Scott VanderWerf: Catherine Russell is one of the finest jazz and blues singers today. The Grammy Award winner is also in a lineage of musical royalty, the daughter of pianist Louis Russell, a band leader and composer who recorded and performed with Louis Armstrong, but was also a leader in his own right from the mid-1920s through the late40s. Her mother was Caroline Ray, a multi-instrumentalist and singer and a member of International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the most prominent female ensemble of the big band era.
Russell has worked with the greatest rock stars like David Bowie and Steely Dan, recording with Roseanne Cass, Joan Osborne and Cyndi Lauper and established herself as a prolific backup singer. In 2006, she recorded her first solo album, Cat, that revealed her as the foremost interpreter of vintage jazz and early blues. Her artistry spotlights not just the historical aspects of the music, but also how it is eternally present.
Russell makes the old songs timeless. most recent album, her eighth as a leader, is My Ideal, a duo collaboration with pianist Sean Mason. Here they perform You Stayed Away Too Long.
[Music Clip]
I talked with Catherine Russell and asked her how my ideal came about. had been working with Sean.
Catherine Russell: I met Sean on gigs that we were on together, which were not my gigs, butwe met through Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.And um when he started working with me, he came in to the studio, had him do several tracks on Send For Me and he came in and just nailed everything and played so beautifully that his, tracks that he played on were the ones that people really noticed, you know, they asked me, oh, who's that, you know. So then he was working with me and my band for a while and I just asked him, you know, just a thought came to me to ask him to make a duo album and he thought about it for a little while and then one day he texted me and said yeah let's do it.So then I chose all the material and we went in and did it basically in a day and then just went uh back into the studio to just fix up some things you know the next day but it was it was so uh easy to do with him you know he's amazing. So he just learned everything came in no charts he just like created, he invents in the moment, you know, he's a beautiful musician. So that's how it came about, I asked him and he said yes. Russell is also on a new album with Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds called Cat in the Hounds, which was released in August, which explores the 1920s jazz and blues and Hancock's work is deeply historical while also filled with bold contemporary interpretations and Russell's contributions are vital to its living restoration of the past.
SVW: Here is Panama Limited Blues from Cat and the Hounds, which was originally recorded by Russell's father in 1926
[Music Clip]
CR: Colin I had met because he's also an aficionado on recording, you know, onto Cylinder. So when he thought about doing this project, he asked me tojoin him on it. So I'm the vocalist on this. So we do ah a bunch of, you know, Bessie Smith. Mamie Smith, Alberta Hunter, uh Esther Bijou, all of these uh 20s blues artists. And then they have a couple of instrumental pieces that he added onto that. And so it's basically, I want to say, three horns, piano, drums, and tuba, and... uh, banjo. her performance at St. Cecilia Music Center, Russell is bringing a group of longtime collaborators.I am bringing my guitarist and longtime musical director, Matt Munisteri, uh, my longtime bassist, Tal Ronan, my longtime drummer, Mark McLean, and, uh, on keyboards, Ben Patterson out of Chicago, who has, we've been working together now for, for a couple of years, and he's also in. So the band is going to be great. know, the band is great. People love my band and you know, they swing, they just play everything great. So it's going to be nice. Russell is working on a new recording after gathering a set of songs that she's already been presenting to live audiences. Yes, I have a bunch of tunes that, you know, uh since the last album, since Send For Me came out, that I've added on. So I'm going to be... recording from that list. always make a master list and then I go from there and I see what the audience reacts towhen I add a tune. see if it goes over well and then I think, oh, okay,I can add that to the list. It along the same line, swing blues and some20s blues. uh so hopefully I am going to be recording that before the end of this year.
SVW: In closing our conversation, I asked Russell about growing up in New York City with her musical parents and what the artistic atmosphere was like.know, by the time I came into the world, my father had basically retired from the music business. So because he was a big band man, really, you know,at least 11, 12 pieces, you know, if not an 18 horn piece toa full big band.
CR: At that point, he was really practicing classical piano, you know, in the house. So he would do a lot of practicing in the house. My mother was very active in the recording studios as a freelance bass player and singer. So she used to take me to sessions when I was a kid. That's how I really started learning what was going on in the recording studio, because she would take me with her. And my parents never left me with babysitters. They just take me with them. And so um I got to seeall of the,how the inner workings of, know, how a record was made type of a thing, you know,and who was in what place and how they put the musicians, uh you know, where the singers were and where the horns were and all of that type of thing.we were doing a lot of that. was going to work with her and then she was also a classical concert choral singers, so I was going to those rehearsals. um so, you know, I had a pretty full childhood as far as uh absorbing all of that type of thing. You know, she took me to a lot of shows. uh I was a dancer first, so I was in, she got me into Catherine Dunham Dance Company when I was five, I think.And so I was dancing in that company for six years. And that's kind of what it was like. Not a lot going on in the home as far as people coming over type of a thing, but a lot of activity outside the home musically.
SVW: Catherine Russell, she's performing at St. Cecilia Music Center on Thursday, October 9th in Grand Rapids at 7.30 p.m.
[Music Clip]
I'm Scott VanderWerf.