Ron Carter Esperanza Spalding - Downbeat

77th Annual readers Poll
female vocalist
Diana Krall
Casting for Chemistry
By Michael Gallant // Photography by Mark Seliger
Diana Krall leans forward in her chair to emphasize a point. “Listen to the lyrics,” says the
two-time-Grammy-winning singer and pianist. “All dolled up in glad rags/ Tomorrow
may turn to sad rags … you’re just a pretty toy.” The words echo from a musical tradition
born close to a century ago, but for Krall, they have an all-too-contemporary bite—and
not just because they’re the lyrics to the title track of her latest album.
“That story still isn’t far from the truth in some ways, and I’m
not just singing about poor little glad rag dolls in the 1920s,” she
says. “I’m making a statement that this song from back then is still
relevant for a lot of women. You can see it here,” she says, gesturing
to indicate the Manhattan cafe in which we are comfortably nestled,
drinking coffee, “any night of the week.”
Though dark, such is a potent example of Krall’s vision for
Glad Rag Doll (Verve), an adventurous album that feels simultaneously
retro and earthy, energetic and experimental, with a warm
edge to relish. Tracks include Gene Austin’s “Let It Rain,” reinvented
in wistful catharsis with arpeggiating guitar and a snareheavy
drum groove that feels equal parts New Orleans parade
and military funeral. The almost psychedelic ghost dance of Doc
Pomus’ “Lonely Avenue” sounds as though Soundgarden’s Kim
Thayil decided to swing by the studio to lend some grunge with a
lick or two; the distortion melts into atmospheric swells that billow
around Krall’s angular improvisations, causing the track to morph
seamlessly between rock, jazz, blues and something else entirely.
In some ways, that space in between is what the album is all about.
Though Glad Rag Doll sources material from a bygone era,
even a quick listen affirms that this is no period piece. “The only
real concept that I had going in was that I wanted to do music from
the 1920s and move forward from that,” Krall explains. “But I did
not want to do a 1920s record with a flapper dress and ukulele. I did
not want this to be The New Paul Whiteman Orchestra or any sort
of nostalgia recording. I wanted to take these songs and make it so
you can’t tell if some of them were written yesterday.”
The Glad Rag Gang
Krall, who started playing piano during her childhood in
Nanaimo, British Columbia, released her debut, Stepping Out
(Justin Time) in 1993. She won rave reviews for 1996’s All For
You: A Dedication To The Nat King Cole Trio (Impulse) and has
became one of the biggest jazz stars of the past two decades. She
has won the Female Vocalist category in the DownBeat Readers
Poll for five consecutive years.
Thanks in no small part to a new team of collaborators, Krall
has hit her mark and then some with Glad Rag Doll, her 12th
album. Guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist
Dennis Crouch and keyboardist Keefus Green are among the
album’s chief contributors, with the legendary T Bone Burnett—a
close friend and longtime collaborator of Krall’s husband, Elvis
Costello—in the producer’s chair.
“Diana is just flat-out good,” says Burnett, who helped Krall
focus her vision for the album and capture the band’s exploits on
analog tape. “This was an extraordinary record to make and our
time in the studio was deep and intense. The band on the record—
Ribot, Dennis Crouch, Jay Bellerose, Keefus—they’ve been playing
together for 25 years now. There’s very, very good communication
among everyone.”
Despite her role as newcomer to the musical mix, Krall meshed
well with her collaborators, according to Burnett, who describes
the artist as an outstanding musical communicator. “It was thrilling
to watch,” he says. “I was an observer for most of it, and it was
great seeing extraordinary artists doing the same thing that artists
have been doing for a century, when this old, beautiful music was
first being made—whether you call it jazz, r&b, rock ’n’ roll, pop or
country, as Ray Charles heard it. These songs tell the truth. They’re
full of love and they’re full of America.”
Just as the source material for Glad Rag Doll traces back to the
early 20th century, so does Krall’s inspiration date back to some of
her earliest musical experiences. Thanks largely to her father (an
avid DownBeat reader) the artist grew up listening to music of the
’20s and ’30s on 78s and cylinders, coming of musical age amidst
“sheet music and real gramophones,” she says.
30 DOWNBEAT DECEMBER 2012