Blue days, all of them gone: The songs are so familiar - Irving Berlin and Gershwins pantheon familiar. You might think: not again! But think again. Put the song titles in some sort of a sentence and that sentence has a narrative of its own: the man I love, it had to be you, after you've gone, blue skies, someone to watch over me, sweet Georgia Brown.
Emmaline Campbell knows how to state and elevate these person-to-person much loved songs. And she has a kind of Ella Fitzgerald like purity in her voice which is no mean feat. The US singer from Indiana plays Jeanne Staples in basketball movie Sweetwater which stars Everett Osborne in the title role of Nat 'Sweetwater' Clifton, the first African-American to sign an NBA contract. The Staples character is a jazz singer wannabe and friend of Sweetwater's.
Brief and to the point this EP, certainly Emmaline emerges as an upmarket ready-to-go new jazz singing star in the classic mould tailor made for the newly excited Samara Joy fanbase wanting heaps more of the same. Irving Berlin classic 'Blue Skies' from the 1920s is the pick, covered in recent years by in complete contrast a whole lot more Carmen Lundy-like and to be frank more real by Eugenie Jones. Emmaline's skill however is in stripping away the contemporary entirely to locate the vintage underlayer without being fuddy-duddy. She finds the essential portion of the lyrics because the point of the Berlin song after all is the line Blue days, all of them gone and what these ''blues skies'' need above all to banish completely. Emmaline, photo: press
Tags:
