Diana Ross - Stolen Moments: The Lady Sings...Jazz & Blues
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Music CD Cover Artist: Diana Ross Edition: Music CD Format: Live, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered CD Release Date: 2002-03-19 Music Label: Motown Soundtracks:
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Free Music Notes for Stolen Moments: The Lady Sings...Jazz & Blues Album
Free Music Review: Problematic recording, so order with care.
Hit: 3 Stars
I rated the recent Ross release "Blue" five stars, on the strength of the deeply felt, dead-on Billie Holiday-haunted readings of songs like "But Beautiful" and "Easy Living." Some of the same qualities are in evidence on this recording, which suffers from some programming miscalculations and production problems or mis-judgments. Using "Fine and Mellow" as a flag-waver, first as an opener, then as a finale reprise, is just plain, well, ridiculous. Billie Holiday sang few 12-bar blues songs, and "Fine and Mellow" was always delivered effortlessly, intimately, and "naturally"--like the flowering of a gardenia. Whoever selected the song for its present position in the program and moreover encouraged Diana to adopt a "blues-belting" form of elocution ("Gimme a Pigfoot" is another example) must have been born yesterday.
The former R&B diva reveals her strengths on the ballads, all of them, with the exception of the two R&H tunes, right out of Lady Day's prime-time repertoire. Moreover, not only is she accompanied by the A Team, but she generously recognizes the contribution of each soloist--Roy Hargrove, Ralph Moore, Urbie Green, Jon Faddis.
I ordered this CD on the strength of "Blue," but it appears not to be a remastered edition. If the latest edition somehow managed to give more "presence" to Diana's voice (she sounds like she's singing in Madison Square Garden to a listener in the nose-bleed seats), and if some of the audience noise was reduced or eliminated (especially when the outbursts seem to bear no relation to what is heard and are intrusive on a song's meaning), then this disk rates 4 stars.
Lesson: Order with care (mine was even a brand new, sealed copy), and don't order this one ahead of "Blue."
One last quibble: Where in the world did the title "Stolen Moments" come from? To any knowledgeable listener it's the title of Oliver Nelson's classic jazz standard. But since the song doesn't appear on the program, the title (one of three on the album cover) appears to be another fumble by a clueless team with too many players on the field.