More oldies from Stacey Kent

I blame Michael Buble for putting me on an oldies kick these days and thinking of Bobby Darin and Doris Day. I blame too all those other new albums that have been coming out these past few months featuring those lovely old songs. These releases, like that remarkable collection Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, or Rod Stewart’s heart-wrenching The Great American Songbook, have in fact, made listening to those goodies from the past so much easier and the old songs so accessible.

There is no need anymore to get out the LPs and put them with lots of loving and fearful care. You’ll never see the likes of them again, on the turntable. No need to wonder if your tapes have melted with the heat and are now stuck together and lost forever. There’s even no need to check out those CD reissues collected recently. The oldies are here again and readily available in various incarnations.

One of the new ones I heartily recommend is In Love Again by UK-based American artist Stacey Kent. Named Best Vocalist by London’s BBC for 2002, Stacey is one of those talents who brought classic jazz styling to today’s generation. She reminds you initially of Ella and Sarah and Billie and all those legendary vocalists from the past, but as recent events have proven, she is also making her contribution to the genre through her impeccable feel for material, classy style and expressive vocals. I am also glad to say hers is a thoroughly feminine approach. She is singing the songs of Everywoman with all the experiences, complex emotions and everything else that makes a woman.

In Love Again is a unique treat. Not only is the treat Stacey’s singing. It is made up of songs composed by the great Richard Rodgers. This is the same genius who gave the world such immortal musicals as The Sound of Music, The King and I, Carousel, South Pacific, Flower Drum Song, Oklahoma, and others. He wrote mostly in collaboration with librettist Oscar Hammerstein II and it is this tandem which came up with songs like Shall We Dance? Bali Ha’i, I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair and It Might as Well be Spring which Stacey performs in the album.

Before Rodgers got together with Hammerstein though, there was Lorenz Hart and they composed some of the most beautiful songs in the English language. Hammerstein was a great lyricist. No one can write songs like Climb Every Mountain or If I Love You and Some Enchanted Evening and not be considered great. Hart, though was a tormented genius who looked at relationships unlike any other writer. He was F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker combined, both cynical and pathetic and always right on target.

That is why it was a joy finding nine songs out of Stacey’s 13 with lyrics by Lorenz Hart. I missed I Could Write a Book and My Funny Valentine from Pal Joey. Also All the Things You Are and Blue Moon. But Stacey does his other ballads of exquisite pain like Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, My Heart Stood Still, It Never Entered My Mind, I Wish I Were in Love Again, Thou Swell, Nobody’s Heart Belongs to Me, Easy to Remember and that tribute to Manhattan that remains as true today as it was more than 70 years ago. Now that is already quite a lot of Hart.

Read the lyrics as you listen and marvel at the way this man spun his words. I Wish I Were in Love Again is particularly interesting with verses that go: The broken dates/ the endless waits/ the lovely loving and the hateful hates / the conversation with the flying plates/ I wish I were in love again…

Back to Stacey Kent. She is again a nominee for Best Jazz Vocalist at the BBC Jazz Awards. The 2003 edition will be given out at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on July 29. Other nominees from the Candid jazz label are Clare Teal for Best Jazz Vocalist and Rising Star for her album Orsino’s Song, Claire Martin, also for Best Jazz Vocalist and Jamie Cullum, the guy they refer to as Sinatra in Sneakers as Rising Star for his album Pointless Nostalgic.