Marilyn Scott has straddled several music styles over her career though she is better known as a pop or smooth jazz singer. Unfortunately, that background rarely serves a musician well who attempts a straight-ahead CD with seasoned mainstream players interpreting standards.
Scott's alto voice is at best average and a bit nasal, while the use of frequent reverb is evidently to cover up for her shortcomings. Her grating inflections in each song reveal her primary music interests. Particularly annoying are
Scott's draggy setting of
Cole Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" (which is misspelled on the cover) and the lightweight "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" (a
Burt Bacharach tune that was a hit for
Dionne Warwick), which is recast in a bland bossa nova arrangement with a rather uninspired vocal. It is a shame that veterans like pianist
Cyrus Chestnut, guitarist
Paul Bollenback, and tenor saxophonist/clarinetist
Ken Peplowski aren't featured more in these rather brief arrangements, aside from a sizzling "Caravan." The producers would have been better off writing a check to
Scott and sending her packing after a few takes, while retaining the instrumentalists for their own record date.