Abbey Lincoln

★★★★★ Abbey Is Blue CRAFT RECORDINGS. DL/LP

A civil rights-era jazz vocal classic.

Singer-songwriter-actressactivist Abbey Lincoln had plenty to be blue about in 1959: she was a black woman living in apartheid America and tired of the repertoire that limited jazz singers to Tin Pan Alley standards. On this revolutionary album, she took a left turn and uncovered songs by jazzers Duke Ellington, Mongo Santamaria and Oscar Brown, as well as Kurt Weill and poet Langston Hughes’s Lonely House. And in her own Let Up, she expressed her artistic and political frustrations. The music ranges from moody to comforting, aided by the stark, nocturnal production that provided neat tricks like recording the trumpet away from the mike, creating a 3am ambience. Top-drawer musicians include drummer/future husband Max Roach and pianist Wynton Kelly. Throughout is that voice, bending blue notes and elongating phrases like no one else.

Michael Simmons