Roberta Donnay: Blossom-ing!

Blossom-ing! is vocalist Roberta Donnay's tribute to one of the most memorable jazz singers who ever lived, Blossom Dearie. She does so via sixteen songs associated with Dearie including Billie Holiday's "Billie's (or Blossom's) Blues," retitled here "Roberta's Blues." After leading with that one, Donnay lends her tremulous little-girl voice (eerily similar to Dearie's) to one of Dearie's best-known themes, "Peel Me a Grape," before scanning the others.

Unlike Dearie, Donnay doesn't accompany herself at the piano, but Mike Greensill does a splendid job sitting in for Dearie (who was an excellent pianist). Others backing Donnay are guitarist Jose Neto, bassist Ruth Davies and drummer Mark Lee, with David Sturdevant added on harmonica ("Spring in Manhattan") and MB Gordy on percussion ("Inside a Silent Tear"). Two of the songs are rendered in French, a nod to Dearie's early years in Paris as a member of the vocal group the Blue Stars, which later became the Swingle Singers.

Donnay, who is also a producer and award-winning composer, did not have to drastically alter her persona to record an homage to Dearie; she has basically always sung like that, even though she didn't delve deeply into Dearie's music until well after she had launched her now thirty years and counting career. That came about in some measure through a friendship with Bob Dorough, one of Dearie's close friends and collaborators. After becoming familiar with Dearie's music, Donnay knew she had to record a tribute to her celebrated prototype who died in 2009.

Several of the songs (and composers) on Blossom-ing! are well known, others less so, but every one of them is admirable in its own way, and Donnay makes them breathe with warmth and awareness. Like Dearie's, her voice is well-suited to the music, and her interpretations are earnest and persuasive. Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers, Jule Styne, Frank Loesser and Johnny Mandel are among the tunesmiths, as are Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh ("You Fascinate Me So," "It Amazes Me"), Lee Adams and Charles Strouse ("Put on a Happy Face"), Anthony Scibetta and Alice Reach ("Spring in Manhattan"), Max Francois and Ben Ryan ("Plus Je t'Embrasse").

Dearie co-wrote "Inside a Silent Tear" and "A Paris," while the peerless Dave Frishberg authored "Peel Me a Grape." Greensill's arrangements are by and large spot-on, with one exception: "The Party's Over," from Bells Are Ringing, is a lament and should be played that way, not as a jaunty foxtrot. Aside from that one slip, no problem. And no problem with Donnay either, as she clearly lends her heart and soul to this rhapsodic tribute to one of the jazz world's remarkable treasures, the incomparable Blossom Dearie.

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