“I love how the great women jazz singers didn’t allow the songs of the time to define or reduce them – they redefined and expanded the meanings of the songs with their bold storytelling. In doing so, they gave themselves and other women a bigger space to live in.” ---Kate McGarry
Eclectic vocalist Kate McGarry describes her new Girl Talk as “my first straight-ahead recording in many years.” Well, don’t be too quick to assume this really is all that straight-ahead. Just remember who we are dealing with here: One of her early mentors was saxophonist Archie Shepp. She spent three years in a meditation ashram in upstate New York. She’s recorded with such inventive jazzers as Fred Hersch, Kurt Elling, and Maria Schneider, and forms one-fifth of the vocal ensemble Moss, which includes the wildly creative Theo Bleckmann. If Girl Talk is straight-head for McGarry, all things are relative, and indeed the 10 tracks reflect accessible songs from the repertoires of Kate’s favorite jazz singers, from Sarah Vaughn and Anita O’Day to Shirley Horn and Betty Carter-- “our strong lineage of visionary jazz women,” adds McGarry. “I see this album as a bridge between the contemporary things I do and the jazz tradition I learned so much from.” Kate has always walked her own path through music, putting her unique stamp on everything from melody to meter to political interpretation. Her approach to the music of Girl Talk, her fifth Palmetto recording, only reinforces that journey with the intimacy of a small ensemble that includes husband Keith Ganz on guitar, Gary Versace on piano and organ, Reuben Rogers on bass and Clarence Penn on drums. Frequent cohort Kurt Elling adds his voice to one track.
Kate opens with the Rodgers/Hammerstein “We Kiss in the Shadows,” here a hopeful –and beautifully rendered--anthem about loving whomever we choose without the bounds of convention. “To me, it became a song about civil rights,” she says. “It’s sad, but hopeful.” The title track, by Bobby Troupe and Neal Hefti, was recorded by Betty Carter, and like her role model, McGarry refuses to take the lyrics (or the melody) at face value, giving a song that potentially emphasizes resignation a not-so-subtle political statement. Guitar and organ implant a swaying groove. Kurt Elling joins in on Dori Caymmi’s “O Cantador,” the two voices intertwining beautifully in Portuguese while Elling’s solo is as moving as any ballad he has recorded to date.
Other tracks include a briskly swinging “I Just Found Out About Love”; a slower, plaintive “The Man I Love” (“a more explicitly cautionary tale,” says Kate); the understated, upbeat arrangement of “This Heart of Mine,” featuring Keith Ganz’s boppish guitar and Reuben Roger’s swinging basslines; Kate’s (least straight-ahead) horn-like phrasing and vocalese on “I Know That You Know” that also highlights a delightfully sputtering duel among Ganz and Penn; a gorgeously brooding take on Jimmy Rowles’ “Looking Back”; a cleverly funky, almost sinister rendition of “Charade”; and the closing, foot-tapping delight, “It’s a Wonderful World,” McGarry and company truly “walking on air” as they set the sunny standard with a modern-day rhythm.
So many elements merge to make Girl Talk more than just another vocal album but rather a masterpiece of artistic riches, ensemble collaboration, and interpretive wisdom. But the centerpiece of this wonderful world is Kate McGarry.
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