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Diana Krall: Glad Rag Doll

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Verve Jazz
Released: 2012.10.02
Time:
 58:06
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): T Bone Burnett
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.dianakrall.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2020
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye (H.M.Woods) - 3:07
[2] There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth the Salt of My Tears (F.Fisher) - 4:30
[3] Just Like a Butterfly That's Caught in the Rain (M.Dixon/H.M.Woods) - 3:43
[4] You Know - I Know Ev'rything's Made for Love (A.Sherman/Ch.Tobias/H.E.Johnson) - 3:48
[5] Glad Rag Doll (M.Ager/D.Dougherty/J.Yellen) - 4:35
[6] I'm a Little Mixed Up (B.James/E.Johnson) - 4:37
[7] Prairie Lullaby (B.Hill) - 4:22
[8] Here Lies Love (R.Rainger/L.Robin) - 5:09
[9] I Used to Love You but It's All Over Now (A.von Tilzer/L.Brown) - 2:51
[10] Let It Rain (J.Kendis/H.Dyson) - 5:44
[11] Lonely Avenue (D.Pomus) - 6:58
[12] Wide River to Cross (J.Miller/S.P.Miller) - 3:51
[13] When the Curtain Comes Down (C.Hoefle/A.Lewis/A.Sherman) - 4:55

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Diana Krall - Vocals, Piano on [1-4,6-13]

Jay Bellerose - Drums on [1-4,6-13]
Dennis Crouch - Bass on [1-4, 6-13)
Marc Ribot - Acoustic Guitar on [1,5-13], Electric Guitar on [2,8,11,12], Ukulele & 6-String Bass on [3], Banjo on [8,11,13]
Keefus Ciancia - Keyboards on [1-4,6-12], Mellotron on [13]
Colin Linden - Dobro on [2], Electric Guitar on [6]
Bryan Sutton - Electric Guitar on [3], Acoustic Guitar on [3,4], Baritone Guitar on [12]
Howard Coward - Ukulele on [4,13], Mandola on [11], Tenor Guitar on [12], Background Vocals on [12,13]
T Bone Burnett - Electric Guitar on [11], Producer

Mike Piersante - Recording, Mixing, Editing
Bob Mallory - Second Engineer
Vanessa Parr - Second Engineer
Zachary Dawes - Mixing Assistance
Thomas Perme - Equipment Technician
Gavin Lurssen - Mastering
Mark Seliger - Photography
Ruth Levy - Production
Coco Shinomiya - Package Design
Edwin Fotheringham - Lettering, Illustration

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2012 CD Verve - 3710109
2012 LP Verve - B 001732701
2012 CD Universal - 0572880
2012 CD Universal - 0572879
2012 CD Deluxe Version Verve - 3712693
2015 CD Limited Edition Verve - 5037585

Recorded at the Studios Avatar (New York City) & The Village (West Los Angeles)
Mastereds at Lurssen Mastering, Hollywood, California



For only the second time in her career, jazz pianist and vocalist Diana Krall deviates from her tried, true m.o. of covering easily identifiable jazz standards. On Glad Rag Doll she teams with producer T-Bone Burnett and his stable of studio aces. Here the two-time Grammy winner covers mostly vaudeville and jazz tunes written in the 1920s and '30s, some relatively obscure. Most of the music here is from her father's collection of 78-rpm records. Krall picked 35 tunes from that music library and gave sheet music to Burnett. He didn't reveal his final selections until they got into the studio. Given their origins, these songs remove the sheen of detached cool that is one of Krall's vocal trademarks. Check the speakeasy feel on opener "We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye," with Marc Ribot's airy chords, Jay Bellerose's loose shuffle, and Dennis Crouch's strolling upright bass. Krall's vocal actually seems to express delight in this loose and informal proceeding -- though her piano playing is, as usual, tight, top-notch. The shimmering sentimental nocturnal balladry there gives way to swing in "Just Like a Butterfly That's Caught in the Rain," which stands out because of the interplay between Ribot's ukulele, a pair of basses, and Bellerose's brushes. Krall's vocal hovers; she lets the melody guide her right through the middle. On the title cut, her only accompanist is Ribot on an acoustic guitar. Being the best-known tune in the bunch, it's easy to compare this reading with many others, but Krall's breathy vocal fully inhabits the lyric and melody and makes them her own. A few tracks stand apart from the album's theme. There's the modern take on Betty James' rockabilly single "I'm a Little Mixed Up," which allows Burnett to indulge himself a little and showcases a rarity: Krall playing rock & roll piano. The atmospheric reading of Doc Pomus' "Lonely Avenue" is somewhat radical, but is among the finest moments here. Burnett gets his obligatory reverb on here, but the weave of his and Ribot's guitars (and the latter's banjo) and the mandola by Howard Coward (Elvis Costello in one of several guest appearances) is arresting. The arrangement also contains an odd yet compelling reference to Miles Davis' "Right Off (Theme from Jack Johnson)"; Krall's piano solo is rife with elliptical, meandering lines and chord voicings. But vocally she gets inside the tune's blues and pulls them out with real authority. Glad Rag Doll is not the sound of Krall reinventing herself so much as it's the comfortable scratching of an old, persistent itch. The warmth, sophistication, humor, and immediacy present on this set make it a welcome addition to her catalog.

