FOR REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT: Holly Cooper/Mouthpiece Music [email protected]
VOCALIST
JOANNE TATHAM RELEASES NEW CD
“OUT OF
MY DREAMS”
Featuring John Clayton,
Tamir Hendelman, Peter Erskine,
Bob Sheppard and more
“A colorful voice with
a great sense of tempo and time… what a pleasure it is to discover Joanne
Tatham”
-
Rex Reed
"...An exceptionally beautiful
voice. It's reminiscent of the pop balladeers of the late '50's and early
'60's,
but with a fine-drawn intensity and
shimmering vibrato that are all her own."
- Terry
Teachout
Joanne
Tatham
is the quintessential big-city girl – wry, no-nonsense, and smart, with a heart
beating behind every word she sings. Songs flow out of her in a voice of liquid
clarity, buoyed by such secure technique that she can forget all about it and
focus on the stories at hand.
Joanne has an interesting one of her own.
In 1993, she left behind a budding career as a New York musical-comedy
performer in order to marry a TV writer and move to L.A. In a few years they started a family. “This
lifestyle change became an artistic change,” she says, “and it burst out into
what I feel is my essence.” Remembering the swinging pop masters she had grown
up loving at her family home in New Jersey – Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Sammy
Davis, Jr. – Joanne began to feel her way as a solo singer in jazz clubs and
cabarets.
Her self-reinvention worked. The
Washington Post praised her “exceptionally beautiful voice”; Rex Reed, a true
connoisseur of jazz singers, enthused about her “great sense of tempo and
time,” adding: “What a pleasure it is to discover Joanne Tatham!”
This album is her third. The producer is Mark Winkler, a gifted jazz singer and
songwriter from L.A.; the subject, of course, is love. But a torch singer she’s
not; though Joanne knows all about disappointment, she doesn’t live in it. Her
singing gives the reassuring sense that, whatever the pain, a happy ending is
in store. She certainly takes risks. On this CD she tackles Broadway, bossa
nova, post-bop modern jazz, Dave Frishberg, and Harry Nilsson. The
arrangements, written and played by top-drawer L.A. musicians, challenge her
musically without ever outshining the words.
“You
Taught My Heart To Sing,” she says, “sort of straddles my world.” It was
first recorded in 1985 by its composer, McCoy Tyner, a titan of modern jazz
piano; his lush music inspired lyricist Sammy Cahn to write of birds in flight and love that lasts
forever. From the sax-and-voice intro to the high-flying ending, Joanne is in
relaxed command. She keeps impressive
company. Tamir Hendelman, arranger
and pianist on this and other tracks, is a trio leader, concert pianist, and a
member of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra – whose cofounder, bassist John Clayton, joins him on this CD.
Saxophonist Bob Shepperd has played
with Chick Corea and Steely Dan; drummer Peter
Erskine is a two-time Grammy-winning graduate of Weather Report.
Joanne’s wistful but dry-eyed approach to
ballads is clear on “Without Him
(Without Her)”, Harry Nilsson’s 1967 hit. A Cuban-tinged piano solo by
arranger Jamieson Trotter and Michael Shapiro’s Afro-Brazilian-style
percussion keep the spirit high.
“Devil
May Care,” the title tune of Bob Dorough’s 1956 debut album, has become an
anthem for the no-strings jazz life. Arranger Eli Brueggemann’s tricky modulations and meter changes would never
fly at Saturday Night Live, where he works as musical director; but they don’t
phase Joanne, who navigates them with the nonchalance the song requires.
Herbie Hancock wrote “Tell Me a Bedtime Story” in the late
‘60s as instrumental music for the Fat Albert TV show. A version by George
Shearing caught Joanne’s ear. “The way he phrased it, I heard a story,” she
said. At her behest, a producer friend, Clifford Bell, asked Hancock if there
was a lyric. “Word came back: why doesn’t she write some? So I did.”
The film-noir-era jazz ballad “Detour Ahead” is the confession of a
woman who has narrowly steered clear of a nasty crash. Joanne’s performance
suggests safety at the end of the road; John Clayton bows and plucks as
expressively as if he, too, were singing. They dip into the same crepuscular
mood with “In a Lonely Place,”
written by Mark Winkler and his singer-songwriter colleague, Marilyn Harris. A
different kind of pain – that of getting stuck on the freeway – inspired “Too Long in L.A.,” Dave Frishberg’s
comic harumph to his old hometown. The trio’s deadpan super-cool is a wink that
Frishberg would appreciate.
Other tracks have their own novel touches.
On Jon Lucien’s “You’re Sensational,”
São Paulo-born Marcel Camargo plays
cavaquinho, the percussive guitar used in samba and choro. Jobim’s “Vivo Sonhando (Dreamer)” boasts a
pretty choral intro sung by Joanne, Camargo, and Michael Shapiro. In his solo
on “Cool” (from West Side Story),
Tamir Hendelman takes the song’s sinister vibe and fleshes it out with edgy,
stabbing chords; Joanne is the siren with a smile of ice.
It melts in the title song. In Oklahoma!,
farm girl Laurey downs a magic potion and sings “Out of My Dreams,” a fairy-tale vision of ideal love. Arranger Todd Hunter turns it into a floating
jazz waltz; Joanne sings it with her sweetest optimism. To Oscar Hammerstein’s
words she added a vocalese lyric, set to a melodic line by Hunter and inspired
by the show’s bucolic theme.
Haystacks and barn dances are storybook
images for Joanne, who now divides her time between New York and L.A. But her
ability to roam all over the musical map, while sounding at home wherever she
goes, is one of the things that make Out of My Dreams such a convincing
journey. — James Gavin, New York, 2014
OUT OF MY DREAMS is available on Amazon,
iTunes, and CDBaby.
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