It’s been a while. There have been quite a few changes over the last couple of years. I have a new album, “Just Last Year – Part One”, recorded during the last few months of Murphy’s Place, the famous jazz club in Toledo, Ohio where I earned my stripes as a jazz singer with jazz master bassist Clifford Murphy and the legendary pianist Claude Black. I had returned to Murphy’s after a year on my own singing Big Band with Jeff McDonald’s Swingmania orchestra and piano bar at Fifi’s Reprise. I had a great time singing in front of that 17 piece (18 counting me) band. When Clifford’s partner, Joan Russell passed, I went down to Murphy’s for the wake and got up on stage with them for the first time in almost a year. We’d had a lot of great nights during the years I’d sung with them, but on that night, we were better than we had ever been. I wanted more and when you’re dealing with guys in their late 70’s, you better get it while you can. Clifford offered me Wednesday nights and I came back to Murphy's Place. I had another motive for coming back; I came back hoping we could make a high quality record of what we had created over our three years together. Cliff agreed and we started recording every Wednesday night come rain or come shine. Bass player friends came to help out when Clifford was briefly out of action. Friends came and sat in. The magic happened. The Universe was good to us and we recorded almost 200 tracks starting in February and working through the last week in May. The club closed on June 1, 2011. My producer, D. M. Harris spent the next 10 months working through the material, boiling it down to the best 30 cuts. He’s created two albums, ‘Just Last Year – Part One’ and ‘Just Last Year - Part Two’. The albums are mixed to put the listener right in front of the stage at Murphy’s, no overdubs, no edits – just the way it happened. So far the feedback from the people who’ve bought it couldn’t be better. I’ve sold out my first run of CDs and am now on my second printing. In my little corner of the music world, that’s a Platinum album – granted, it’s only about an ounce of platinum, but satisfying nonetheless. To know that people are digging my stuff makes all the work completely worthwhile.
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