Thom Jurek - All Music Guide



When listening to Diana Krall's fun, smart new recording Glad Rag Doll, it's helpful to consider a question recently posed by Gyp Rosetti, the sensitive psychopath lending sparks to this season of HBO's Prohibition-era series Boardwalk Empire. "What the f--- is life if it's not personal?" sputtered the Sicilian fireball, expressing some violent doubts about the sincerity of the show's slick boss, Nucky Thompson. He could have been talking about the small fuss surrounding the sultry piano tickler's new release, an album that takes her back to her own musical origins by snapping a sepia portrait of the birth of jazz.

Krall's marketing team is presenting Glad Rag Doll, a collaboration with producer and family friend T-Bone Burnett, as one of her most personal efforts. Songs were culled from her father's collection of 78 RPM discs and others she'd discovered in sheet music lying on her grandparents' piano bench. She's exploring the youthful fantasies she cultivated during late nights watching Carole Lombard movies on television: this dream of glamor is designed to free her from the one that's made her famous but also hemmed her in, which is more contemporary but also more dull, since it's founded in the idea that she makes sophisticated (read: not rock or pop) music. Eleven albums in, Krall is finally acknowledging her inarguable sex appeal through a cover shot that puts her in a modest version of America's eternally popular adult Halloween costume — a corset and stockings — and song selections that establish a mood of playfulness and heat. She had to go back to the dawn of popular music as we know it in order to do what Pink and Katy Perry do every day.

The quote from Krall's electronic press kit that's floating around has Burnett calling this "sex music," though what he said next — "this is swing music" — is equally important. Working with Burnett and the top-notch small band he's assembled, including guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Jay Bellerose, Krall successfully evokes a time when people assumed that, if music was playing, they'd be dancing in pairs, not just sitting and listening. The swing is the thing that wakes up listeners to sensual pleasure and romantic possibility.

Glad Rag Doll doesn't only cull from the roaring '20s, but it does sustain a mood reliant on the tensions that make music from that moment so fascinating. This gets back to that central idea of "the personal." In the Jazz Age, recording techniques were changing to accommodate the use of microphones in the studio, and singers began transitioning from vaudeville theatrics to a more conversational style. This shift, along with an increasing frankness about sexuality following the upheavals caused by rapid urbanization and the First World War, led songwriters to adopt a tone that was often quite racy, but also intimate in other ways, and that's what Krall uncovers in this set.

In his excellent book on New York nightlife in this period, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret, Shane Vogel describes what happened between performers and audiences in the tiny clubs of uptown New York as a form of "public intimacy": a contingent but powerful connection that, as Vogel writers, "brought bodies, sounds, and histories together in ways that disorganized and reorganized desires, selves, time, and space." Artists were articulating ways of being that were new or had been hidden, and in the close quarters of Connie's Inn and the Cotton Club, they could create the mood that got their messages across. The same thing was happening in different ways through mass media: in movies, now suddenly made "small" by sound (to quote Gloria Swanson's famous line from Sunset Boulevard) and in a recording process that could catch nuances the older acoustical approach missed.

