Hot Java Jazz

1997: PolyGram/Starbucks DPSM 5193

1. Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)

   Ella Fitzgerald (1956)

2. Night Train

   Christian McBride (1994)

3. Cantaloup Island

   Donald Byrd (1964)

4. My Baby Just Cares for Me

   Nina Simone (1987)

5. Agua de Beber

   Antonio Carlos Jobim (1963)

6. Morning

   Steve Turre (1995)

7. Love for Sale

   Oscar Peterson (1959)

8. Bumpin

   Wes Montgomery (1965)

9. Comes Love

   Billie Holiday (1957)

10. Dance of the Infidels

    Bud Powell (1955)

11. Harlem Nocturne

    Mark Whitfield (1995)

12. Baby, You’ve Got What It Takes

    Dinah Washington with Brook Benton (1959)

I like the mixture of 1950s and 1980s/90s tracks here, to my own surprise, but then it was done so much more sensitively than was the inclusion of one disruptively non-contemporaneous track at the end of the Starbucks Blue Note Blend compilation.

It doesn’t hurt that the selections are mostly brilliant and feature dazzling performances such as Oscar Peterson’s on “Love for Sale” and the eventually hilarious interplay of Dinah Washington and Brook Benton on “Baby, You’ve Got What It Takes.”

However, I wish Starbucks would go back to making great coffee and quit with all the CD and film stuff. In hindsight I suppose it was when they started putting out compilations like this that I should have stopped being a Starbucks customer, rather than waiting until even after they’d switched over to <shudder> push-button espresso, but old habits die hard and besides the crew at the 1st & Yesler (Seattle) Starbucks have been so great it was hard to let that go.

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Comments © 2006 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.