Nancy Harrow - The Beatles & Other Standards

Styles: Jazz, Vocal
Year: 1989
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:26
Size: 121,2 MB
Art: Front

(3:04)  1. My foolish heart
(4:04)  2. Drive my car
(3:18)  3. Yesterday
(3:58)  4. Got to get you into my life
(4:07)  5. When the world was young
(5:23)  6. Here comes the sun
(2:55)  7. Blackbird
(4:01)  8. Nature boy
(4:00)  9. Because
(3:54) 10. Yesterdays
(6:16) 11. Something
(6:21) 12. More than you know

"The Emarcy disc comes from Japan and finds Ms. Harrow singing so well that we are beguiled into believing that Ringo, Paul, John and George are legitimate pretenders to the ranks of Jerome, Johnny, Vincent, Victor, and Otto. In the end, we are only incredulous that she has been able to make tortes out of muffins like 'Drive,' 'Got to Get,' 'Here Comes,' 'Because,' and 'Blackbird.' 'Drive' comes off sounding like something Dave Frishberg might have written in an off moment, while 'Here Comes,' enhanced by Bill Easley's pirouetting soprano, is as cheering as a Summer sunrise. 'Got to Get' is slowed down, denied its usual air of hyperventilation and made marginally meaningful. Ms. Harrow manages to make something out of next to nothing with 'Something,' and clears up considerable confusion about 'Yesterdays and 'Yesterday'. The former is a masterwork by Harbach & Kern, whose perfection of lyric ('...gay youth was mine/truth was mine/joyous free and flaming life, forsooth, was mine') wed to melody is examined in great detail in a performance abetted only by George Mraz's resolute bass. 

The latter is Lennon & McCartney's adolescent whine ('Love was such an easy game to play/now I need a place to hide away'), but this singer elevates it to a reasonable level of maturity by dint of her interpretive resourcefulness. Together with 'Yesterday', her reading of three of the other non-Beatle tunes, 'Foolish', 'World,' and 'Know' constitute the warm, pulsating marrow of this recital, the moments during which she eschews any pretension whatever, draws on the pain and pleasure of her own experience and makes confession. With only Roland Hanna's unbelievably empathic piano lighting the way on these three tracks, we emerge from the inner passages of her psyche, abashed but slightly wiser than we were."~ Alan Bargebuhr, Cadence  http://www.nancyharrow.com/rev.php

The Beatles & Other Standards

---