Early versions of the songs Krall covers on Glad Rag Doll, by flapper-era favorites like Libby Holman, Annette Hanshaw and Ruth Etting, feature performances with one satin-clad foot in broad theatrical performance and one in the newer, more introspective style. (It's a little strange that she picked songs mostly made famous by white singers; the repertoire of blues queens fits in so well with her project. Maybe her grandma's collection was short on Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith?) Krall benefits the most, actually, from emulating the broader strokes of these singers. There's a vivacity to her singing and piano playing that's welcome after so many years of mellower material.

The other major touchstone is Bing Crosby, who pioneered and popularized microphone-centered crooning. Der Bingle recorded three of the thirteen songs Krall approaches here; listening to his versions of "Here Lies Love" or the larky "There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth the Salt of My Tears," in which he matches the ease of Bix Biederbecke's cornet playing with the kind of gentle confidence that Krall's been pursuing throughout her career. "The essence of his art was an illusion of naturalness that fails if people notice it," Robert Christgau once wrote of Crosby; that's a pretty good description of what people who love Krall appreciate.

Krall steps forward into rhythm and blues with two of Glad Rag Doll's most beguiling cuts: a Tom Waits-y take on Doc Pomus's 1956 classic "Lonely Avenue," and "A Little Mixed Up," a 1961 Chess Records rarity cowritten and performed by Betty James. These songs are musically characteristic of the later dates when they were composed, but their lyrics bare the same emotional concerns that crooners and Gaiety Girls expressed. The modern romance that pop promoted during and after the 1920s reflected ideals of individual fulfillment and emotional independence that the nascent science of psychology made fashionably. Women's increased financial independence and mobility made them bolder in their pursuit of happiness, and that's something that obviously interests Krall and Burnett. The very idea that women could have "personal" concerns extending beyond home and family was still fairly radical in the early 20th century. The sexy sound Glad Rag Doll evokes is really the sound of women possessing themselves.

This project may, indeed, be personal for Krall; it's also well-timed to complement current trends. The Roaring decade tangos back into fashion every once in a while, and it's happening again, with Boardwalk Empire, Beck's sheet music project, and the lawn parties on New York's Governor's Island reviving interest in the era. I think the lure of the 1920s (really the whole period between the World Wars, but hey, fashionistas are rarely stickler historians) boils down to the fact that it's the first historical moment in which we recognize modernity. People have always thought of their time as the new time, whether they were rockin' in the Renaissance or venturing into outer space in the 1960s. The 1920s idea of what was fresh, however, had many parallels to our own. Diana Krall seems to get that, and that's what makes this vintage outing so right for right now.

Ann Powers - October 4, 2012
© 2020 npr



If you can allow yourself room to get out of any comfort zone you may have regarding Diana’s music, then her new album, which is pretty much nothing like anything she’s recorded before, is an absolute delight. Drawing on 1920’s era material, Krall holds off on her usual formats of swinging quartet or string-backed bossas and ballads, and opts for a grittier, guitar-driven saloon jazz scenario. It seems all that’s missing on Glad Rag Doll is the crackle and pop of hard vinyl from a century ago.

Krall is, as always, masterful with phrasing and understatement, and her deliberate piano and sultry Shirley Horn-steeped vocals are always at the core of what makes her the best at what she does. Lyrically, heartbreak and loneliness are themes on Glad Rag, delivered via torch songs and stompy two-step blues. Producer T Bone Burnett is at the helm, and if there’s anything we’ve come to expect from him, it’s an ear for frame-working excellent songs. Several of Burnett’s often-used cast of excellent studio musicians are on hand, with great guitar work from Mark Ribot often dictating the mood. The result is markedly different than the last time Diana strayed this far stylistically  (2004’s The Girl In The Other Room with husband Elvis); the repertoire here is deep and the album’s concept works on every level. An extra half-star for the killer front cover photo.

Dennis Crouch’s upright is big and bold, and together with drummer Jay Bellerose the rhythm section sounds like two dirt-shovelers reveling in toiling the earth together. Unlike most of Diana’s albums (often featuring bassist John Clayton), there are no bass solos here, but why bother? Crouch’s expressiveness abounds with every note he plays.

Rick Suchow - October 17, 2012
Copyright © 2020 Bass Musician Magazine



Success is to be devoutly hoped for in life. And if you are a jazz musician, achieving Diana Krall-level success is like winning the lottery or striking gold – a rare coming together of spectacular sales and not a little critical acclaim.

But that kind of success in art is going to be a prison more often than not. It certainly was for Krall.

