IMN - International Music Network

For Thunderbird, her last Blue Note recording in 2006, vocalist Cassandra Wilson explored the outer reaches of jazz with a multilayered sonic approach piloted by pop producer T Bone Burnett and supported by his A-team of studio musicians including guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Jim Keltner. This time, Wilson ventures into another fascinating direction with Loverly, a tantalizing, rhythmically driven collection of jazz standards given new luster with a top-drawer band of friends that includes Marvin Sewell on guitar, Jason Moran on piano, Herlin Riley on drums, Lekan Babalola on percussion and Lonnie Plaxico on bass (with bassist Reginald Veal and trumpeter Nicholas Payton guesting).

“I wanted to work with spare arrangements this time,” says Wilson of Loverly, her first full album of standards since her 1988 JMT album Blue Skies. “And I decided to dig back into standards with a small, compact group of musicians. I don’t record the typical jazz standards a lot, but I love them and that’s how I honed my craft. I studied the standards, listening to how other singers put their swing into them. But it’s hard to do standards. You can’t really sing them until you understand them.”

Wilson cites an example: “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” which she offers here as a soulful, meditative reflection, accompanied solely by Sewell. “I never really understood the lyric because I hadn’t experienced it,” says Wilson. “I’ve always admired this song and I have a Betty Carter album where she sings it brilliantly. But I couldn’t touch it until I could tap into it emotionally.”

Other standard fare on Loverly includes “Caravan,” “Gone With the Wind,” “Black Orpheus,” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “Till There Was You,” “A Sleeping Bee,” “The Very Thought of You” and “St. James Infirmary.” Plus, Wilson and co. conjure up a joint original, the grooved “Arere” (inspired by the Yoruban deity of iron and willpower) and deliver a killer take on “Dust My Broom,” a Robert Johnson original made famous by blues slide guitarist Elmore James.

Wilson gathered Plaxico, Sewell and Babalola to her home in Woodstock to start the Loverly ball rolling by “getting together some possible tunes and getting ideas of shapes.” Key to those preparatory sessions, says Wilson was Babalola, the master percussionist from Lagos, Nigeria, who has been living in London. “I’ve known Lekan for 15 years but this is the first time he recorded with me,” says Wilson. “He’s a priest of the Yoruban religion and has a vast knowledge of African rhythms and how the rhythmic patterns have been retained throughout the African diaspora. We share a passion for discovering the connections between the rhythms from West Africa to the many places in the western hemisphere. That’s why I brought Lekan into this project. His job was to find that West African drumming pattern underpinning each of the tunes that weren’t straight-ahead or ballads.”

Case in point: “Dust My Broom,” which Wilson learned when she played with the Southern band Bluejohn in her mid-twenties. She was strumming on her guitar on the first day of the Loverly recording session, and Babalola immediately identified the rhythm as sakara, the rhythm played on a sakara frame drum, which was banned by plantation owners. “Lekan is an encyclopedia of rhythms,” Wilson says. “He hears rhythms that we’ve yet to fully comprehend. When he and Herlin got together, they bonded immediately. Before we tried each tune, the two of them would huddle like in football and call the rhythmic plays. We all depended on them to find that rhythmic bed.”

For the recording sessions, Wilson rented a house in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, and turned it into a studio—bringing in all the recording equipment and then set up shop with her band from noon to midnight for six days. She sought to capture the relaxed nature of the sessions, to give a 360 degree view of what happens. That feeling is captured in the group’s funky, upbeat version of “St. James Infirmary.

Another band member who Wilson hadn’t recorded with before was label mate Moran, who was in her band for a while earlier this decade. Wilson says, “I love Jason. He’s my favorite piano player. I love the way he’s so seemingly careless in his playing but thoughtful at the same time. It always seems like he plays as if he’s falling off a cliff, but then brilliantly ends up back in a place that makes perfect sense.”

Some of the songs on Loverly were suggestions from Blue Note label head Bruce Lundvall. “When Bruce heard I wanted to do a standards album, he came up with songs that I had never heard of,” says Wilson. “He knows more standards than anyone I know. He made me a list.” On the list were well-worn classics like “Caravan” which Wilson takes upbeat with noteworthy solos by Sewell and Moran, and the rapturous “Gone With the Wind,” with a striking Sewell opening and a subtle groove. It was the first song of the session and features “piano work that’s crazy,” says Wilson. Also on the list were some lesser-knowns such as “Lover Come Back,” which Wilson wanted to deliver in a bouncy vibe of late ‘40s, early ‘50s music. When Wilson was mixing the album in New Orleans, Payton dropped by and improvised over a section.

Other tunes include the quiet gem “Black Orpheus,” with Sewell’s sinuous slide guitar accompaniment and Plaxico’s hypnotic bass line; the cool and swinging “A Sleeping Bee,” from the Truman Capote/Harold Arlen musical House of Flowers; the gently lilting “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” from My Fair Lady, one of Wilson’s favorite musicals; and the gorgeous melody ”Till There Was You,” from the musical The Music Man (and also covered by the Beatles on Meet the Beatles). “That song was Lonnie’s call,” says Wilson. “He asked me if I knew it, so then he said, let’s do it this way. What emerged, after he and Herlin huddled, was a Chicago step dance rhythm.”

Veal makes one appearance on Loverly accompanying Wilson in a duo setting on her molasses-slow delivery of “The Very Thought of You.” “That’s a song I’ve always wanted to record,” she says. “I love the lyrics and the beautiful melody. This was the very last song we recorded after everyone else in the band had left.”

Even though Wilson is credited as the producer of Loverly, she says that the songs came together in a joint effort with her band. “I am the unproducer,” she says with a laugh. “I listen to everyone’s opinion about the songs. Some people say that that is a fault. But I like the democratic approach. I like the input, and then we play the tunes, capturing the energy and the improvisational voices of everyone.”