''The Newest Sound Around'' is an album by singer

Jeanne Lee Jeanne Lee (January 29, 1939 – October 25, 2000) was an American jazz singer, poet and composer. Best known for a wide range of vocal styles she mastered, Lee collaborated with numerous distinguished composers and performers who included Gunte ...

and pianist

Ran Blake Ran Blake (born April 20, 1935) is an American pianist, composer, and educator. He is known for his unique style that combines blues, gospel, classical, and film noir influences into an innovative and dark jazz sound. His career spans over 40 rec ...

. It was recorded in November and December, 1961, at RCA Victor Studio in New York City, and was released by

RCA Victor RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also A ...

in 1962. The album, which was the debut recording for both musicians, was reissued on CD in 1987 with four extra tracks, and with the title ''The Legendary Duets''. Bassist

George Duvivier George Duvivier (August 17, 1920 – July 11, 1985) was an American jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in ...

is featured on two tracks. Lee and Blake met while students at

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 1860, ...

, and, as a duo, won the Wednesday night

Apollo Theater The Apollo Theater is a music hall at 253 West 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue) in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is a ...

amateur contest, leading to a record deal with RCA. A followup album by the duo titled ''The Newest Sound You Never Heard'' was recorded in 1966 and 1967 but was not released until 2019. Lee and Blake also recorded the album ''You Stepped Out of a Cloud'' in 1989.

Reception

In a review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Music ...

, Andrew Hamlin wrote: "'Third stream' may have been the bandied term, but this unjustly ignored 1962 duet set... plays blissfully free of the lumbering lugubriousness and Big Mac-thick philosophizing that mar so much of that music. The eeriness, the mystery, and the sweetness lie always in the deceptive simplicity... The record started no revolution, probably because no other two performers had such chemistry or such a distinctive reaction. As jazz styling, though, it endures unsurprisingly. You hear the set in less than one hour... You spend decades wandering inside the sound, as you might inside a sonic Stonehenge, savoring each new vantage point discovered, and the impossibility of discovering them all." The authors of the '' Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings'' stated: "Blake recorded many fascinating duo performances over the years... This, though, was pretty much where it all got started... Much of the material is repertory or traditional stuff...though there is a thoughtful reading of 'Blue Monk'... but the highlight has to be 'He's Got the Whole World in his Hands,' transformed into something wry and joyous by turns. Lee was never excessively theatrical, though her articulation derives more from speech rhythms than from ''bel canto'' or traditional jazz singing; Blake swings even when he sounds most abstract. And there's plenty of humour from both of them. Not the best recording, but the music comes through strongly."

Ben Ratliff Ben Ratliff (born 1968 in New York City) is an American journalist, music critic and author. Ratliff is the son of an English mother and an American father, growing up in London and in Rockland County, New York. From 1996 to 2016, he wrote a ...

, writing for

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, called the album "a cult favorite," and stated: "In jazz standards and Thelonious Monk tunes on the album, Ms. Lee and Mr. Blake subtracted swing, but added intellectual coolness, abstruse piano harmonies and vocal influences from Holiday and Washington; the record is a series of minimalist dreams." In an article for The New York Review, Adam Shatz wrote that the album "in its mélange of youthful effervescence and noir fatalism, captured the sensibility of New York bohemia as much as John Cassavetes's ''Shadows'' or James Baldwin's ''Another Country''." He continued: "On that album... Lee and Blake approached each other not as singer and accompanist but as highly interactive improvisers, taking apart standards... and rearranging them like a pair of musical Cubists. Full of whimsical, often violent contrasts in color and dynamics, Blake's playing was an eccentric, fractured collage of twentieth-century modernism, Thelonious Monk, gospel, and film music. His spiky, unresolved style found a perfect foil in the serenity and poise of Lee's singing and in her precise, sensuous diction."

Track listing

Original LP release

# " Laura" (

Johnny Mercer John Herndon Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallic ...

David Raksin David Raksin (August 4, 1912 – August 9, 2004) was an American composer who was noted for his work in film and television. With more than 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit, he became known as the "Grandfather of Film Music ...

