Lilac Wine

Helen Merrill,

Gitane Jazz ***

Among the great jazz divas of the 1950s and ’60s, the most familiar names are Ella Fitzgerald (of course), Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington. This is a reversal of the historical trend of black artists playing second fiddle to whites. Only Peggy Lee was as famous as the trio above, but there were other wonderful white chanteuses as well — Blossom Dearie, Morganna King and, most under-rated of all, Helen Merrill. Merrill’s voice was both girlishly suggestive and sexually assertive, somewhere between a whisper and a caress. Listen to her version of You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To and, if you’re a man, she’s exactly what you’d want to see walking in the door on a snowy night. If you’re a woman, you might want to be her. Or take her version of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, which somehow suggests both innocence and experience.

Like Dearie, Merrill has lived and worked off and on in Europe (her parents were Croatian immigrants to the United States) and Lilac Wine, her fortieth-plus album, was recorded in Prague. Lilacs may be the flowers of spring, but there is a decidedly autumnal quality to the nine tracks here, as in the title song, and in her ravaged reading of Wild is the Wind and Portrait of Helen Merrill. Elvis fans should treasure her idiosyncratic version of Love Me Tender, part of a lovely medley with How Sweet You Are.

Although the album’s laconic pace has a hypnotic quality, sometimes one does long for the slightly naughty youthful sprightliness of the earlier work. Still, less than perfect Helen Merrill is still Helen Merrill, and always worth the effort.

Lonely Runs Both Ways
Alison Krauss and Union Station,

Rounder ***

As anyone who has read past columns here will know, I am a devotee of bluegrass fiddler/singer extraordinaire Alison Krauss, perhaps now most widely familiar as the voice for two exquisite ballads in the Coen brothers’ film, O Brother Where Art Thou?

Some fellow fans, however, have begun to question Krauss and her wonderful band’s increasing emphasis on what they perceive as middle-of-the-road (MOR) ballads of loves lost and lorn. Krauss, looking nightclubby glam on the cover, seems most comfortable singing these. Among this album’s generous 15 tracks are a number in that vein: Gravity (what a way to announce an album’s theme!), Wouldn’t Be So Bad, If I Didn’t Know Any Better. This is low-key, bittersweet stuff, sombre without being dirgey. Krauss has always been known as a fiddling prodigy (and, I suppose a fiddlin’ fool in lyrical romance), but she reinforces the dark tones of this album (think a happier Lucinda Williams) by switching to viola for many tracks.

Her breathy voice remains exquisite and moving. And, just when you think all roads here lead to Heartbreak Hotel, we get some down-home bluegrass from Dan Tyminski and company which will set even gouty toes tapping: Woody Guthrie’s Pastures of Plenty, or the farmer’s lament, Rain Please Go Away, or the instrumental Unionhouse Branch, with the talents of Dobro virtuoso Jerry Douglas on stunning display. Pure bluegrassers may be slightly disappointed; Kraussians will love it.