An expatriate from St. Louis,
Genie Grant has become a fixture on the Dallas scene. With her husband, jazz pianist
Dave Zoller in the role of musical director and arranger, this maiden album is filled mostly with standards.
Grant is also backed with some excellent musicians, many of them veterans of
Pete Peterson's Dallas-based and very good
Collection Orchestra.
Genie has a noticeable vibrato which she artfully manages to accentuate the meaning the lyrics of each tune. Hear her on "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." Her voice is quite delicate and she shines with greater brilliance on cuts where she is accompanied only by
Zoller on "Blame It on My Youth" and "These Foolish Things" and
Zoller and
Pete Brewer's saxophones on "Still Crazy After All These Years" and "Blues in the Night." The full ensemble tends to be too much for her slight, coquettish voice. Not only coquettish, her voice has that silky and sensuous quality which grasps and keeps the attention of the audience. Her "I'll Be Around" matches most versions of
Alec Wilder's classic. Maybe the pitch isn't always perfect, but this small defect is more than compensated by her sincerity and passion.