Black and Blue. - sound recording reviews

National Review, May 28, 1990 by Ralph De Toledano

When I put Black and Blue on the CD turntable, I expected little more than warmed-over performances by less than warmed-over performers of once-great jazz songs and instrumentals. I was, happily, very wrong. For here you have Ruth Brown, an underappreciated jazz and blues singer, Linda Hopkins, and Carrie Smith-backed by a group of jazz sidemen who are as brash and as true to the genre-giving us some gut buckety and really go renditions of some of the great old standards.

Here is the original Broadway cast putting out the likes of Am I Blue?" Body & Soul," I'm Confessing," After You've Gone," and even that rowdy Harlem nightclub special, "If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sitting on It." The beat is there, and the authentic phrasing. The voices are there, too, and that wonderful drive in the band that will get you out of your chair every time. It's the kind of music and atmosphere that we once got in Harlem, before the blacks became unwilling to share their entertainment with us honkies (DRG CDSBL 19001).