia Barber opened up the category, there are now lots of
singers out there who have turned pop songs into jazz. After the
release of her breakout album, Distortion of Love (1992),
she said: “No one else was recording contemporary pop tunes
in a jazz vein. I feel like a postmodern pioneer.”
Pioneering
a new concept can be intimidating, and it takes a head of steam
to push past the naysayers. For 20 some years Patricia Barber
has been working at her craft. However, it wasn’t always
easy sailing after the female jazz greats died off: Ella, Sarah,
Carmen, Peggy Lee. Barber said it was a major hurdle to get people
to listen to anyone new and female, not to mention -- take seriously.
Jaded, die-hard jazz buffs had presumably heard it all. But change
can’t be denied, and Patricia Barber, Diana Krall, Cassandra
Wilson have emerged as significant agents of change since their
music has won over the hearts and ears of both the old vanguard
as well as many new listeners. No surprise that she received significant
critical acclaim for her memorable performance at the 2009
Montreal Jazz Festival which featured mostly material
from her new CD, The Cole Porter Mix, as well as several
originals.
Chicago-based,
Patricia Barber has been releasing mind boggling albums for more
than 20 years: Café Blue in 1994, Modern Cool
in 1998, Nightclub, 2000 and the 2006 album, Mythologies,
based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, released after Barber
received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003.
Long
an admirer of Porter, Barber feels a deep affinity with his incomparable
craft and gift for melody. “Cole Porter has always been
my songwriting idol. I love his music and I’ve been singing
his songs for so many years.” She confesses to being somewhat
self-conscious about putting her own material (three originals)
on the same CD with Porter’s songs, until she realized,
“I (try) write like him, I’ve learned from him, I
count syllables and use internal rhyme like he did.”
She explains
in her song, “I Wait for Late Afternoon and You,”
“the effect of the song is not quite sad, but the sadness
is there. Cole never wrote a song that said ‘I’m miserable.”
Barber’s three songs on the CD, “Late Afternoon,”
“Snow,” and “New Years Eve Song,” are
haunting, lingering, with melodious twists and turns. The ingenious
lyrics are invested with a contemporary (and sometimes humorous)
feel, as in “Snow:”
Do
you think of me like fat, irresistible as cream
On your lips on your hips like chocolate like a dream
Oh to be the moon
A diamond you can't resist
The space between the stars do you think of me like this
True
to the jazz idiom, Barber exercises the performer’s prerogative
in her interpretation of Porter’s songs, which also includes
timely, updated lyrics (“You’re The Top),” but
is always mindful of the qualities and inherent message of the
song, and delivered with utmost respect.
Sad to
say some singers feel they need to do ‘things’ to
a song to hold the listeners’ attention. Patricia Barber
delivers straight from the heart. In this writer’s opinion,
Diana Krall and Cassandra Wilson, both good singers, can be accused
of putting too much icing on the cake; perhaps too much style.
Barber is just plain better: no gimmicks, softly bitten, lingered
over words, breathed in and out, that make for an intimacy that
lingers in the air like an expensive cologne.
Band
member, Neal Alger, guitar and bass, has been with Barber for
six years and is showcased on “I Wait for Late Afternoon
with You” with a talkative, walkin’ bass combined
with his double duties on guitar. Michael Arnopol, also on bass,
shares an intimate cheek to cheek conversation (bass to piano)
with Barber on “Snow.” He has been with her since
1980. “He feels like a brother,” she says, “We
learned jazz together;” Nate Smith is on drums and percussion
along with Eric Montzka; Barber on piano and melodica. Guest artist,
tenor saxophonist, Chris Potter accompanies her on, “You’re
The Top,” “C’est Magnifique” and is delicious
on “The New Year’s Eve Song” with Barber on
melodica.
I’m
sure Cole Porter would give The Cole Porter Mix the highest
marks for having ‘gotten under his skin.’ And for
her Montreal concert, the audience wouldn’t let her go –
which is why she’ll be back soon.
