This week, someone who had heard Jo Harrop live, described the experience to BBC Jazz Record Requests as having been “spellbound”. The producer of this CD introduces Jo Harrop’s music as coming “straight from the heart”… and as someone who has followed Jo for years, I found some of the new tracks recalled Dan Hill’s 1977 ballad Sometimes when we touch, the honesty’s too much.
This last year has seen Jo Harrop really “break through”, including winning a Parliamentary Jazz Award for Album of the Year (‘When Winter Turns To Spring’, Jo Harrop and Paul Edis, 2023) and US triumphs on both East and West Coasts. Thankfully, success has not changed her character, as I witnessed in a basement club during the London Jazz Festival: where she supported less celebrated singers with typical generosity.
Jo is a singer-songwriter, and most of the songs are originals, with diverse collaborators. All the tracks (below) are interesting, but I will focus on the five songs that moved me most.
Her here’s to all the Beautiful Fools is the culmination of creating many songs with a soulful, bluesy influence. D-Day memorial events are going on nearby, as I write this review, and connoisseurs of Wartime love songs might consider this a modern torch song: delicately overflowing with memories of lost love?
Whiskey or the Truth makes a complete contrast. This is an elegy for empty promises and ‘a love that never ran dry’. Languid and gently self-mocking, the feeling resembles Mark Twain’s saying “cheer up, the worst is yet to come”!
Leonard Cohen’s Travelling Light comes from his final album, ‘You want it darker’. This provides Jo with the perfect, sparse framework to flesh out…. e.g. ’if the road leads back to you’. Her fans may also recognise Jo’s advice to travel light when touring (Mothers in Jazz, 2023).
Her title track The Path of a Tear was recorded in a sound booth originally built for Stevie Nicks. Another torch song, this ‘tear’ touches the cheek you once caressed. An exquisite yearning for lost love that is now irretrievable…. ‘lost like a raindrop in the ocean’.
My favourite track I have saved here for last: You’ll never be Lonely in Soho. Back in 1972 I was doing voluntary work in Soho, and this humorous number captures the creative, sleazy, craziness of that place better than any other song I know. If they ever make a movie of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell (Keith Waterhouse, 1989) then this song should be on the soundtrack.
Track list
Beautiful Fools
Whisky or the Truth
A Love like This
Travelling Light (Leonard Cohen cover)
The Path of a Tear
You’ll never be Lonely in Soho
If it Wasn’t for Bad (Leon Russell cover)
Too Close to the Sun
Hurt
Goodbye (Steve Earle cover)
Stay Here Tonight (bonus track)
Recorded at the Village Studios, Los Angeles.
Jo Harrop: Vocals
Anthony Wilson: Guitar
Jim Cox: Rhodes piano, Hammond B-3 Organ
David Piltch: Bass
Larry Klein: Bass
Victor Indrizzo: Drums
Producer: Larry Klein
Launch gigs :
5 June, The Django, New York
7 June, Village Studios in Los Angeles
4 July, Ronnie Scott’s, London
