You may think you have heard the songs from the Great
American Songbook more than enough times so that you have no desire to hear
them again. Think again; you haven’t heard
them like you’ll hear them on Either Way,
the new album from French jazz singer Anne Ducros. That she makes these hoary
standards her own, doesn’t come close to doing justice to what she does with
them. She transforms them, and more important her transformations are
absolutely killer.
She takes the original song and pushes its musical
possibilities as far as they will go. This is a singer who colors outside the
lines. Her vocals are a perfect demonstration of what a jazz singer should be
doing. Many jazz singers are content to interpret, Anne Ducros creates. In a
sense what she does with a song parallels what her deconstructionist countryman
Jacques Derrida does with literature. The original song becomes a remembered
shadow that marks just how far she’s taken its ideas.
All this wouldn’t make much difference if the lady couldn’t
sing. No problem, this is a lady with
the chops to make her music work. If her performances don’t quite make you
forget the originals, they sure give them a run for their money.
The concept of the album as Ducros explains is to work with
songs associated with great Ella Fitzgerald and somewhat surprisingly Marilyn
Monroe. The two are associated because of Fitzgerald’s acknowledgement of a
debt to Monroe for a booking she got at the prestigious Mocambo in Los Angeles,
at a time when black artists were discriminated against. Monroe, it seems,
called the club owner and demanded Fitzgerald be booked immediately. She
promised to show up and take a front row table every night of the gig. With
that kind of publicity, how could he refuse?
The album is made up of 15 songs, 14 standards and one, the
title tune, original. Although there are some guest performers, the singer for
the most part is backed by a quartet: Gilles Nicolas on double bass and
electric bass, Benoît de Mesmay on piano, Maxime Blesin on guitars and percussion,
and Bruno Castelucci on drums. It is a tight ensemble that not only backs up
Ducros to perfection but contributes some fine solo work as well.
The songs— “You’d Be Surprised,” “My Heart Belongs to
Daddy,” “Thou Swell,” just to name a few, all titles you know—need to be heard
to understand what Ducros is doing. Check out her version of “Summertime” and
you begin to get an idea of the complexity of her art. And classics like “It
Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing),” “A Fine Romance,” and “Laura”
push the cliché envelope even further.
Either Way is
perhaps the finest album from a jazz vocalist, I’ve heard this year, and
certainly the most interesting.
