I don’t usually listen to tracks in isolation – I’m more of an album sort of person.
However, one track nearly always leaps out days later when listening is paused for a while and thoughts turn to what really lingers long, stays in the memory and insists tell the smart speaker to play a certain melody.
I challenged myself earlier to do that. So no googling, no re-listening just silent thought.
And the outcome
So the track of the week that I have chosen for the week beginning 17 August among new material I have listened to recently is according to ideas set out above this one, a treatment of Irving Berlin’s ‘How Deep is the Ocean’ performed in a duet version by singer Denise Donatelli and her fellow American pianist-arranger Geoffrey Keezer. It’s on the brand new Take My Breath Away.
I thought for a while the choice would be instead something from Ganavya or a new single by Blair/Huber both excellent in their different ways incidentally but both flatter to deceive given their catchiness. That factor I predict reduces their shelf life as “go to” tracks or makes them seem more akin to the more ambitious end of commercial radio fare. That’s another issue isn’t it, the much vaunted “instant appeal” is it a good thing or not? For streams and numbers probably yes given “instant appeal” usually means accessibility and impact; but for long term jazz listening when you know you like something but can’t quite explain why and after vast amounts of relistening suddenly work out only then why it’s compulsory and compelling.
Jazz vocals always have an advantage in the accessibility stakes but just with their cousins the instrumentals can in certain hands go far deeper than initial listen responses can provide even when there is an obvious euphony. The approach then reveals itself (often via intricate arrangements or great soloing that you discover as you spend more time with it) later. Future listening proof certainly is then far more likely.
After all as a listener we can only take in a tiny amount of detail of even the simplest pieces. If interested in this idea read cognitive psychologist and jazz scholar Dr Paul Berliner’s 1994 book, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation.
Listen to the track of the week in tandem with a version of the 1930s song that was introduced jauntily to the world by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra in a dance band version. That featured creamy male crooner Jack Fulton. But many years later a jazz treatment by the great English jazz singer Claire Martin in duet with the Murder on the Orient Express film composer Richard Rodney Bennett is from this new perspective in 2026 a closer match. It appeared on their album Say It Isn’t So released by the Scottish high end audiophile label Linn Records in 2013. Martin begins with the line from the fourth quatrain “How many times a day do I think of you?” whereas Donatelli starts in more orthodox fashion. If you do such a compare and contrast exercise and not just swerve it by saying “the dog ate my homework” the subtleties of interpretation and variation on both versions are clear. And the exercise goes some small way to indicate how freshness can be brought to work every time. And that’s even when the most familiar and potentially hoariest of standards are tackled.