New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media) Producer T Bone Burnett is talking about the connections between the desolate and the mischievous songs to be found on Diana Krall's wonderful new album, "
Glad Rag Doll" - out on
Verve October 2nd - and the characters that she portrays in song.
Diana had brought a big stack of songs to the studio, tunes that she had grown up around in a household full of sheet music folios and recordings from the 78rpm era, songs that she wanted to play and sing in the 21st Century.
These are the funny, tragic and even scandalous songs that she had held in her heart and imagination since before she discovered Nat Cole, Ernestine Anderson or Oscar Peterson and began to make her name in the world of jazz.
These are songs that came from a time before the revolutions of music became orthodox and so prohibitively defined.
And some might even call this rock and roll...
Here's T Bone again:
"The first reference I've heard in music to rock and roll comes from about 1924.
"There are only two kinds of music. There's war music and there's sex music. This is sex music. It's not war music."
Krall's own connection to the music is anything but mixed up:
"My mother would have really loved the music on this record. She was from the Alberta Plains, she loved country and western music and she loved rock and roll."
Adding, "I'm not trying out a new suit here. This is a big part of who I am."
Still, given that Krall always calls her own tunes, it was a measure of the trust between the artist and the producer that when T Bone suggested cutting a brand new version of "A
Little Mixed Up" - an R&B title originally cut by Betty
James for Chess Records in 1957 - Diana didn't hesitate.
So when Diana's rocking spinet rises unexpectedly out of the swing and the swagger of the Jay Bellerose/Dennis Crouch rhythm section, the blue guitars of Marc Ribot and Colin Linden and the rolling baritone ukulele of
Howard Coward, it is to deliver a chorus of her most joyful and unexpected playing.
And as T Bone says, "Diana is a great rock and roll piano player."
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