So a request has flooded in… We had to have some Abbey Lincoln sooner or later but what to choose? Thank you, John, for suggesting this one.
Five years after her death, Lincoln remains revered by many and completely unknown by others. Her first album was a fairly traditional affair complete with orchestral arrangements and cute/sexy cover pic but by her fourth (and first great) recording – Abbey Is Blue – and it’s follow up, Straight Ahead, she had begun to create the template that would inspire many other jazz vocalists for years to come.
She recorded sporadically until relatively late in her career when she produced nearly a dozen albums for Verve. But Abbey Is Blue remains a career-high and from that here is her version of a Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes song from their ‘American opera’ Street Scene.