Diana Krall is very good at singing jazz standards in a smoky and sexy voice, accompanied by her own deft piano and often a swinging trio or a lush orchestration. Her audience seemed to want more of that, please. She made six such records (as well as a crisp live record of the same standard material) in the decade following her 1993 debut. Then she tried something different: 2004’s The Girl in the Other Room, a collection of rock-era songs and original material that sounded only a little like jazz and nothing like her prior work. The market spoke loud and clear. She went back to jazz standards and bossa nova after that for three more discs.

Except that Diana Krall turns out to be an interesting and searching artist. Her smoothest material was always rich in rhythm and hip phrasing, and her piano work was confident and melodic – way more than merely competent. And it turns out that she was not content to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Glad Rag Doll is a riveting leap forward and backward at once. It leaps forward because it allows Krall to sound much more contemporary, embracing and owning for the first time a directness of expression that includes distorted rock guitars and thumping drums. But it leaps backward as well to songs from the 1920s and 1930s that include vaudeville, blues, and roots material, as well as jazz era pop songs. Glad Rag Doll is old and new, but mainly it’s fresh and bracing. It does not reinvent Diana Krall – she sounds utterly like herself here. But it makes you realize that her talent is broader than you previously realized.

Glad Rag Doll was produced by T-Bone Burnett, and it has his distinctive mark, including boasting his house rhythm section of guitarist Mark Ribot, bassist Dennis Crouch, and drummer Jay Bellarose. The groove here swings plenty when it wants to, but it also whumps and rocks and even crackles. This is not “Diana Krall Rocks!” In fact, most of these songs are decades older than Krall’s usual repertoire. But Burnett embraces the roughness and directness of that older music, and so the effect is that of Krall’s diamond-like voice being affixed to a craggy setting. And it makes her shine that much brighter.

The Betty James rockabilly tune, “I’m a Little Mixed Up”, is a perfect bit of joy. The guitars are distorted and rootsy – twangy and rocking at once – with the rhythm section playing a slap-happy backbeat that inspires Krall to play barrelhouse piano that is as lean and clutch as any Allen Toussaint performance. But there is the smooth alto of Krall’s voice, bending the melody and the lyrics too, and sounding great: close to the elemental emotion of the tune.

Or check out Doc Pomus’s “Lonely Avenue”, which has got to be the grittiest recording in Krall’s canon, with a guitar squall that storms behind her pouty voice as if Neil Young had been mischievously let loose in a Manhattan nightclub. Burnett brilliantly mixes Ribot’s banjo with feedback and thunderous left hand crashes on piano – with the whole mix getting positively atonal in a collective improvisation that takes place after the second vocal section. It is ripping good fun, but haunting too, with the leader’s vocal getting at legit blues feeling.

Other tunes branch away from Krall’s traditional strengths by treading on folk or “Americana” territory. “Let It Rain” is a quiet and simple song featuring acoustic guitars atop a simple rhythm section – plainly sung with no harmony or extra dressing. “Prairie Lullaby” is a keening waltz that coaxes from Krall a charming and elegant piano solo that has little to do with “jazz” and is a triumph of avoiding technique. “Here Lies Love” starts as just piano and vocal, slightly inviting a lounge vibe, but then the rhythm section kicks in with directness. Even though the song’s harmonies carry a trace of Tin Pan Alley, the arrangement drips with joy in a slow, back porch style – the kind of music that might be described as “pre-rock”.

There is another strain of sound on “Glad Rag Doll” that will be more familiar for Krall fans – snappy jazz tunes, most certainly, yet ones that clearly come from an earlier era. “I Used to Love You But It’s All Over Now” has a grooving swing driven by acoustic guitar at first, then a loose rhythm section that supports this maximum-relaxation vocal. “We Just Can’t Say Goodbye” chugs along with pre-bop elegance that sets up Krall’s vocal tone about perfectly. “There Ain’t No Sweet Man” has a rocking snap to it, but the melody is all jazz. And the title track is a sad ballad that finds Krall accompanied only with guitar, giving her a huge space in which to bend her voice around blue notes.

Maybe the best thing on the recording, however, is a more contemporary tune, Julie Miller’s “Wide River to Cross”, which is an aching country-folk song that couldn’t be more wistful or sad. Here, Krall’s husband Elvis Costello makes one of several appearances, in this case providing the slightly strained high harmony that makes the song. This is simply four minutes of bliss, with Krall’s piano finding a perfect place in the Burnett arrangement.

