After four decades of performing, that sizzling jazz cat Dee Dee Bridgewater, who is known for being a risk-taker, continues to en-thrall. Offering a new spin on mostly familiar Billie Holiday songs, she manages to weave a compelling spell that is infectious on Eleanora Fagan... The album pays insightful musical homage to jazz icon Billie Holiday while eschewing the baggage and exalting the triumph that made Holiday a household name at a time when it wasn’t easy for a poor black woman to make waves. The results are one of Bridgewater’s best discs in years. Just when you thought you’ve heard Billie Holiday tributized to death, along comes this fresh spin that will make listeners hear a side of these tunes that is at once haunting and refreshing.

The new CD is filled with classics, like a driving, re-harmonized “All of Me” thanks to gifted musical arranger/director Edsel Gomez. A spunky “Good Morning Heartache” and a melancholic “You’ve Changed” stand out. The disc is repeatedly punctuated by flawlessly nuanced arrangements led by Gomez heading the exceptional quartet that includes dynamic reeds player James Carter and seems right out of the Cotton Club. Other outstanding cuts include a saucy “Miss Brown to You” and a haunting “Don’t Explain” that is so deep, one can almost taste the smoke in the room. “God Bless the Child” and “Strange Fruit” recall the greatness that was Holiday and open a new window to the greatness that Bridgewater is today. A nice surprise is the treatment she gives a swinging “Foggy Day (in London Town).” Sublime. Some fifty-one years after her death, Lady Day’s torch continues to be passed on. This time, it’s with sublime style by a contemporary jazz great who is carving her own legend.

Bassist Christian McBride and drummer Lewis Nash deftly complete the quartet.

John Hoglund
Cabaret Scenes
April 2010
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