CD Review: Daryl Sherman - My Blue Heaven.

Daryl Sherman (pno/vcl); Harvey S (bs on 2 tracks)
(Review by Lance).

Six years on, I still relish the memory of hearing Daryl, first at the Saville Exchange, North Shields and, the following evening, at Trinity Centre, Gosforth - two venues now, sadly, lost to jazz.

Since then, I've followed her career avidly. The lady travels. Apart from touching down at Sage Gateshead in 2012 with Carrying Cole to Newcastle and Mike's Classic Jazz Party in 2014, for the past three years, Japan has played a major part in her itinerary. This year she's back again playing the Tableaux Lounge, Daikanyama, Tokyo throughout March, April and May.

This CD is a first, a mainly solo piano/voice album reminding me, in the unlikely event that my memory needed nudging, just how good she is in both departments! However, it also presents a problem for a reviewer such as I inasmuch as the album notes are written in Japanese! Then again, with Daryl, all you need are ears.

These ears thought their birthday had arrived 11 days early, such was the impact of listening to Daryl singing: I Walk a Little Faster; Wouldn't it be Loverly; Feel Like Makin' Love; Let's Go Live in a Lighthouse; Cycling Along With You; Inside a Silent Tear; My Blue Heaven; You Turned the Tables on me; Fly me to the Moon; You Wanna Bet?; The Brooklyn Bridge; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Particularly interesting to hear Julie Styne and Sammy Cahn's The Brooklyn Bridge, first sung by Sinatra and Jimmy Durante in the movie It Happened in Brooklyn. Blossom's Inside a Silent Tear also a couple of Cy Coleman's - I Walk a Little Faster and You Wanna Bet? Then there's Cycling Along with You, a Daryl original - I'm already inflating the tyres on my bike!. 

What strikes me about this album is that, along with the sophistication, there is the suggestion of an earlier era. An era where we had bootleg gin, speakeasies and singers like Ruth Etting and Annette Hanshaw. An era that Daryl moves in as easily as she handles Jimmy Webb's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Roberta Flack's Feel Like Makin' Love. An era personified by the Classic Jazz Party...
Details.

Lance.