Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, Lucille Hegamin -- Songs We Tau

In 1961 jazz-backed blues seemed slack, almost nonexistent. Bebop, hard bop, tenor sax & organ combos, and the avant-garde were more relevant in the jazz world. And blues was veering toward an electrified, altogether different realm. So when Chris Albertson brought Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, and Lucille Hegamin to the acclaimed Rudy Van Gelder's studio to capture songs from the era when jazz and blues melded together, the result could've easily sounded thinly nostalgic. But with a backing band that included pianist Willie "the Lion" Smith (on Hegamin's four tunes) and trombonist J.C. Higginbotham and clarinetist Buster Bailey (on the four tracks from both Hunter and Spivey), this session came out topnotch. It's redolent of an earlier era (specifically the early 1920s, when the three singers got their starts), but each of the tracks is potent with a deep, slow swing accentuating the peerless vocals. Spivey's grainy voice is impassioned and powerful, in the same way that Hunter's is unmistakable in its slight waver, carrying her sometimes near-spoken lines to the stars (especially as she delivers jewels like this: "I don't like those hepster lovers / They've got larceny in their eyes / They got a handful of gimme / And a mouthful of much obliged"). The acoustics are as sharp as any of Van Gelder's sessions, and the music is majestic. --Andrew Bartlett



Throughout its relatively brief history, the blues had many queens, but none so regally named as Queen Victoria Regina Spivey. She wasn’t one to hog the throne, however, and beginning with this 1961 Prestige/Bluesville album, launched a one-woman crusade to bring recognition to other surviving blueswomen of the Twenties and continued it on her own Spivey label until her death in 1976. Spivey, Lucille Hegamin, and Alberta Hunter represent different styles within the genre known as classic blues. Spivey was a rough, almost rural singer, while Hegamin was of the refined vaudeville variety and Hunter (who had given up on music and was working as a nurse at the time of these sessions) was a lighter-toned, more jazz-imbued stylist. Producer Chris Albertson picked the cream of New York’s traditional jazzmen for the record, including Harlem stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith for the Hegamin tracks.



with Sidney de Paris, J.C. Higginbotham, Buster Bailey, Cliff Jackson, Zutty Singleton, Henry Goodwin, Cecil Scott, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Gene Brooks....