Canadian singer/pianist
Diana Krall
moved up to an American major label,
GRP Records
, with her second album,
Only Trust Your Heart
, having made her debut,
Stepping Out
, with the Canadian independent
Justin Time Records
two year earlier. The approach is basically the same, although her supporting musicians are different. Tenor saxophonist
Stanley Turrentine
sits in on three tracks,
"Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?,"
"I Love Being Here with You,"
and the
Ray Brown
instrumental
"CRS-Craft,"
but otherwise this is piano trio music, with drummer
Lewis Nash
and either
Brown
or
Christian McBride
on bass.
Krall
is a neo-traditionalist with a legitimate pedigree detailed by
Michael Bourne
in his liner notes: an isolated upbringing in British Columbia, playing her father's
Fats Waller
78s; classical piano lessons while playing in the school jazz band; a
Vancouver Jazz Festival
scholarship to the Berklee College of Music; a Canadian Arts Council grant to study with
Jimmy Rowles
in Los Angeles. The result is a performer steeped in traditional acoustic jazz piano playing and singing, and
demonstrates her talents on this album, soloing freely on the tunes, which are mostly standards, of course, and singing in a sturdy alto. It says something about the state of jazz circa 1995 that, at age 30, such a performer was getting a big promotional push.
was much more than a pretty face and a wave of blonde hair playing old-fashioned jazz, but she was that, too. So, once again in major-label jazz, it was back to the future for a record that, for all intents and purposes, could have been recorded in 1954 instead of 1994, except, of course, that that would have been ten years before the artist was born. ~ William Ruhlmann