Contact: Adam Sullivan
Email: adam@putumayo.com
Web: www.Putumayo.com
JAZZ TAKES THE STAGE WITH SWINGING VERSIONS OF CLASSIC SHOW TUNES ON PUTUMAYO’S BROADWAY JAZZ
Putumayo continues the celebration of its 25th anniversary with Broadway Jazz, featuring swinging jazz covers of beloved show tunes. The company began the year with New Orleans Party in May, 2018, honoring its current home in the Crescent City. Putumayo now celebrates New York City, another important music center and its original home in 1993. The album is set for release on January 25, 2019 and will be available on CD, digital download and streaming on Apple Music.
Broadway Jazz explores the deep and storied history of musical theater and jazz and their intertwined relationship that dates back to the early 1900s. Since its inception, jazz has been seeping into Broadway shows. The influences went the other way as well, as songs written for Broadway quickly became adopted by jazz musicians as standards. That trend continued over the years, and the list of Broadway songs that have been interpreted by jazz musicians could fill a book.
Broadway Jazz opens with Kermit Ruffins’ New Orleans-style take on “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” a song that owes a big part of its success to another Crescent City trumpet player, Louis Armstrong. Act 2 of our musical revue highlights the silky vocal stylings of Maxine Sullivan performing Duke Ellington’s “I Got It Bad, and That Ain’t Good.” Blues legend Jimmy “T-99” Nelson reminds us that life is a “Cabaret” with his smooth performance of the title track from one of Broadway’s most successful musicals.
Jazz saxophone legend Coleman Hawkins keeps the show going with “Make Someone Happy” from the musical Do Re Mi. Canadian jazz singer Emilie-Claire Barlow offers a playful version of the Frank Sinatra classic “You Make Me Feel So Young,” a song that lived a long life before it finally made it to Broadway in Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra revue Come Fly Away.
Though its Broadway run was short lived, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera gave birth to one of the most recognizable jazz tunes in history (thanks to Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin’s famed renditions). Another great trumpeter and singer, Leroy Jones, gives his own New Orleans-style twist on “Mack the Knife.” This is followed by the classic Broadway tune, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” from Show Boat, performed by Tony-nominated singer and actress Bertice Reading.
Legendary saxophone player Sonny Rollins delivers a moving instrumental version of a classic with his 1957 version of “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face” from My Fair Lady. Our night at the theater concludes with a double-header from the late, great Peggy Lee who sings two classics from Oklahoma, “People Will Say We’re In Love” and the closer, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
Putumayo’s Broadway Jazz brings together the beautiful melodies of musical theater and the coolness of jazz for a beguiling collection. Broadway and jazz music’s shared history and longtime reciprocal relationship make for a perfect musical partnership.
For more information or to interview Putumayo founder and music compiler Dan Storper, please contact Adam Sullivan at adam@putumayo.com.
For more information or to interview Putumayo founder and music compiler Dan Storper, please contact Adam Sullivan at adam@putumayo.com.
julia thomas
publicist
