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Barbara Morrison: Live at the Dakota (Dakota Live LLC) Barbara Morrison, who has played Columbus a few times in years gone by, is one of the few vocalists who could sing the Yellow Pages or Obits and I’d give it 5-stars and 4-Thumbs Up. She’s earthy, real, sassy, swingin’, sensual, blues-drenched, and epitomizes everything great jazz singing is all about. This diverse set, recorded at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, splendidly showcases her enormous vocal talents, jazz-sense, humor, imagination, musicality, and outgoing personality. I only wish I had been in the crowd when she wailed her way through such winners as the soulful, hauntingly-wantingly “Please Send Me Someone to Love” and the rollicking “Take The A-Train.” “They Call Me Sundown (I do my best work after dark)” is “da-blooz-on-wry” at its best! Delivered Morrison-style, it’s sure to bring a smile to even the most morose listener. And for Liberace’s closer, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” she emits a movin’- groovin’ glow even without his candelabra. Backing her up is the smoky, steamy, sensual sound of tenorman Houston Person, who fills, accentuates, complements, inspires her vocals throughout. Blues-based pianoman, Junior Mance, and the rock-solid rhythm work of bassist Earl May and drummer Jackie Williams make this a first-class example of jazz singing at its best. Short North Gazette, Columbus Ohio, Nov 2005
Los Angeles Times, Friday July 15, 2005 Hollywood Bowl Don Heckman "Morrison nearly stole the performance from the beginning singing "Our Love Is Here To Stay" and "I Loves You Porgy" with the briskly swinging musicality and storytelling intensity that are her most appealing attributes." Feel-good
factor from jazz's new real-deal super star! Rob Adams Barbara
Morrison Her singing comes right out of the jazz, blues, gospel, and soul traditions. Utterly commanding on gentle ballad, her Never Let Me Go duet with Finlay was a peach, fast tempo swinger Down Home Blues, and Stevie Wonder song, she gives every impression of having lived through her repertoire phrase by phrase. A highly developed line in cheating-husband jokes and sharp ad libs may well confirm this. She's funny! The laughs come fast and often. She makes an audience feel good, like we're all round at her place and she's feeding us in the kitchen. But, without wishing to overstate her case with the Ella-Billie-Sarah-Carmen comparison, she has artistry, the quality, the telling-it-like-it-is naturalness to be the next, real-deal jazz singing superstar. Never
mind million-pound advances and development stratagies, Morrison
has all the required stuff on tap - or with apologies to my sister's
bairns, I'm a monkey's uncle. Comments about Barbara.. Singer raises
smiles as well as roof: VOCALIST Barbara Morrison has one of those rare personalities that radiates from within an envelopes everyone in her path. If you're not smiling when she climbs on to the stand, you'll be beaming ear to ear within seconds. And that's exactly the impact she made on her audience at the Apex International last night. Two bars into her first number, everyone was in the palm of her hand. FANTASTIC! You can't learn this kind of stage presence- you've
either got it or you haven't. Sinatra had it, Ella Fitzgerald had
it and Barbara Morrison has it in spades. Something else she has in
common with those greats is a unique voice and a fantastic way with
a tune. Whether it's a ballad, a swinging blues or an up-tempo funk
number, she milks it of every nuance. Her intonation, breath control
and diction are immaculate, while her body language demonstrates in
no uncertain terms that she has made the song her own.
The Hearld -Scotland Edinburgh
Jazz & Blues Highlights Colin Steele, “Years ago they used to call jazz singer Dinah Washington “The
Queen of the Blues.” Well,
these days that title could very easily go to the dynamic, persuasive
Barbara Morrison… If you’ve heard any of Morrison’s albums, … you
know that she can deliver that rhythmically charged genre with consummate
flair.” -L.A. Times / Zan Stewart“It is possible to delight a crowd without sacrificing
one’s creative integrity. Which is exactly what Morrison
did for a full-house audience – one that cheered her peaks of high
exuberance as well as her moments of intimate musical thoughtfulness.
She was masterful with blue, moving easily from the urban style
of Percy Mayfield to down-home Texas blues to the hard swinging drive
of Mercer Ellington… Morrison made superb use of the inherently dramatic
framework of the blues to find the perfect balance between works and
music… It was, in short, a superlative display of eclectic music-making,
engaging as entertainment, compelling as jazz…” -L.A.
Times / Don Heckman
“The Captivating Ms. Morrison
just tears ‘em up!” -L.A.
Scoop
“A joy! At Carnegie Hall, Barbara
Morrison delivered one song a la Esther Phillips and another with
Ella Fitzgerald’s blithe scat singing.” -New
York Times
“One of the finest singers
to hit this county in years. A red-hot vocalist.” -The Orange County Register“She can be as playful
as Ella, as thoughtful as Sarah, as naughty as Etta… Barbara Morrison…
has gained a national following with her big personality and delicious
sense of swing.” -L.A.
Times
“Morrison’s work breathes
the spirit of jazz improvisation. She can swing a tune with
the best of them, and the pointed quality of her vocals allows her
to penetrate even the most formidable instrumental accompaniment.
