Recently my wife Laura and I were invited by friends to dinner. At a certain point, our hosts said, "You have to listen to a young singer we've discovered". I thought to myself, "Be polite, George". It was my first introduction to Samara Joy, a 23-year-old sensation. At that tender age, she has absorbed an entire earlier generation of jazz history's greats, such as Sarah, Ella, Billie, and Carmen. It's almost miraculous that someone so young has been able to engage an important and revered part of jazz history. And she does all this with spot on phrasing, incredible scatting, and a once in a lifetime dreamlike voice. In addition to all that, she chooses tunes that her predecessors leaned on but keep in mind, she is ALL Samara Joy at the same time. There are ten tunes in all (twenty would have been even better!) including "Can't Get Out Of This Mood", "I'm Confessin'", "'Round Midnight", "Misty", and the title tune, "Linger Awhile". A few that particularly spun my head around were "Sweet Pumpkin", a charmer I associate with the underrated great singer Bill Henderson; a Betty Carter winner called "Social Call"; the Tadd Dameron classic "Nostalgia"; and a revisit of the Nancy Wilson hit, "Guess Who I Saw Today". Samara Joy is a modern miracle who draws upon the prime jazz singers of the past, but she adds her very own brilliance at every special turn of a phrase.
Verve; 2022; appx. 45 min.
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