The difficulty with Blue Note Plays Sting
is that it feels like a stretch to have put this anthology
together at all. Out of a total of eleven tracks, seven
come from Bob Belden’s 1991 album Straight to
My Heart: The Music of Sting, on which Belden arranged
a variety of Sting’s compositions for a large group
with a featured soloist or vocalist on each track. The arrangements
aren’t bad, yet for some reason most of them never
really click into place for me, either. But if you are interested
in checking out Belden’s arrangements then you’d
do better to pick up his complete CD, which features four
additional tracks not heard here.
The remaining four tracks are not particular
high points in their performers’ recorded careers,
but they do hold one’s interest. Trumpeter Flavio
Boltro leads his quintet through a lyrical reading of “Tea
On the Sahara,” highlighting the song’s attractive
melodic content, which seems a bit at odds with the angst
of the song’s protagonists. Kurt Elling fares best
with his live reading of “Oh My God,” recorded
live at Chicago’s legendary Green Mill. It’s
truly the most creative arrangement on the CD and towers
even above Cassandra Wilson’s highly personal reading
of “Fragile.” “Fragile” also closes
the disc, in a version featuring Freddie Hubbard circa 1988.
The performance, from the now deleted album Times Are
Changing, is very pleasant, but hardly necessary or
ultimately very interesting among Hubbard’s recorded
work.
Among Belden’s contributions (he also
penned the liner notes), are a very slow, stately arrangement
of the Police hit “Roxanne” that never explodes
into the anticipated rock beat, and a nice version of “Wrapped
Around Your Finger” featuring John Scofield and vocals
by Dianne Reeves that is one of the more satisfying of the
Belden tracks. “Straight to the Heart” is cast
as a big band Latin romp with a guitar section composed of
John Scofield, Fareed Haque, and John Hart, as well as pianist
Joey Calderazzo, and that also works admirably. Maynard Ferguson
alum Mike Migliore gets in a decent alto turn as well. “Every
Breath You Take” seems to draw out the precisely wrong
musical impulses, whether it be Sean “Puffy” Coombs
or, as in this case, vocalist Mark Ledford, tenor player Kirk
Whalum, and a smallish group. It’s dead on arrival and
won’t appeal to jazz fans, smooth fans, or modern R&B
fans. The remaining tracks are pleasant enough, with no glaring
problems. But on the other hand, they can scarcely be said
to stand out, either.
