The Songbirds Archives

Diana Krall: When I Look In Your Eyes
Verve (IMPD-304/IMPC-304); US, 1999

Reviewed by Earl Dachslager; The Woodlands, Texas

Diana Krall, to use the lingo du jour, is a phenomenon. She is without a doubt the hottest - most popular, most successful, most acclaimed - jazz singer, male or female, black or white, to come along in forty years. And that's saying something.

Krall's previous three releases - Love Scenes (Impulse, 1997), All For You (Impulse, 1996), and Only Trust Your Heart (GRP, 1995) - have had extraordinary combined sales, exceeding 600,000 SoundScans in the U.S. alone. Krall's first album, Stepping Out, was originally recorded on the Canadian label Justin Time (1993). Given the advance publicity and anticipation for this newest release, its sales may well exceed those of her previous recordings combined.

In addition, Krall has released a single, actually a triple, Christmas CD, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Impulse, 1998), with orchestrations by Johnny Mandel, who also figures prominently and, in my view, not entirely happily, on this new release. Krall can also be heard on several movie soundtracks, including Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Midnight Sun) plus Eastwood's recent True Crime (Why Should I Care). She can also be heard on the Chieftains' new release, Tears of Stone, along with Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell and Joan Osborne.

As further evidence of her growing reputation and prominence as a jazz vocalist, she was asked to choose the selections for the recently released (May 25) Shirley Horn CD in the new Verve "Ultimate Series" albums. She will also sing a duet with Rosemary Clooney on the latter's forthcoming Concord release.

Given her great popularity and her record-busting sales, it's not surprising that Krall and her marketers and producers would want to extend her appeal to an even broader, more pop-oriented audience, and to make her more accessible to listeners who ordinarily wouldn't be found dead in the jazz section of their local CD emporiums. In other words, to move her from being labeled a mere jazz singer to being labeled… what should we call it? Mainstream? Pop? Commercial? All the above?

The results of this left (or right) to center shift can be heard on When I Look in Your Eyes, with some questionable results. The evidence of the shift is heard not so much in the album's selections which, for the most part, conform to Krall's previous albums - mostly tried-and-true standards plus a couple more contemporary numbers - but in the arrangements, which bring us back to the omnipresent and, judging from the hype surrounding the release of this recording, omniscient Johnny Mandel.

Over a long career, dating back to the 1940s, Mandel has worked with just about everybody in American jazz and popular music. So I imagine it was quite a coup de disque to have Mandel perform as arranger and conductor for several of the tracks on Krall's new release - incidentally, her first on Verve. The problem is, the cuts with orchestral arrangements - lush strings, quiet horns, languid tempos - generally don't work as well as the ones where Krall accompanies herself on piano, along with guitar and bass (trio format), or, on a couple of cuts, with drums added, to form a quartet.
To my way of listening, the best tracks on the album are the McHugh-Fields I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Brooks Bowman's East of the Sun, the Kern-Fields Pick Yourself Up, and Berlin's The Best Thing for You. The latter, in a fine arrangement by Krall and bassist John Clayton, is done up-tempo with a quartet (Krall, vocal/piano; Clayton, bass; Russell Malone, guitar; and Jeff Hamilton, drums). It features some groovy contrapuntal work between Krall and Malone and, likewise, between Hamilton and Clayton, and it proves once more what a great composer Berlin was. All in all, a fine track.

East of the Sun is taken at a similarly medium-to-fast tempo by the trio (with Ben Wolfe on bass). It begins and ends with a reprise of Bobby Troup's Baby, Baby, All the Time, and swings merrily along from start to finish. It's a great song sung by a great singer in a great arrangement. More like this would have been welcome. Wolfe shines on bass, and manages to work in a nod to I Wish I Were in Love Again. Malone on guitar is splendid as always. How lucky, or smart, Krall is to have him.

As for Krall, she's totally in her element on this track - phrasing, timing, breath control, pitch - everything right - proof that jazz is really what she does best. This is my nomination as the best track on the album, hands down. Incidentally, Jeff Hamilton, who plays drums on half-a-dozen of the tracks on this release is also the drummer on Stacey Kent's Love is the Tender Trap CD, on which Kent also has a choice version of East of the Sun.

