Behind the Lens

MUSIC
MUSIC
For the follow-up to
Cécile McLorin Salvant’s
breakthrough
WomanChild, she
and producer Al
Pryor had the sense
to stick with what already
works: Letting
her strut in front of
pianist Aaron Diehl’s
crisply efficient trio, here including
bassist Paul Sikivic and drummer
Lawrence Leathers.
Cécile McLorin Salvant
For One to Love
Mack Avenue, 180g 2LP or CD
©Photo by John Abbot
McLorin Salvant pretty much has
it all: A beautiful instrument, sure pitch
and timing, charm, humor, chops,
and taste. Her range easily scales
three octaves, and she’ll change up
her timbre, dynamics, vibrato, and
intonation from one syllable to the
next—foggy veiled tone to full-bellied
bellow to dying croak—in ways that
make musical sense. She’s a swinger
who brings a great editor’s focus to
the meaning of a lyric. McLorin Salvant
is also a curator of obscure old
songs that she’ll come at from odd
angles, clearing your ears for a fresh
appraisal. She seems to have listened
to and learned from everybody. Who
else’s prominent influences include
Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughan, Blossom
Dearie, and Abbey Lincoln?
The Miami-born singer first
blossomed in France, and sings
one tune here in French— namely,
60s chanteuse (and Jacques
Brel buddy) Barbara’s “Le Mal de
Vivre,” which the trio tags with
a lovely, Modern Jazz Quartet-y
baroque ending. McLorin Salvant
stirs in some of that nouvelle
chanson melancholy along with
echoes of classic Broadway balladry
into her five originals on
which the singer’s persona is apt
to be chronically lovesick. The
titles—“Look at Me” and “Left
Over”—are tells. But the helpless
air is ever undercut by her total
musical control. (When she pops
a p—“Fix your makeup” on “Wives
and Lovers”—it’s on purpose.) The
best and cheeriest of her own fare
comes in the form of “Underling,”
distinguished by its leaping ascents
and precarious dips to
port-wine lows.
McLorin Salvant shines most
brightly on the borrowed tunes,
spanning 1926 to 1964. She’s
funnier when she gets some
distance from the material. The
thematic meeting point between
songs old and new is the short
and sweet “Stepsisters’ Lament”
from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
1957 Cinderella: A plain
girl’s complaint, even as she
begrudgingly admits her flashy
rival’s got something. Later on
Bessie Smith’s “What’s the Matter
Now”—not a blues, and taken
as a 2/4 stomp—the singer addresses
her withholding mate
as if placating a child throwing a
tantrum. Getting the tone right is
a high-risk business; that’s what
makes it thrilling. A little earlier (on
the line, “Tell me pretty papa did
you break that thing?”) she gets
a little too kewpie cute, but such
missteps are rare.
The band always knows it’s
her show, the players holding up
a frame or melting into the background.
But they get their moments
to stretch, as on a long “Something’s
Coming” from that other
1957 musical, West Side Story.
There, as on “Fog,” they restrain
themselves before kicking into booty
swing time. The tour de force for
all hands is “The Trolley Song” from
1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis, as
McLorin Salvant makes that meetcute
narrative Technicolor-vivid. On
the introductory verse, she even
slips in a bar of ersatz Judy Garland,
a showbizzy tip o’ the hat so
musty it’s endearing. On this “Trolley”
ride, the trio makes frequent
stops and gets up to syncopated
speed on the straightaways, till they
all exit on cue on the end line “Till
the end of the line.” And for once
on For One to Love, the gal gets
the guy. —Kevin Whitehead
104 TONE AUDIO NO.75
November 2015 105