Fate can be interesting and at times wonderful. In this next month, we are blessed to hear reissues from some of the historically great female blues and jazz singers, kicking off with the reissue of Abbey Lincoln’s 1959 classic Abbey Is Blue. Separately, we will also hear from Nina Simone and Etta James. Craft recordings brings us this special Lincoln reissue – a date that featured her soon to be husband, drummer Max Roach, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, tenorist Stanley Turrentine, drummer Philly Joe Jones, bassist Sam Jones, and pianist Wynton Kelly – jazz royalty all and all playing in a restrained manner here, giving Lincoln ample room to sing expressively.
Abbey is Blue marked Lincoln’s fourth and final recording for Riverside. The previous three albums were steeped in standards from the Great American Songbook but here she is melancholy, contemplative and concerned with the state of the world, presaging her roles both in and outside of music as a Civil Rights activist, actress, and songwriter in her own right. Her emotive voice steers her through both her own composition, “Let Up,” and several from Black writers such as Langston Hughes (“Lonely House’), Duke Ellington (‘Come Sunday”), and Oscar Brown Jr. (“Brother, Where Are You?” “Long as You’re Living,” and his lyrics to Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue”). These are mixed with well-known compositions from Hammerstein/Romberg (“Softly As in a Morning Sunrise”) and Maxwell Anderson/Kurt Weill (“Lost in the Stars”).
Unlike earlier sessions when producers suggested the material, each of these selections was chosen carefully by only Lincoln according to the renowned co-producer Orrin Keepnews. Her own “Let Up” is the major precursor to her work that would follow in the ‘60s. Upon accepting the NEA Jazz Masters Ward in 2003 Lincoln commented, “My life was really becoming oppressive. I was trying to be seen as a serious performer. And there were many people making snide, ugly remarks about {me].” “Let Up” is a defiantly, carefully nuanced but emotional answer to that feeling. The recording quality is pristine, allowing this emotion to come through strikingly. She captures the deep feeling of sorrow and pain on “Brother Where Are You?” with stunning vocal range and power and takes it up even to a higher perfectly pitched wail in Memorex glass shattering mode in “Laugh, Clown, Laugh.” It’s such a sarcastic interpretation of the title as Lincoln purveys the kind of sadness that would make her incapable of laughing.
Although every one of these performances is dripping with emotion, naturally it’s the most well-known tunes she interprets here that have sustained the reputation of the album. It’s likely the first time, or at least one of the first times a vocalist took on “Afro Blue” and her treatment of Ellington’s oft-covered “Come Sunday” is as elegant and poignant as any. “Softly As In a Morning Sunrise” has long been a favorite of countless jazz artists from Coltrane to Miles to Rollins to Sinatra to mention just a few but only a handful of vocalists recorded the tune during this era and none with the despondent tone Lincoln brings. She does somehow rise above the melancholy with the message song, the up-tempo closer “Long As You’re Living” which features one of the few solos, a trumpet statement Dorham.
To understand the importance of the recording is to realize that Lincoln’s next step was to play a major part on the fiery We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite. While Abbey Is Blue is essentially a lament, the collaboration with Roach is one of the first angry unapologetically bold statements on injustice. These two recordings are the benchmark for Lincoln’s career that extended for a full forty years into the ‘90s. Keepnews commented, “that it stands up as among the most effective and moving albums that any singer has created in a long time.” Yes, this precedes Aretha, Nina, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, and many others you may want to add to that list but here we are 62 years later and its remarkable power endures. One listen to just the one track “Let Up” will likely engender a similar response from those hearing this for the first time.
