At The Great American Music Hall Carmen McRae feat. Dizzy Gillespie

• 1Them There Eyes02:03
• 2Paint Your Pretty Picture06:27
• 3On Green Dolphin Street03:24
• 4A Song For You04:48
• 5On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever)04:27
• 6Miss Otis Regrets (She's Unable To Lunch Today)06:02
• 7Too Close For Comfort04:07
• 8Old Folks04:47
• 9Time After Time03:04
• 10I'm Always Drunk In San Francisco03:48
• 11Don't Misunderstand03:41
• 12A Beautiful Friendship04:04
• 13Star Eyes03:02
• 14Dindi04:37
• 15Never Let Me Go03:14
• 16'Tain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do05:34
• 17Only Women Bleed04:28
• 18No More Blues (Chega De Saudade)04:14
• 19The Folks Who Live On The Hill03:52
• 20Closing01:13
• Total Runtime01:20:56

Info zu At The Great American Music Hall

„Carmen McRae has always shined on stage, and this fine account of her 1976 three-night stand at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco proves the point. Couched in that stellar Blue Note sound, McRae ranges far and wide on a set of standards. And McRae not only spices things up with an impressive reading of the bossa nova standard 'Dindi,' but she even goes completely out of her expected domain with a version of the Alice Cooper ballad 'Only Woman Bleed' -- interesting, to say the least.

Surprisingly, though, she turns this FM hit into one of the most effective performances here. The whole recording is remarkable, for that matter. And this, no doubt, can be traced to the McRae's choice of backing, which includes the venerable Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet and future drumming heavyweight Joey Baron. A must for McRae fans.“ (Stephen Cook)

Carmen McRae, vocal
Ed Bennett, upright bass
Marshall Otwell, keyboards
Joey Baron, drums, percussion
Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet

Digitally remastered

Carmen McRae
Even almost a decade after her death in 1994, Carmen McRae remains an institution unto herself. Born in Harlem, she studied piano as a child and her parents encouraged her to go classical, but the world of jazz and what she called the Great American Songbook was beckoning. For a time she also wrote songs, and as a teenager she came to the attention of one of the power couples of the jazz world, piano star Teddy Wilson and composer Irene Kitchings Wilson. Through their influence, one of McRae’s early songs, "Dream of Life", was recorded by Teddy Wilson’s longtime collaborator Billie Holiday.

Unfortunately, this early success did not immediately lead to a career as writer or performer. By the late Forties she was well known among the young modern jazz musicians who gathered at Minton’s, Harlem’s most famous inside after-hours joint, but her talent seemed doomed not to reach out beyond that world until 1953. It was while working in Brooklyn that she happened to come to the attention of a tiny independent record label, and thankfully the records she made for that concern happened to fall on the ears of Decca’s Milt Gabler, one of the great talent scouts in the history of jazz.

Her five-year association with Decca (and its brother label, Kapp Records) served both to make her a bona fide singing star and to yield what would ultimately prove to be the most consistently excellent series of recordings of her entire forty-year career. These twelve LPs, indeed, rank among the greatest vocal records of all time. McRae is simultaneously cool and cutting-edge sharp, relaxed and swinging, putting over all manner of material in all manner of settings. These range from trios (none better than that led by pianist Ray Bryant on After Glow) or her own piano (By Special Request) to swinging big bands (led by Tadd Dameron on Blue Moon, Ralph Burns on Torchy, or Ernie Wilkins on Something to Swing About), a full-sized string orchestra (Book of Ballads, When You’re Away), and experimental jazz groups boasting such unusual accoutrements as accordion (By Special Request) and cello (Carmen for Cool Ones). She also tackles such unusual subjects for a jazz singer as, on Mad About the Man, the songs of Noël Coward, and, on Birds of a Feather, songs about our feathered friends.

This isn’t to imply that the remaining thirty years of her recording career were anything less than wonderful. As the years wore on, she developed an increasingly world-weary attitude in her singing. Contrastingly, the freshness and vitality of these, her earliest notable recordings, is remarkable. These tracks announced the coming of a major new artist, one whose light would be hidden under a bushel no more, and nearly fifty years later they retain their power. (Will Friedwald, Excerpted from: Carmen McRae’s Finest Hour)

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