Key viewpoints
More new reign than Janey days and Mondays
With her name in the title this is more positive than some more tear strewn undercooked vocals torch song saderie out there. Listening to all the tracks of Jane Monheit for the first time last night it’s probably too soon to come to a definitive verdict without the benefit of time doing its reliably spooky wonders. One thing is for sure – there’s no doubt that American singer Jane Monheit is one of the greats and proves her standing yet again on our listening so far.
Something of a rebirth
The signs have been there since Lockdown. Here down in the never mind the bloggers cyber Bowery environs of marlbank we have playlisted a few songs from Jane Monheit already especially the rewarding puckiness found on ‘Whatever Lola Wants’. It’s interesting the singer uses her name as the album title as if to say maybe this is really me at last.
Monheit’s wavering, highly flexible and mobile communicative voice has the ability to weave in and out of a jazz sensibility.
But the American is certainly a powerful jazz singer first and foremost who also inhabits Broadway material supremely well. Show singers who are also jazz singers is another thing entirely.
Check out Jane Monheit in this YouTube performance recently posted recorded in Saratoga Springs’ venue Caffè Lena. The singer is with Monheit’s pianist the Tamir Hendelman influenced Max Haymer who is prominent on the brand new record.
Tracks to lean in to
■ On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
■ Young and Foolish
■ Whatever Lola Wants
■ My Brazil
■ Green Finch and Linnet Bird
■ In a World of My Own
■ Not a Day Goes By
■ Too Close for Comfort
■ New Beginning
■ And So It Goes
But go back and remind yourself of the glory days
On songs from the show and jazz label Club 44 Monheit who hails from New York and emerged as a jazz star in the late-1990s reaching peak visibility later on Sony 2004 album Taking a Chance on Love from which ‘Dancing in the Dark’ was Grammy nominated has already created a strong body of work for her ”new” label home given that Come What May just like this worked well. But that album got lost a bit as the world came out of lockdown and deserved more plaudits and attention. Let’s draw a veil over the Christmas collection The Merriest. Like most Yuletide fare it did nothing for us.
Safer in cages singing when she’s told?
■ Features Jane’s husband Rick Montalbano on drums
■ Max Haymer on piano
■ Karl McComas Reichl on double bass best heard in his break on the peppy ‘Too Close for Comfort’
■ Kevin Winard and Tiki Pasillas on percussion
■ Joel Frahm on saxophone
■ The Nashville Recording Orchestra
While it’s rhetorical to riff on the lyrics of the most notable song of the album certainly Monheit has not taken the easy route at any point. There’s nothing to suggest she’s ”safer in cages singing when she’s told” unless of course you are allergic to jazz vocals as a preset biased position.
That ”demon barber of Fleet Street” number is Stephen Sondheim’s delightful ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird’ from the late-1970s era music theatre work Sweeney Todd covered very nicely but not so satisfyingly by Camila Meza on 2016’s Traces which is the only jazz adjacent version within the last decade we can think of.
What a line: ‘if I cannot fly let me sing’. And certainly with Monheit you get that joy in what she does and a compulsion to express herself clothed in such classic material that while vintage does not seem in her hands unlike some at all fogey-ish.
Through the looking glass
Frahm in the frame
Including ‘Young and Foolish’ and ‘Too Close for Comfort’ are perhaps more obvious.
A better choice is Alice in Wonderland Disney 1950s movie song ‘In A World of My Own’ covered by Kat Edmonson found on Dreamers Do a few years ago in a corny but fun Andrews Sisters-meets-Hawaii version of the Sammy Fain/Bob Hilliard rarity.
Monheit’s version is exuberantly decorated by loquacious Joel Frahm sax contributions who I suppose is like the ”babbling brook” the lyrics speak of. And I liked the section when Monheit scats in the fast samba section.
Frahm is mentioned a good deal in the early career sections of Brad Mehldau’s powerful memoir Formation and has his own very daddio bebop soaked new Anzic album Lumination out at the moment which is fun and romps along like a mutha.
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