Lazy Afternoon (Moss-Latouche) [4:57] *
It Never Entered My Mind (Rodgers-Hart) [2:52]
*
I Can’t Make You Love Me (Reid-Shamblin) [3:54]
*
My Foolish Heart (Young-Washington) [3:59]
*
A Natural Woman (Goffin-King-Wexler) [3:54]
**
They Can’t Take That Away from Me (George
and Ira Gershwin) [2:59] **
Caught Up in the Rapture (Glenn-Quander) [4:29]
*
Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing (Wonder) [3:59]
*
Day by Day (Cahen-Stordahl-Weston) [4:18]
**
Willow Weep for Me (Ronnell) [4:58]
Let’s Stay Together (Green-Mitchell-Jackson)
[3:11] **
It’s Alright with Me (Porter) [3:41] **
When I Fall in Love (Young-Heyman)[2:32]
Johanna Grüssner (vocal)
Ted Broussard (guitar)
Bob Sunda (bass)
Mike Burch (drums)*
David Mahoney (drums)**
rec. 1-3 May, 2006, Dockside Studios, Maurice,
Louisiana
The Finnish singer Johanna
Grüssner is an undoubted talent – one
need only listen to her Naxos (86078-2) disc
No More Blues, issued in 2004, to be
sure of this. This new CD, however, is something
of a disappointment.
Grüssner, who studied both at Berklee
and the Manhattan School of Music, is now
based in Stockholm, but made a special trip
to New Orleans to record this album. The results
are pleasant listening – perhaps for a lazy
afternoon, should one be lucky enough to have
one – but there’s an air of blandness about
much of the music which makes it less than
memorable. The choice of material perhaps
relies on the over familiar, and the implicit
competition is sometimes of the very highest
order. Grüssner, it has to be said, characterises
some of the songs rather less vividly than
my earlier knowledge of her work led me to
expect. Grüssner is too good a vocalist
for there not to be some attractive moments,
some nicely judged inflexions, some striking
phrases and the CD closes with a nicely considered
reading of ‘When I Fall in Love’; but the
whole never catches fire.
Producer John Snyder tells us, in some gushing
notes in the booklet, that "She came
prepared. With her songs, her arrangements,
her honed-technique, her determination, She
let the musicians play but she was quick to
push them where she wanted them to go".
Mmm … I wonder if that isn’t a coded acknowledgement
of a certain lack of spontaneity in the recording.
Certainly the accompanying musicians – well
established on the New Orleans scene – do,
very competently, what they were paid (I trust!)
to do, but one senses little real involvement
or passion in their work. It isn’t intended
as an insult to Ted Broussard and his colleagues
if I say that Grüssner’s wholly unaccompanied
intro to ‘Day by Day’ is perhaps the finest
moment on the CD; indeed Brossard himself
contributes an attractive, brief solo on the
same track – his musicianship is not in doubt.
But somehow singer and accompanists never
strike sparks off one another, never really
seem to stimulate one another. It is perhaps
the absence of this creative interplay between
vocalist and accompanists, the failure of
each to do anything which surprises the other,
that ensures that this album never really
rises above the level of professional competency?
It is a shame that this should be so; maybe
Grüssner would be better served by a
situation over which she had less control,
where was made/enabled to face the unexpected
just a little more?
Glyn Pursglove
CD Reviews
Prophone PCD 087 [49:50]
