I remember being in Chicago back in the day, listening to an FM rock station. After a bevy of alternative rock, the DJ suddenly put on the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At the art store where I worked, one of the young hipsters immediately yelled, "Tchaikovsky!" and began conducting with her hands. I'll never forget that moment. We had gone from, say, Throwing Muses to Tchaikovsky, and I remember thinking: How cool was that? Here was music making its own case. It didn't plead. It didn't demand. In its own way, it rocked. And then, after that glorious interlude, it was back to alternative rock. The funny thing was that the classical piece had not seemed out of place. It held its own. It brought to the table its own heft, its own weight. It wasn't preachy. It wasn't better than. It was simply another fiber in the fabric of the day. And maybe that's the way great music should be heard. Not fenced off by genre. Not placed behind glass. Not approa...
It is one of those increasingly rare nights when people actually come together to eat, enjoy one another, laugh, have fun conversations, and stimulate each other with glosses on great films, music, literature and other soul-refreshing topics.
No politics.
No rancor.
Just a gathering.
And the host knows the way to enhance such a moment—moments which are all too rare in our rancorous era, so when we get them we must enjoy them—is with a soundtrack.
Not music that intrudes.
Not music that announces itself.
Something that sits comfortably in the background, enhancing the room without demanding its attention.
Except...
The music is so tremendous under its own power that occasionally someone stops talking.
Listens.
And finally asks:
"Who is that?"
Ahhh.
And this is where the host gets to give a gift.
"That's José James, from his killer album Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday."
And right now?
That's "Lover Man."
A few guests pick up their phones.
Spotify.
YouTube.
Somebody goes to iTunes and buys it outright.
Then the phones go back down.
The conversation resumes.
And somehow the evening spreads out before everyone a little richer than it was before.
Something was learned.
Something was gained.
A gift was given.
A revelation unfolded.
Because José James's exquisite baritone is hitting on all cylinders.
He's a Johnny Hartman for our times.
He's not Billie, of course.
But he's not trying to be Billie.
He's José James—his own magnificent stylist. And that he can so easily be consigned to the "jazz" bin is everyone else's loss.
This is a voice that fills a room without raising itself.
James works his way around a song with a panache all his own. He doesn't merely sing the melody; he inhabits the space around it. His voice settles into the room, finds the song's corners, and makes itself comfortable.
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