A close second for best album track is I Can't Give You Anything but Love. In spite of, or because of, its obvious indebtedness to Rose Murphy's classic version, Krall nevertheless manages to make this take distinctively hers. The trio is again in excellent form, solo and together, a good example of what Stephen Holden was talking about when he referred recently in the New York Times to "the trio's inventive musical dynamics."

Nearly as good is Kern's Pick Yourself Up, done in a bluesy, medium-tempo, quartet arrangement, but here with light orchestral backing, which somewhat diminishes the arrangement's overall jauntiness. Krall's vocal glances at Holiday and McRae, but she still gives the lyrics her own inimitable cast. Much has been said about various singers, especially pianist-singers - whom Krall is supposed to sound like or who influenced her - Roberta Flack, Nat Cole, Carmen McRae, Andy Bey - but the truth is that Krall sounds like nobody but herself. Her voice is utterly distinctive. Much of its distinction comes from its timbre - throaty, almost husky, what in jazz singing is often called smoky. Critic Terry Teachout's early-on and oft-quoted simile holds true: "Her low, grainy, insinuating alto sounds like wild honey with a spoonful of scotch."

The wild honey and scotch are much present on this album, perhaps most obviously so on the two riskiest songs included: the Gershwin-DeSylva Do It Again, and Michael Franks' Popsicle Toes from his The Art of Tea CD.

Do It Again is risky not simply because it is risque, and thus perhaps misunderstood (or understood!), but because the temptation is to act it out as much as to sing it - to moan and groan and ooohhh and aaahhh, as we hear for example in Carol Lawrence's take on it, or in a somewhat grander mood on Sarah Vaughan's version of it on her live Gershwin album. Krall's rendition falls somewhere lower down on the musical and emotional scale. It's sensual, even a tad sexual, but not blatantly so; nicely understated, and therefore all the more fetching. Here the strings are meant to add an atmospheric, romantic, midnight mood, which they do, albeit predictably and somewhat tritely. I hope somewhere along the line Krall decides to do it again, as a solo.

Franks' Popsicle Toes is, by any accounting, the odd tune out on this release. Frankly, I have no idea what it's about, or why, but maybe that's the point. In a promotional release Krall describes the tune as "both saucy and lighthearted," and goes on to say that it's "a bit naughty and silly." I got the silly part but somehow missed the naughty. (Do It Again - now that's naughty). Inane lyrics apart, the track is rhythmically and instrumentally enjoyable, thanks mainly to the trio's (Krall, Malone, Clayton) expert playing.

Fans of Bob Dorough's song Devil May Care (not to be confused with the Johnny Burke song of the same title), covered notably by Teri Thornton on her 1961 debut album of the same name, should relish Krall's rendition. Here again, it's played in trio mode, at a slightly faster, funkier clip than Thornton's. Because of its staccato rhythms and key changes it's not an especially easy song to sing, but Krall sails through it. Maybe other singers will be inspired to give it a try.

The cuts that are backed with orchestra vary a good deal in their effectiveness, depending on the duration and strength of the orchestral presence. For example, on Let's Fall in Love, where the quartet, augmented by Larry Bunker on vibes, is backed up by strings and horns, the effect is relatively minimal - a dollop of schmaltz but not enough to totally overwhelm the small ensemble flavor. Still, the schmaltz is evident.

Likewise, the Harry Warren-Al Dubin standard I'll String Along With You, from the 1934 Dick Powell-Ginger Rogers film Twenty Million Sweethearts, is played here by the trio with full orchestral backing. It's a tune that lends itself to a soft, languorous, strung-out arrangement (Alec Wilder called it "a hack job" compared to other Warren-Dubin songs), and so it pretty well fits the sensuous arrangement Mandel gives it. Krall sings it beautifully, adapting herself admirably to the lush setting.