) – 5:06 # "

Blue Monk This is a list of compositions by jazz musician Thelonious Monk. 0-9 52nd Street Theme A contrafact based loosely on rhythm changes in C, and was copyrighted by Monk under the title "Nameless" in April 1944. The tune was also called "Bip Bop" ...

" (

Thelonious Monk Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including " 'Round Midnight", ...

) – 4:40 # "Church On Russell Street" (Ran Blake) – 3:12 # "Where Flamingos Fly" (Elthea Peale,

Harold Courlander Harold Courlander (September 18, 1908 – March 15, 1996) was an American novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist and an expert in the study of Haitian life. The author of 35 books and plays and numerous scholarly articles, Courlander specialize ...

John Benson Brooks John Benson Brooks (February 23, 1917, Houlton, Maine – November 13, 1999, New York City) was an American jazz pianist, songwriter, arranger, and composer. Brooks worked early in his career as an arranger for Randy Brooks, Les Brown, Boyd R ...

) – 4:17 # "Season In The Sun" (

Fran Landesman Fran Landesman (October 21, 1927 – July 23, 2011) was an American lyricist and poet. She grew up in New York City and lived for years in St. Louis, Missouri, where her husband Jay Landesman operated the Crystal Palace nightclub. One of her bes ...

Tommy Wolf Thomas Joseph Wolf Jr. (1925 – 1979) was an American composer and piano player. He was best known for his songwriting collaboration with Fran Landesman. Life Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Wolf met Fran Landesman while playing piano at the Jeffer ...

) – 2:25 # " Summertime" ( DuBose Heyward,

George Gershwin George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ' ...

) – 3:30 # "

Lover Man "Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)" (often called simply "Lover Man") is a 1941 popular song written by Jimmy Davis, Roger ("Ram") Ramirez, and James Sherman. It is particularly associated with Billie Holiday, for whom it was written, and her ...

" ( Jimmy Davis,

Ram Ramirez Roger "Ram" Ramirez (September 15, 1913 – 11 January 1994) was a Puerto Rican jazz pianist and composer. He was a co-composer of the song " Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)" Early life Ramirez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 15, ...

Jimmy Sherman James Benjamin Sherman (August 17, 1908 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania – October 11, 1975 in Philadelphia) was an American jazz pianist and arranger. Sherman played in dance bands in the late 1920s and played on and off with Jimmy Gorham in th ...

) – 5:00 # "Evil Blues" (Ran Blake, Guy Freedman, Jeanne Lee) – 3:04 # "

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", also "Motherless Child", is a traditional Spiritual. It dates back to the era of slavery in the United States. An early performance of the song was in the 1870s by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. "Blue Ge ...

" (traditional) – 2:37 # "When Sunny Gets Blue" (

Jack Segal Jack Segal (October 19, 1918 – February 10, 2005) was a pianist and composer of popular American songs, known for writing the lyrics to '' Scarlet Ribbons''. His composition '' May I Come In?'' was the title track for a Blossom Dearie album. ...

, Marvin Fisher) – 4:51 # "Love Isn't Everything" (Patty McGovern) – 1:20

Bonus tracks on 1987 CD release

"Vanguard" (Ran Blake) – 3:12 # "

Left Alone Left Alone is a punk rock band from Wilmington, California. They were formed in May 1996 by lead vocalist and guitarist Elvis Cortez. Cortez formed his own label, Smelvis Records, to release Left Alone's records, and has since expanded the l ...

" (

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop s ...

Mal Waldron Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron (August 16, 1925 – December 2, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Wa ...

) – 2:51 # "

He's Got the Whole World in His Hands "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" is a traditional African-American spiritual, first published in 1927. It became an international pop hit in 1957–58 in a recording by English singer Laurie London, and has been recorded by many other si ...

" (traditional) – 2:04 # "Straight Ahead" (

Abbey Lincoln Anna Marie Wooldridge (August 6, 1930 – August 14, 2010), known professionally as Abbey Lincoln, was an American jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress. She was a civil rights activist beginning in the 1960s. Lincoln made a career out of deli ...

) – 3:08

Personnel

– vocals *

– piano *

– bass (tracks 5 and 8)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Newest Sound Around 1962 albums Ran Blake albums