Vocalist Toni Ballard has an actor’s ability to change her mood as the song-role indicates. Hers is a crystal clear sound with a straightforward style that allows the lyrics to shine through. She delivers familiar love songs beautifully, such as “My One and Only Love” with its strings and flute arrangement, or “The Song Is You” enriched by strong horn work. The tracks range from trio backing to a vocal-guitar rendition of the title song with Larry Coryell and a three-part harmony dubbing on “Taking a Chance on Love.” An added attraction is the comical “Three-Bass Hit” featuring Bob Simonelli dueling with Harve Swartz double-tracked on pizzicato and bowed basses.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes

Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro