Juliet Roberts is best known for her stint as vocalist for Working Week, the house band of 1980s Brit-jazz whose fertile melting pot of soul, jazz and reggae had a profound influence on Black British music. It is most easily represented here on her carib-jazz version of Dennis Brown's How Can I Leave?
She arranges and co-writes the bulk of the songs, but it's a star-studded collaborative affair with the likes of Courtney Pine, Denys Baptiste and Gary Crosby joining Roberts' trio of Andrew McCormack (piano), Arnie Somoggi (double bass) and Rod Youngs ( drums). Positively summery.
Claire Martin - Too Darn Hot! (Linn Records)
It's dinner jazz for sure, and there's a smattering of standards, but Claire is blessed with smokey caramel latte vocals and treats the compositions with the right amount of reverence, making sure they don't dull by over familiarity; she positively purrs with naughty intent on the title track! Elsewhere, Black Coffee has a dark blues heart while Noir conjurs up a sense of filmic urgency. Of the original material, Four Walls (by Geoffrey Keezer) has a contemporary jazz feel (Diana Krall territory) but album closer Blue Hotel Room with Ian Shaw sharing vocal duties is an accapella delight.
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