Songs We Taught Your Mother

In 1961 jazz-backed blues seemed slack, almost nonexistent. Bebop, hard bop, tenor sax & organ combos, and the avant-garde were more relevant in the jazz world. And blues was veering toward an electrified, altogether different realm. So when Chris Albertson brought Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, and Lucille Hegamin to the acclaimed Rudy Van Gelder's studio to capture songs from the era when jazz and blues melded together, the result could've easily sounded thinly nostalgic. But with a backing band that included pianist Willie "the Lion" Smith (on Hegamin's four tunes) and trombonist J.C. Higginbotham and clarinetist Buster Bailey (on the four tracks from both Hunter and Spivey), this session came out topnotch. It's redolent of an earlier era (specifically the early 1920s, when the three singers got their starts), but each of the tracks is potent with a deep, slow swing accentuating the peerless vocals. Spivey's grainy voice is impassioned and powerful, in the same way that Hunter's is unmistakable in its slight waver, carrying her sometimes near-spoken lines to the stars (especially as she delivers jewels like this: "I don't like those hepster lovers / They've got larceny in their eyes / They got a handful of gimme / And a mouthful of much obliged"). The acoustics are as sharp as any of Van Gelder's sessions, and the music is majestic. --Andrew Bartlett