Singer Judith Owen honors musical heroines with joy and New Orleans flavor. Seated before the audience at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter of New Orleans on a balmy October night, singer and pianist Judith Owen thought back to her deepest joy while growing up in London — her father’s record collection. She recalled finding,
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Yet all this music is cast anew, partly through Owen’s range and command of nuance. Away from her piano, she whispered, purred, snarled, pleaded, testified and declared; she gave it to us straight or with a wink and sometimes both ways within a single song. On the album, singing “Big Long Slidin’ Thing,” she’s a savvy blues shouter, backed by a big band, bending notes to underscore each double-entendre. Her luscious and patient delivery on “Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast” makes room for both the sincerity with which the lyric arrived nearly 60 years ago, when Julie London recorded it, and the irony with which it arrives today. At Preservation Hall, she delivered Peggy Lee’s ballad “He’s a Tramp” with translucence and entrancing focus; the repetition of a single leaning tone split the difference between frustration and longing.
Come On & Get It draws from Owen’s earliest inspirations, distilling the spirits of her musical heroines. It also reflects her life in New Orleans, where she spends half of each year. “This album could only have been recorded here,” she told the Preservation Hall audience. “It needed that grease, that sexiness, that feel you can’t find anywhere else.” And it required the particular core of joy — “like the music is smiling from the inside,” she said — that is as much Preservation Hall’s credo as anything else.
Owen’s bands — there are both small-ensemble and big-band tracks on the new release — feature some of the Crescent City’s finest and wisest players. She calls them her “Gentlemen Callers,” befitting both a period-specific idea about romance as well as Owen’s inclination toward call-and-response sections. On the album, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison’s solo on “He’s a Tramp” is knowing and buoyant. Charlie Gabriel’s tenor sax on “Snatch and Grab It” is real-deal R&B. Evan Christopher’s clarinet soars and sears on two tracks. Drummer Pedro Segundo mines rock-solid yet feather-light grooves throughout; on “Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You,” he provides especially easeful propulsion. And, by ceding the piano duties to David Torkanowsky, who serves as music director, Owen imbues this project with a sense of “humidity,” that, according to Torkanowsky, defines the New Orleans sound — you can feel it, along with echoes of the great Allen Toussaint, through his introduction to “He’s a Tramp.”
Come On & Get It marks an empowered turn in Owen’s career, rooted in the boldness of her predecessors. It succeeds also as an expression of artful restraint — in the obbligati from trumpeter Kevin Louis and tenor saxophonist Ricardo Pascal, in Torkanowsky’s pianism and, especially, in Owen’s thoughtful and relaxed singing. Projects like this, for which an acclaimed vocalist wraps herself in a theme, fronts an all-star band and rethinks classic songs, often invite excess: the curse of too many notes. Owen honors the fact that these songs began as perfect miniatures. And she knows, as have smart singers, forceful women and New Orleans musicians throughout time, that, when it comes to sexual and musical allure, a succinct utterance — be it alluring, cutting or tongue-in-cheek— offered up just right and in rhythm says more with less. - Larry Blumenfeld
Photos by Rick Guest.