Track Listing

1. Nature Boy
2. April in Paris
3. Beauty of All Things
4. Dance
5. Prayer for Mr. Davis
6. Endless
7. Tanya Jean
8. It's Just a Thing
9. Gingerbread Boy
10. Prelude to a Kiss
11. Time of the Season - Kurt Elling, Cassandra Wilson
12. Messenger - Kurt Elling, Cassandra Wilson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27643 in Music
• Released on: 1997-04-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Chronique amazon.fr
Qu'est-ce qui peut bien pousser un jeune type de Chicago de trente ans à peine à faire "le chanteur de jazz" ? C'est pourtant bien cette carrière improbable, vouée dans le meilleur des cas à un obscur succès d'estime, qu'a décidé d'embrasser Kurt Elling en cette fin de millénaire. Ceci étant, passé la surprise, on comprend mieux : un timbre chaud et vibrant de ténor profond qui s'aventure à l'occasion dans le registre si délicat du crooner de charme ; une façon très personnelle de se situer stylistiquement entre l'intelligence musicale d'Eddie Jefferson et le raffinement exquis de Mark Murphy ; un sens de l'improvisation étonnant, se permettant les dérives les plus audacieuses aux limites du free jazz - Kurt Elling synthétise et actualise à lui seul cet art si délicat de faire swinguer les mots. A découvrir d'urgence. --Stéphane Ollivier

Customer Reviews

Wildly Inventive Effort
Listening to this album is like watching Barry Bonds play baseball. You will hear (see) some strikeouts; but you will also hear (see) enough "shots into McCovey Cove" to convince you that both deserve to be in their respective Halls of Fame.

The most immediately impressive piece is "Ginger Bread Boy." This is the finest meld of free jazz and vocal jazz I've ever heard. The way Elling scats here is just sensational; listening to this made me hear Mingus, Dannie Richmond, Don Pullen and Eric Dolphy--with Elling doing a knock-off of Dolphy.

I was also blown away by "Tanya Jean"--a vocalese creation based on a Dexter Gordon tune about a "spiritual siren", and "Nature Boy", a hard-bending improv over a 4 beat with accents on "2" and "3" that takes the tune way beyond where Nat King Cole originally took it.

The strikeouts? Mainly, Elling has a 3-octave range (including falsetto), but too often he tries to push it to four, and is singing out of his range. I was also somewhat disappointed by Elling and Cassandra Wilson's cover of the Zombie's "Time of the Season"--mainly because it was written too low for Ms. Wilson. It was great, but I expected sensational.

OTOH, I'm very impressed with Elling's poetry. He does beat poems "It's Just a Thing" and the title cut, which is far more than a meandering bass with "I'm too cool to care" lyrics strung together. In fact, "The Messenger" has to do with the premature death of Elling's biological brother. Two more home runs, IMO.

In sum, the high points of this album are so high, that it's an essential for every connoisseur of vocal jazz. If you are one, you will get over the album's unevennness very quickly.

Cheesy...
Kurt Elling has a decent voice, but doesn't write meaningful lyrics. His writing involves copying the style of beat poets to a much lower standard, and placing words above fast solo passages to which he can barely pronounce the syllables. It ends up sounding entirely ridiculous. The musicians on the album sound great, even if they're playing on some obnoxiously smooth arrangments, yet Elling hardly improvises in his phrasing, giving the tunes a hokey, and uninspired sound. Unfortunately, it's hard to find a modern jazz vocal album that is very good. I recommend the classics for this genre.

Shoot THE MESSENGER
Kurt Elling's freshman CD displays all the problems of a young artist showing off before taste, restraint and maturity thankfully caught up with him. Aside from a few wonderful cuts, such as the swinging "Tanya Jean" and a duet with Cassandra Wilson on "Time of the Season", much of the ablum is an unlistenable collision of Elling's worst excesses in vocal flash against blaring crash in the arrangements. Case in point: The unfortunate version of "Nature Boy" which opens the album, and which Elling and Co. send to Pluto and back before it slams to Earth. Anyone looking for an introduction to Elling - and he is one of the most thrilling, amazing jazz singers out there, particularly when seen live - would be best off with one of his later efforts, such as the lovely extended mood piece of FLIRTING WITH TWILIGHT or 2003's jazzy THE MAN IN THE AIR, which displays the matured Elling at his best. As for THE MESSENGER, don't bother to answer the call.