VARIOUS ARTISTS / “Save Your Love For Me Mixtape”
Last week when we considered Buddy Johnson, I had an ace up my sleeve. I knew all along the song I really wanted to get to was “Save Your Love For Me,” which is Buddy's most famous contribution to jazz standards.
So here we go again, taking a leisurely stroll with 15 versions including two featuring Nancy Wilson—that’s my joker: Nancy live with Art Farmer and Bennie Golson recorded in performance.
In case you don’t know, Nancy’s version with Cannonball pretty much established the basic arrangement that most folk employ. Nevertheless, I’m digging on some of these other versions so much, I’m willing to lead with the joker; we’re going to Boston with this hand (do I have to tell you that’s bid whist card game terminology for winning every trick?).
No doubt, you won’t recognize all the names and one or two might not appeal to you, but you going to find it damn near impossible to do better than Jose James, Nancy Wilson with Cannonball, Hank Crawford, and finally Sunny Sumter batting clean up with an utterly original performance.
So go ahead and enjoy. If you want swing Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Johnny Griffin will rock you til you can’t rock no more, but on the other hand don’t miss Ms. Randy Crawford and brother Joe Sample doing their elegant begging, or for that Bobby “Blue” Bland demanding that you save him.
And that doesn’t cover it all. I’ve been listening to this set for two weeks now. Everytime I get to the end, I end up starting it over again. Yeah, it’s like that.
By the way, the Mixtape cover is a young Nancy Wilson… yeah, I know some of you men folks wants to know.. by the way for a second go round: which one of the Nancy Wilson’s do you like. Hit me up in the comment section. Idle minds want to know. ;->)
—Kalamu ya Salaam
P.S. If you don’t like either one of Nancy’s versions, you can keep that to yourself. It ain’t necessary to go round advertising that you too square to dig the pulchritudinous charms of Ms. Wilson wonderfully warm, inviting and enticing vocal work.
Save Your Love For Me Mixtape Playlist
01 In Performance At The Playboy Jazz Festival - Art Farmer/Bennie Golson & Nancy Wilson
02 Tenderness - Al Jarreau
03 Concrete Jungle (out of print) - David "Fathead" Newman
04 Sing! Sing! Sing! - New York Voices
05 Renaissance Of The Resistance - Kahil El'Zabar's Ritual Trio
06 The Concert McDuff - Jack McDuff
07 Bobby Bland: The Anthology
08 One More For The Road - Charles Brown
09 Johnny Lytle - Johnny Lytle
10 Feeling Good - Randy Crawford & Joe Sample
11 Tough Tenors - Johnny Griffin & Eddie Lock Jaw Davis
12 Blackmagic - Jose James
13 Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley
14 True Blue - Hank Crawford
15 Sunny - Sunny Sumter
This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 5:23 am and is filed under Cover. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “VARIOUS ARTISTS / “Save Your Love For Me Mixtape””
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:04 pm
kalamu, i like the second version of nancy best of the two. on another note my 20 something daughters were surprised to recognize the opening notes michael jackson borrowed for his ‘this is it’ version of ‘the way you make me feel’.
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