Pinky Winters is one of the treasures of the vocal world. I would suggest that any endeavor to locate her recorded work is well worth the effort. I am partial to Rain Sometimes, Cellar Door Records CCLR 101, recorded in 2002, also produced by Bill Reed. She is masterfully accompanied on piano by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett and the fondly-remembered Bob Maize on bass. Wonderful songs, inspired renditions … Look for it and buy it. You will thank me.
Carol Sloane
New female singers billed as jazz artists pop up these days at the rate of about two a minute. If they must pop up, I wish that they would first listen carefully to Carol Sloane and then, if they decide to persist, listen to her again. And again. Something might rub off. They could start with one of her new CDs, Whisper Sweet, for instance—or one from her early career—say, Out of the Blue.
Out of the Blue, a 1961 Columbia album, was the first under her own name. It had Bob Brookmeyer’s first string arrangements and other charts by Brookmeyer’s hero Bill Finegan. The soloists included Brookmeyer, Clark Terry, Nick Travis, Barry Galbraith and Jim Hall. The album opened with Brookmeyer’s introduction to Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss”—which amounts to a short composition—then Sloane entered with the most perfect delivery I have ever heard of that enchanting first line:
If you hear a song in blue,
like a flower crying for the dew….
Instantly, I was hooked.
Columbia never issued Out of the Blue on compact disc. Koch Jazz did, ten years ago, but the CD is out of print, inexcusably, and copies are going for nearly fifty dollars. Is it worth it? It would be to me.
But, I’m still hooked.