To hear her ride the great, roaring orchestral sound is to
behold one of the more accomplished jazz-blues singers in the business.” -The
Sydney Morning Herald
“Sauntering boldly along
the trail blazed by such celebrated Jazz/Blues singers as Bessie Smith,
Billy Holiday, Sarah Ellis and Dinah, Barbara Morrison proves with
every note that she does indeed know how to do it… One of Morrison’s
cardinal strengths is that she sounds like noone else but Barbara
Morrison.. Whatever the milieu, Morrison’s interpretations are uniquely
her own.” -The Jazz World Magazine “This is traditional Jazz
and Blues at its finest… Morrison’s vocals color the Blues with a
frisky, devilish twist, making every one of the standards very much
her own.” -The Music Connection
/ Jonathan Widran
Barbara Morrison singing jazz, blues at Basie tribute By Michael Rydzynski
When Barbara Morrison sings, it's never a performance for her but a communal event.
"It's about communication," she said recently. "It's my ability to make myself one of the audience, to make them feel a part of what's going. They're really on stage with me. They're the real stars (because) they support this music." On Sunday, "this music" includes jazz and the blues, Morrison's favorite styles, when she guests with Frank Capp and his Juggernaut Orchestra, a 17-piece big band, doing their annual "Tribute to Count Basie," part of Kenny Allan Productions' big-band dance series at the Irvine Marriott Hotel. "I make the audience feel like I know what they've been going through," she continued. "One time, a lady came up to me, her makeup running down her face because of all her tears, and she cried, 'How did you know?'" It's not at all difficult to figure out the reason for Morrison's rapport with her audiences; warmth simply radiates from her. "It's a little piece of magic," she said. "I probably got that from my father." Reluctant to reveal what she plans to sing Sunday, Morrison only admitted that she will perform "Confessin' the Blues," "Never Make Your Move Too Soon," "My One and Only Love" and "Christopher Columbus." "And that's all I'm telling you," she said with a sly chuckle in her voice, adding; "Come see the show to know the rest." She fully intends to divide her repertoire that night, as always, equally between her two loves, jazz and the blues. "They were always there in my household while growing up (in Ypsilanti, Mich.)," she explained. "If my father would make it home with the paycheck - and it wasn't often - my mother would play 'Sidewinder.' My parents would always play jazz and blues in the house. That's all I ever heard. That's all I knew." But Morrison knew it so well that she decided at age 6 that she would be a singer when she grew up. In fact, she didn't wait until she grew up. At 10, she entered a contest sponsored by the Tip-Top Bread Company for a radio show that invited a child to sing on it. "You're supposed to save the Tip-Top wrappers," she related, "so I had all my relatives and neighbors save them for me and I sent them in. The one who saved the most wrappers got to sing. And that was me. "Pretty aggressive, wasn't I?" she said with a laugh. For her debut, Morrison sang Stevie Wonder's "Castles in the Sand." "He and I were the same age and he was known as the 'Boy Wonder' at the time," she said. It wasn't too long before Morrison, who made more appearances on Michigan-based WCHB, the first black-owned and -operated radio station in the country, started her professional recording and performing career at the age of 22. Her first regular big-band job? None other than with Capp and the Juggernaut, then called the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut. "They play old charts (and) new charts and everybody reads so professionally," she said. "And (the late) Nat (Pierce) and Frankie (Capp) always knew how to get top-of-the-line, A-list cats. "These cats travel all over with such bands as the Count Basie Orchestra, Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, Bill Berry's band, you name it, they've done it. Frank still picks a nice blend of cats. I always look forward to having them play behind me. "You see, if I mess up, they cover me," she said, laughing. With her list of collaborators looking like a "Who's Who in Jazz History" - Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson, Ron Carter, Etta James, Johnny Otis, Terence Blanchard and many more - Morrison could have a difficult time selecting her favorites. But, in fact, she doesn't: Besides Capp, she enjoys traveling with Doc Severinsen the most. "He and Frank are the classiest guys I know," she said. "Doc and I travel all over the states, and that's great for me because I have a brother in Florida, a brother and a sister in Texas and a sister still living in Michigan. And I can visit them all and see my nieces and nephews. I got to see my newest nephew, who's beginning to walk now. "And Doc is always on the move, his venues are always sold out and his shows are so perfect, with all the historical people from the old 'Tonight Show' band playing their buns off at 80 years. And he brings in people around that age to come watch, some in their walkers, and getting them to stand up and give him and the band a standing ovation. "That's what I like about Kenny Allan: he brings out the older crowd and gives them music they grew up on and like to hear." Not that Morrison, who will be making her fourth appearance on Allan's series, all with Capp and his band, has anything against younger crowds. "I've done music with swing dance bands doing songs of the '30s and '40s - and the kids really get into all this choreography," she said with amazement. "Nobody's over 24, and they're dancing routines where they're up in the air and go between the legs. They're smokin'! Swing dancing is more popular now than when it was first here." Morrison wasn't too bad herself in her youth when she did splits and back flips as part of her imitative routine of Jackie Wilson for her grandmother, who adored the lead singer of the Dominoes. "I'd do his 'Lonely Teardrops' (a No. 1 hit from 1959) and she'd crack up when I'd do the splits like Jackie," she recalled. "We were so dirt-poor. But those records my parents played in the house made everybody in my family so happy. "Even my grandmother would be shaking her hips a little."
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