Jeanne Lee with Ran Blake • The Newest Sound You Never Heard
 eanne Lee and Ran Blake released their first album, The Newest
Sound Around [RCA LPM-2500/LSP-2500], in 1962. Don’t feel bad if you’ve
never heard of it, because it pretty much tanked in the US, leaving few original pressings
in circulation. No top-notch reissue has ever righted that wrong.
I missed out on The Newest Sound Around until 2002, when Ben Ratliff published his The New York Times Essential Library. He included the record in his listing of "the 100 most important recordings" in jazz. He painted a portrait of artists who had nothing to lose in not following the pack. Just barely jazz, The Newest Sound Around incorporates dance, theatre, gospel, film noir and too many other influences to list. As Ratliff noted, there are "not many outsider-art works in jazz" and this album was "one of the best and the few." I rushed down to my local record shop and found a minty original mono copy, the cover a little worn but the vinyl immaculate. Since then I’ve hunted high and low for a copy with a cleaner cover, but the few copies that were sold back in 1962 and still survive today trade at high prices and in low condition. Singer Jeanne Lee and pianist Ran Blake met in 1961 at Bard College, where they were both students. They struck up what became a lifelong friendship (Lee died in 2000; Blake continues playing and recording). They were in the right place at the right time and landed a contract with RCA for their debut release. They toured Europe in 1963 and again in 1966/'67. Lee was much better known in Europe, where her avant-garde vocal style enjoyed a wider audience. She recorded with Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Carla Bley, Andrew Cyrille, Cedar Walton, Anthony Braxton, and her husband, Gunter Hampel, mostly on European labels, including Soul Note, OWL, BYG Actual, ECM and Horo. Still, it is the debut album with Ran Blake that best represents her unique sound. Blake recorded a host of albums, including Film Noir [Arista/Novus AN3019], and, like Lee, he has a unique style that's hard to describe but easy to identify. In addition to his countless recordings, Blake has distinguished himself over the years as a mentor of other musicians, and this current recording is sponsored in part by the New England Conservatory (NEC), where he teaches. This new two-CD set, with its tongue-in-cheek title, makes available for the first time two recordings from Lee and Blake’s European tours. One CD is devoted to a radio-station recording made at the studios of Belgian radio and television station VRT (then BRT-Belgium Radio and Television) on October 21, 1966. The other is a 1967 performance in Brussels (exact date and location unknown). The late Belgian composer, producer and Jazz Middelheim Festival founder Elias Gistelinck produced both sessions. The tapes sat in the VRT archives for almost 40 years before they were discovered. The slightly reverberant mono sound is clear and well balanced. In a few places during the 1966 performance there appears to be tape damage that briefly takes the piano out of tune, but, on the whole, the sound is quite modern. The beautifully constructed four-way fold-out cover includes a sleeved set of liner notes written by fan and pianist Danilo Pérez and singer/composer Dominique Eade, who is on the faculty at NEC with Blake and has recorded with him. The programming of these sessions differs only slightly from that of The Newest Sound Around, which includes standards, Blake compositions, songs associated with Billie Holiday, a Monk piece and the theme song from the movie Laura. These two sessions follow the same route, but include more pop material, including a Dylan tune, a couple Lennon/McCartney songs and one from Ray Charles. The performances are just as quirky, just as outsider and every bit as essential as those on the original RCA album. If your preference for jazz vocals is limited to Diana
Krall or Lyn Stanley, this music may exceed your appetite for original improvised music.
But if you are open to the likes of Cassandra Wilson, Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, you
will treasure this set. It’s still early in the year, but The Newest Sound You
Never Heard is ahead in the running for best historical release of 2019. |
