Many of the cover songs posted on this blog are of the “so different they’re interesting” variety. If you’re turning dance pop to acapella, or transplanting indie folk to instrumental piano, or transforming 90s Brit-rock into dreamy electro, then you automatically win novelty points with your listeners.
But jazz standards are arguably more difficult. The jazz community being…the jazz community, there’s the double pressure of a) giving your own authentic take, while b) doing justice to the original. If your version is too straightforward, you haven’t added anything, but if it’s too different, you’ve somehow disrespected not only the songwriters, but all the performers who have recorded it before you.
So if, just say, you’re going to cover a song written for Frank Sinatra, and subsequently recorded by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Sting, you’d better be ready to give it something new.
The first minute of Jamie Cullum’s 2002 interpretation does exactly that.
With all due respect to the other five and a half minutes of the recording, I could listen to that first minute all day. The horn arrangement is pure brilliance, alternating between harmonies and surprising dissonances that somehow bridge the 50-year gap between the song’s original release and Cullum’s 21st-century update.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Having stolen the show for the first minute, the horns graciously leave room for the other things, notably a sleepy sax solo at 2:20.
2. Cullum’s voice is just the right timbre for the song. He kind of sounds like Sinatra’s long-lost British nephew.
3. The last 30 seconds showcase some simple but lovely piano work by Cullum, closing the track with the same original beauty provided by the horns at the opening.
Recommended listening activity:
Walking down your favourite street at night, imagining what it looked like fifty years ago.