Saturday, May 2, 2020

The Album Thing: Karrin Allyson, Collage

Time for today’s album! (If you don’t know what I’m doing, look at some of the previous posts.) When we moved back to Missouri, Karrin Allyson kind of welcomed us back. She was still based in Kansas City then. We still see her every chance we get. Even though she’s in New York now, you can still hear the Midwest in her voice. She does so much so well: upbeat scat bebop, blues, ballads, sambas, pop . . . she could sing the phonebook, and it’d be great! And she doesn’t get enough credit as a band leader.

It was hard to pick one album by her, but Collage is one that always makes me smile.

This album welcomes you with its first song, “It Could Happen to You/Fried Bananas.” (Would you call this a “mashup”? With “Fried Bananas” in it?)

A vocal version of Clifford Brown’s classic “Joy Spring.”

I said she can do ballads. Here, she does tribute to a Thelonius Monk classic, “Ask Me Now.”

And yes, blues. She’s a big Bonnie Raitt fan, and here’s “Give It Up or Let Me Go.”

And, for fun, a live version of the above.

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