In the interview round for this album, Rachael Calladine explained that it took her many years of plying her craft as a jazz singer before she started to work at the 606 Club – where her album launch will take place next week – and even longer before she got booked regularly at Ronnie Scott’s. She remembers the sense of having arrived when she could finally stand on the white taped cross which (pre-refurbishment) used to mark the singer’s place on the stage in Frith Street. But what was clear above all from the interview was how she remembers those times, when she would sing for a week at a time opposite Louis Hayes… or Monty Alexander…or the Yellowjackets, and quite how fulfilling she found the experience of having arrived at the jazz mecca. She has worked in all kinds of contexts, US3, a decade in Dubai…but from the fondness of those memories, and from the way this new album works, jazz and soul singing are surely at the heart of what Rachael Calladine does.
Calladine’s earlier musical experiences came from the Derby Youth Jazz Orchestra: her sister played alto sax, and saxophonist Dave O’Higgins and guitarist Phil Robson were near-contemporaries. But that was then, and this is now. Everything about this new album talks of a deep and long experience of being onstage and performing, of knowing how to shape and form a story for audiences, of knowing what works and what doesn’t, and of picking good musicians to work with – Pat McCarthy on guitar, Andy Tytherleigh on bass and Si Potts on drums are all truly excellent throughout.
Right from the start, in the title track, an original, she instantly echoes all the freedom and the sass of Carmen McRae in “Chega do Saudade/No More Blues.” Later, Andre Previn’s “Like Young”, the band swings hard and echoes Ella Fitzgerald. All that freedom…I particularly enjoyed her ease of expression in “Dream a Little of Dream”, the confidence to shape the line of the full song form with only a bass for accompaniment, and I loved the care and precision with which voice, guitar and bass shape the perfect ending together.
My favourite track is “All I Need is the Air that I Breathe”. There is an unexpectedly confiding and warmly sensual vibe to the verse, but the free scatting and vocal riffing once the song form is opened out are wonderful, and as the track is faded out, I found myself wishing the song could go on. It certainly whets the appetite to hear Rachael Calladine live.
Calladine told one interviewer : “You have to be a bit older to sing the blues properly.” As an abstract debating point, some nitpicker, as ever, is going to want to debate it. However, with “The Game” – and the wide range of emotion and ‘life lived’ on it – Rachael Calladine has proved the point, and very well indeed.
