A Century of Songs from Rebekah Victoria

courtesy of Play MPE

It took me a while to get around to listening to Rebekah Victoria’s Songs of the Decades album. One reason was that it only came to my attention through my monitoring of Play MPE at the beginning of October, even though the album was released this past June. Nevertheless, the idea of trying to map out the twentieth century in ten songs piqued my attention; and I am now ready to report on the results.

The album itself was produced jointly by Victoria and Wayne Wallace, the trombonist on the album. Wallace is also responsible for all of the arrangements. Readers may recall that I had been particularly impressed by Wallace’s own release in June, an album entitled The Rhythm of Invention with performances by the Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet. His arrangements involved a prodigious capacity for invention that I would be happy to listen to under just about any circumstances.

Those circumstances include the ten tracks on Songs of the Decades, but I have to confess that I was not particularly drawn to Victoria’s vocal qualities. While she is fearless in confronting the inventiveness of Wallace’s arrangements, that confrontation is blunted by a sense of pitch that is insecure more often than not, particularly when an adventurous chromatic line is involved. I also have to say that the appeal of jazz vocal work began a downward slide in the Sixties, a decade when any number of pop offerings were pushing more envelopes than had previously been imagined; and, by the time we got to the Seventies, the concepts of both song and song stylization were sailing on some very rough seas.

As a result my own preferences reflect back on earlier decades when jazz inventiveness arose from any number of mind-bending techniques. The best reflection on those days shows up on the second track. The foundation for that track is John Schonberger’s tune “Whispering,” which was first published in 1920 and enjoyed its initial popularity thanks to Paul Whiteman and his Ambassador Orchestra. However, in 1945 Dizzy Gillespie decided that the tune itself would benefit from some bebop tunesmithing; and the result, “Groovin’ High,” is now regarded as a bebop classic. On Songs of the Decades Wallace comes up with delightfully engaging techniques to superpose the two tunes. The result could not be a better object lesson in bebop, and the attentive listener is likely to hoot with delight over the results.

The bottom line is that this album is at its best when Wallace is at his best; if Victoria can refine her technique enough to be weaned away from her currently overly-casual approach to delivery, she might be able to collaborate with Wallace on more adventurous future projects.