New Orleans Delight
featuring
Lee Gunness & Norbert Susemihl

Just Jazz September 2005
CD review by Burt Thompson

I can still recall the first time I heard Lee Gunness sing. I was almost literally stopped in my tracks, and her voice has that effect on me still each time I hear her sing. It is a rich, powerful, all-enveloping voice that seems to wrap you up but not knock you down. And it is "black," as almost everyone who has commented on it attests. Since Ms. Gunness is hardly a household name, not knowing any different one might expect her to be physically like Ma or Bessie, probably from one of the southern states, deeply rooted in the blues. Only the last is true. Paradoxically, she is a diminutive white Australian woman who has obviously immersed herself in listening to the black American blues singers. And she has learned well the lessons they teach: to sing slightly before or after the beat rather than squarely on it all of the time; to bend a note; to scoop into it; to circle one before finally landing on it; to indulge vibrato wisely. Finally, she is quite comfortable in the upper and the lower registers. In short, she is a monster vocalist.

Of course, I am not the first to find this out. As Marcel Joly tells in the liner notes, she has knocked out every musician—even the most skeptical ("O God, not another chick who thinks she can sing")—and every other person involved in music production after they have heard the first notes. The one exception seems to have been George Buck, head of Jazzology records in New Orleans, who apparently managed to focus exclusively on a conversation he was engaged in and claimed not to have heard a note she sang when she sat in at his and his wife, Nina's, Palm Court Cafe. But on a second occasion when he gave her his attention as she sat in, he was so bowled over that he hastily scheduled a recording session (GHB CD 314 - Lee Gunness Sings the Blues) a couple of days before she was to return to Australia.

This recording, Mecca Music CD 4091-2, was made at the yearly jazz festival at Femø, a small island off the Danish coast, in the summer of 2004 when Ms. Gunness was touring with the New Orleans Delight band from Denmark. All of the selections are gospels or hymns, excepting the last, You Are My Sunshine, which to my ears does not come off too well as a jazz vehicle. It is certainly played as jazz, as any tune can be, but some songs lend themselves more to a jazz treatment than others, and for me this is one of the latter. The only other selection I find less than satisfying as a jazz rendition is Abide with Me, beautifully sung as it is to the accompaniment of the rhythm section only. But the others are winners all! Demonstrating her complete command and confidence, Ms. Gunness is not averse to indulging in some a cappella singing, e.g., boldly leading into Amazing Grace for two verses or having the band drop out while she sings a chorus or two, as she does on I Shall Not Be Moved and This Little Light of Mine.

Providing her with a solid backing is the New Orleans Delight band. Guest Norbert Susemihl on trumpet lays down some nice counterpoint to the vocals. I would, however, have liked more ensemble choruses from the band when they were filling between vocal choruses: they were often quite content to allow one instrument to "solo," accompanied by the rhythm section while the rest of the front line dropped out. But the album belongs to Ms. Gunness, and the band generously does not try to take that from her. The audience is well aware of that, too, and responds enthusiastically to her renditions, witness the rhythmic clapping so beloved of approving European audiences!

Like other Music Mecca CD's, this one can be ordered on-line at the following internet websites: www.cdjazz.com (e-mail ambia@cdjazz.com) or www.jazznblues.co.uk (e-mail jazzjerry@aol.com).