CURTIS STIGERS
Baby Plays Around (Concord Jazz)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

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Jazz vocals are always problematic. Just about anything that draws on the Great American Songbook tends to get tagged "jazz," though it often isn't. Just about anything that departs from the GAS gets rejected from the jazz bag, though it may well belong there. Curtis Stigers mixes it up enough to cause even more confusion, with material supplied by everyone from Elvis Costello (not even American, let alone GAS) to Cole Porter (definitely GAS). To add to the confusion, Stigers is best known as a pop oriented blue-eyed soulman, more likely to be linked with Michael Bolton than Mel Torme in the popular imagination.

Make no mistake, though, Baby Plays Around is definitely a jazz album, and whatever he may have performed in the past, it establishes Stigers as a promising jazz singer. That wouldn't surprise folks in his hometown of Boise, Idaho, who knew that when he wasn't playing tenor for local blues and R&B acts, he was busy blearing from their resident jazz master, pianist Gene Harris. He learned well, he never forgot, and having established himself securely enough through pop success to earn some musical flexibility, he's continued to build on what he learned.

Stigers still has his tenor, but he's refreshingly self effacing about his skills, noting that "When a real tenor player walks in the room, I become a singer really fast." Self assessment notwithstanding, when he does pick up his sax on a pair of the tracks here he does a better than credible job. His experience as a saxophonist also informs his vocals, so that rather than transposing to adjust the key of the song to his voice, he adjusts his voice to the written key of the song. That places high demand on his range, and leads him to adopt a variety of approaches. As a result, you can trace echoes of several singers in his approach, including his former teacher Mark Murphy, vocalese legend Jon Hendricks and another notable player/singer, Chet Baker. He's not afraid to draw the comparisons, apparently, because he has chosen material widely associated with his influences. His lack of fear in that regard is well founded, because any comparisons objectively drawn are overwhelmingly positive.

There are too few voices in jazz altogether these days, and far too few male voices. If Stiger continues to take this direction, even as a significant sideline to his pop career, he's likely to become known as one of the great ones. Baby Plays Around is a great start.

Track List:

But Not For Me * Baby Plays Around * Centerpiece * Marie * Let's Get Lost * Love * Billie's Bounce * Everything Happens To Me * Parker's Mood * All The Things You Are * I Keep Going Back To Joe's * All Of You * You Are Too Beautiful

© 2001 - Shaun Dale