With the release of A Lady With A Song, Amber Weekes pays homage to a jazz legend. Two years in the making, Amber and producer Mark Cargill conjured up the audacious project of creating an album that would pay homage to one of Amber’s childhood, musical inspirations, Nancy Wilson. With an astounding repertoire of over 60 albums and charted singles produced by Nancy, this project had some lofty goals.
“In thinking of a unique project to follow up ‘Round Midnight, Mark suggested I take the opportunity to focus on someone who was a major influence for me,” Amber says. “I’ll often acknowledge Ella and Sarah, my parents told me great stories about Diahann and many have compared me throughout my career to Lena Horne. But as I was listening through Nancy’s massive catalog, I realized that most of the songs most identified with her were actually cover songs – yet she had an incredible, inimitable way of making them hers.
In choosing material for the album, the key for Amber and Cargill was to showcase the multitude of moods and stylistic range of Wilson’s decades’ worth of repertoire, from her innate ability to swing (the opener “My Gentleman Friend”) and romp sassily and sensually in the bossa nova groove (“Save Your Love For Me,” Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Wave”) through her way with bright, orchestrated big band energy (“What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” “The Best Is Yet To Come”) and a tender, pointed ballad (“Guess Who I Saw Today,” which saves its biting, surprise twist for the last line).
In one of the collection’s most powerful moments, Amber makes clear the original racially charged meaning of Irving Berlin’s anti-lynching dirge “Suppertime” (introduced by Ethel Waters in the 1933 musical As Thousands Cheer) with her spoken word addendum about a mob taking her man away, dragging him through the street and hanging him from a tree, leaving her and her children alone. Amber balances the more serious themes of tracks like “Suppertime” and the romantic heartbreaker “Ten Good Years” with the playful, humorous “I’m Always Drunk in San Francisco,” which taps into her lifelong love for the city by the Bay and strikes her as a curious song for her and her sister to have sung as young children.
Amber pays homage to Wilson’s brilliant, socially conscious, and often comical storytelling with all-star, style-specific assistance from a dream team of all-stars, including guitarists Russell Malone and Paul Jackson, Jr., multiple Grammy-nominated urban jazz saxophonist Gerald Albright and flutist Justo Almario. Other top live and session jazz cats on hand include pianist Tony Campodonico, bassists Jeff Littleton and John B. Williams, saxophonists Carol Chaikin, Rickey Woodard and Jacob Scesney, and drummer Fritz Wise.
No doubt, when Amber was a toddler she didn’t understand all the deep emotional nuances of the charming nostalgic waltz “Wasn’t It Wonderful” – one of the gems the Weekes sisters sang for their parents – but it makes an ideal through line to the present day, and an emphatic coda to all the interpretive magic on A Lady With A Song – Amber Weekes Celebrates Nancy Wilson.
Amber Weekes has always been a storyteller who puts a lot of heart and honest feelings into her interpretations and like a breath of fresh air, this album is a delight to breathe in and delivers soulful jazz that touches your soul.
Courtesy in part to Jonathan Widran, The JWVibe
Track Listing
- Gentleman Friend (Arnold B. Horwitt, Richard Lewine) 2:18
- Save Your Love For Me (Buddy Johnson) 5:13
- A Lady With a Song (Ken Hirsch, L. Smokey Bates) 4:19
- Ten Good Years (Marty Charin, Luther Henderson) 3:43
- What a Little Moonlight Can Do (Harry M. Woods) 4:04
- Midnight Sun (Johnny Mercer, Lionel Hampton, Sonny Burke) 4:22
- Suppertime (Irving Berlin) 5:51
- Wave (Antonio Carlos Jobim) 4:28
- Guess Who I Saw Today (Elisse Boyd, Murray Grand) 3:47
- I’m Always Drunk in San Francisco (Tony Wolf) 3:32
- The Best is Yet To Come (Carolyn Leigh, Cy Coleman) 3:35
- You’re Gonna Hear From Me (Andre Previn and Dory Previn) 3:57
- Wasn’t It Wonderful (Ed Pola and George Wile) 3:09
Musicians
Russell Malone – guitar (feat. tr 1,5); Paul Jackson Jr. – sax (feat. tr2,8); Gerald Albright – sax (feat. tr2); Rickey Woodard – sax (feat. tr11); Justo Almario – flute (feat. tr6,9).
Also feat. Ray Monteiro & Mike Cordone – trumpet (tr3); Mark Cargill – Violin (tr7,8); Rashawn Ross – Trumpet (tr10); Tony Campodonico – Acoustic and Rhodes Piano (tr13); Jacob Scesney – Tenor Saxophone (tr13); plus others.