AMY BANKS
When the Sun Comes Out
It’s got to be hard to get noticed these
days as a jazz vocalist with so many contestants out there,
many of them good or at least showing some solid potential.
Vocalists are among the most marketable of jazz musicians
because they can be sold to a variety of markets depending
on the songs they choose and the arrangements, production,
and carefully controlled image of the artist that a major
label puts out there. But once the trappings of a major
label are discarded, there is essentially only the raw material,
the music, to go by. Judging by the musical evidence available
on Amy Banks’ new self-release CD, When the Sun
Comes Out, she’s got a great deal of potential.
Banks isn’t as polished as she may one
day become, but she’s well on her way. This is the
kind of disc that, a little later in an artist’s career,
will be used to demonstrate that her raw skills were in
evidence early on. Banks has her chops and phrasing in place,
and her voice is bold and earthy. She handles the power
of the title track, the wistfulness of “I Get Along
Without You Very Well,” the blues inflections of “Lover
Man” and her cover of Michael McDonald’s “It
Keeps You Runnin’” all with equal aplomb.
Banks steps out as co-writer, with pianist
Steve Rudolph, of “Ruined for the Rest.” It’s
a cute, sophisticated tune and lyric that makes one hope
for more original songs in the future. But it is in the
closing two tracks, “Lover Man” and Hoagy Carmichal’s
“Skylark” that she reveals herself to be a singer
blossoming into maturity right in front of us. “Lover
Man” is interpreted in a way that both honors the
interpretations of other famous singers who have sung them
and creates its own notch in the canon. Accompanied most
actively by bassist Steve Varner (drummer Rich De Rosa provides
shadings here and vibist Tony Miceli is there primarily
as a soloist) Banks delivers her own full-bodied rendition
of the fabled song.
“Skylark,” perhaps best known
to jazz listeners as a vehicle for saxophonist Paul Desmond,
is given a gorgeous reading by Banks, who does justice to
the subtleties of the song’s heartbreaking melody.
It provides further evidence (if any is needed at this point)
that the listener is hearing a future jazz star.