The only thing here that seems not to work is the final tune, a self-conscious closer (“When the Curtain Comes Down”, natch) that has Costello shouting like a carnival barker. It sounds like the tune farthest from any traditionally black idiom, and it breaks the spell of intimacy and sensuality so carefully built by the rest of the album. My recommendation: just skip this last tune and let “Wide River” linger in your ear.

Let’s hope that, having crawled out on this creative and more risky branch, Diana Krall stays out at the edges of her own comfort zone. Glad Rag Doll sounds like a near-ideal blend of jazz chanteuse and roots rock, or tried-and-true and a fresh breeze. What’s old is new again, and in this case Diana Krall finds something new in older music – a rejuvenation earned by looking backward in years but forward in daring.

Will Layman - 14 Oct 2012
PopMatters



Canadian jazz singer/pianist Diana Krall had an assured if undramatic career until her 2004 album Girl in the Other Room, mostly co-written with new husband Elvis Costello, which included more interesting songs (Tom Waits' Temptation among them). This album - in a cover where she's draped like a sultry dominatrix - pushes further.

Long-time producer Tommy LiPuma is dropped in favour of Costello's old mate T-Bone Burnett, the band includes Costello/Waits guitarist Marc Ribot and Colin Linden on dobro, and the songbook is comprised of lesser-known but timeless songs from the 20s and 30s, along with Doc Pomus' Lonely Avenue (turned into Waits-spooky by the gloomy arrangement) and Wide River To Cross by Nashville's Julie and Buddy Miller.

The jazz (improvisation) has also been reined in, so this persuasive song collection favours country-flavours (the jaunty I'm a Little Mixed Up, a stately Prairie Lullaby, the desertscape Let it Rain), classy ballads (Here Lies Love, Just Like a Butterfly) and old style swing-into-funkiness (There Ain't No Sweet Man). Most are coloured by Ribot's slightly off-kilter guitar.

Her old fans seem to hate this because she's changed, but she'd been there, done that. She'll probably retreat again, but this is kinda cool.

NZ Herald E-Edition - 11 Oct, 2012



Glad Rag Doll is the eleventh studio album by Canadian singer Diana Krall. It was released on October 2, 2012, by Verve Records. Produced by T Bone Burnett, the album covers mainly jazz tunes from the 1920s and 1930s, mostly from Krall's father's collection of 78-rpm records.

Glad Rag Doll received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 76, based on 12 reviews. Peter Goddard of Toronto Star wrote, "Glad Rag Doll is choc-a-block with utterly unlistenable moments, murky production and heavy-handed playing, notably from drummer Jay Bellerose who approaches everything as if it were a march. This supposedly "old time" heavy-on-the beat approach totally messes with Krall's singing. What Glad Rag Doll might have sounded like is given away by its four "bonus tracks," each produced by Krall accompanying herself on piano". Brendon Veevers of Renowned for Sound commented, "Upon first glance of the new record it would appear that Krall has taken a 'sex sells' approach to marketing as we are presented with a scantily clad songbird draped over red velvet in all but some rather revealing black lingerie, however, don't judge a CD by its sleeve as the contents within are anything but sex driven. Although a covers collection Glad Rag Doll reveals itself to be, over a running time of just shy of an hour, a record that could easily be one of Krall's best work to date". Christopher Loudon of JazzTimes noted, "Though her voice seems to have grown a shade more tenuous since 2009's Quiet Nights, she remains one of the most compelling balladeers around. Indeed, her slightly heightened fragility only adds to the tranquil beauty of "Prairie Lullaby," the redemptive ache of "Let It Rain," the hollowness of Doc Pomus' brilliantly atmospheric 'Lonely Avenue' (one of two tracks of more recent vintage) and the road-weariness of 'Wide River to Cross' (also newer). And Krall is masterful in her interpretations of the delicately contemplative title track (explored solely with Ribot, who is equally transfixing) and the melodramatic playlet 'Here Lies Love,' with its marvelous faux-dirge propulsion".

Glad Rag Doll debuted at number six on the Billboard 200, selling 46,000 copies in its first week.

Wikipedi.org

 

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