New Moon Daughter

Cassandra Wilson

1995: Blue Note CDP 7243 8 32861 2 6

1. Strange Fruit
2. Love Is Blindness
3. Solomon Sang
4. Death Letter
5. Skylark
6. Find Him
7. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
8. Last Train to Clarksville
9. Until
10. A Little Warm Death
11. Memphis
12. Harvest Moon

Engaging. Enchanting. Unsettling. Very, very touching. My friend Rob introduced me to Wilson’s voice via this record and one other which impressed me less. This one really takes some thoughtful listening time to get into, but when I’m in I’m so cozy and brooding that I never want to get out. That said, I should add that I always start the CD playing at track 3: I do NOT care for her version of “Strange Fruit” (which is a song I rarely care to listen to in any case, to be fair to her), and “Love Is Blindness” is just too maudlin for my tastes.

Also, after I had the extreme pleasure of seeing her in concert in 2003 (thanks to Rob and his wife) with the Seattle Symphony, I finally knew how she counted that funkily unbalanced tempo in her ultra-cool cover of “Last Train to Clarksville.”

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Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.