Rather more egregiously, the title track, Leslie Bricusse's When I Look in Your Eyes, is done as a moody, easy-listening, soft jazz, late-night jazz, 'round midnight jazz, whatever the current market term is for this sort of blues-based music is called. In spite of its treacly arrangement, Krall manages to endow the song with sincerity, even passion. And the song is so seldom heard that maybe we should just be grateful to have it on record at all and not carp about its arrangement. The song was, of course, originally sung by Rex Harrison, in the movie Doctor Dolittle (1967), to a seal. The original last lines of the song go: "Your eyes, so warm, so wise, so real / Isn't it a pity you're a seal?" Here, the last line is changed to "I love the world your eyes reveal." For me, at least, it's hard to hear the song - also recorded by Carol Sloane, on her 1994 Concord album of the same name, and by Linda Eder - without thinking of the good Doctor D. and the seal.

The Clint Eastwood-Linda Thompson-Carol Bayer Sager tune Why Should I Care, from the True Crime soundtrack, is here given the full orchestral treatment, with at best mixed results. In fact it may be the most blatantly obvious example on the album of Krall's move away from the jazz class and closer to the middle class.

In a promotional interview, Krall recently made it clear that she doesn't want to be classified as a jazz singer, or, presumably, any sort of singer. "I just would like to be an artist," she states. It seems to me I've heard that song before. It's fine to want to be an artist, but that's a pretty broad class. To say, as Krall does, "I don't want to be categorized," is at best naive, at worst nonsense. Creative people are categorized. Novelists are sci-fi or mystery or Victorian or post-modern; composers are baroque or classical or romantic or minimalist; designers are traditional or eclectic or modernist, and so on. Why should singers be different? The artists who are beyond category can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The point is worth belaboring because it's really what this album is about, in concept as well as execution: Diana Krall trying to straddle two musical worlds, jazz and something closer to what used to be called easy listening. I don't mean to be negative. I'm a great admirer of Krall; I think she's the best female, non-operatic vocalist recording today. For my money, Krall, even with lugubrious strings and schlocky songs, is worth any number of Whitneys and Mariahs. I hope this album turns out to be as popular, if not more so, than all her previous ones; and on balance it should, because it features some first-class songs by a first-class singer and pianist, aided by some first-class sidemen. If we were working here on a five-star rating system, I'd handily give it four stars; and with a stretch, four-and-a-half.

However it turns out, for the moment all is well. Krall is about to embark on a major Canadian/American tour, which includes the Montreal Jazz Festival (July 2), the Newport Jazz Festival (August 15), and the Monterey Jazz Festival (Sept. 18), along with 30 or so other American towns and cities. While it's true, as Shakespeare said in one of his songs, that what's to come is still unsure, right now what's to come looks pretty sure for Diana Krall. I, for one, hope it stays that way.

[CD cover art not available at presstime.]

Tracks

1. Let's Face the Music and Dance (Irving Berlin) - 5:18
2. Devil May Care (Bob Dorough) - 3:20
3. Let's Fall in Love (Ted Koehler, Harold Arlen) - 4:10
4. When I Look in Your Eyes (Leslie Bricusse) - 4:31
5. Popsicle Toes (Michael Franks) - 4:28
6. I've Got You Under My Skin (Cole Porter) - 6:10
7. I Can't Give You Anything but Love (Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields) - 2:32
8. I'll String Along with You (Harry Warren, Al Dubin) - 4:45
9. East of the Sun (and West of the Moon) (Brooks Bowman) - 4:57
10. Pick Yourself Up (Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields) - 3:02
11. The Best Thing for You (Irving Berlin) - 2:37
12. Do It Again (George Gershwin, B.G. DeSylva) - 4:35
13. Why Should I Care (Clint Eastwood, Linda Thompson, Carol Bayer Sager) - 3:44

Personnel

Produced by Tommy LiPuma and Johnny Mandel. Orchestra arranged and conducted by Eddie Karam and Johnny Mandel.
Diana Krall: piano, vocals; Russell Malone: guitar; John Clayton: bass (1,3,5,10,11,12); Ben Wolfe: bass (2,6,8,9); Jeff Hamilton: drums (1,3,5,10,11,12); Lewis Nash: drums (6,8); Larry Bunker: vibes (3).