Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

She ain’t no Ella Fitzgerald, but you can tell that she’s a fan of the First Lady of Song. Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, and Doris Day were all influences to Sandy Dennison growing up. These artists drew Dennison to Jazz and, as she likes to put it, got her “hooked.” I however, was not hooked to her album.

Dennison started her singing career in her twenties. After a short shot at it she gave it up to take care of her family. Twenty-five years later, after she recovered from a spinal surgery close to her voice box, Sandy started working the clubs around the Portland Oregon area and came out with her premier CD titled Love You Madly.

Jazzed! is Dennison’s sophomore album and like her first she doesn’t try anything new. All the songs are jazz classics such as Like Someone in Love, Sway, and A Sunday Kind of Love none of which I’m in love with.

Her voice pulls you back into the 50’s era. Tricking your ears into thinking that artists such as Carmen McRae or Chris Connor are crooning, until she tries to push her voice too low and then your musical dreams are pushed back into a melancholy reality.

The album starts out with the song A Wonderful Day Like Today. What a horrible selection for this lady’s first song! It shows all the weaknesses in her voice, and at times it even sounds like she’s off tempo! I would have picked one of her slow ballads such as Close Your Eyes, which is much smoother and showcases Sandy’s voice so much better.

Dennison has a remarkable set of musicians in her band too. Vincent Frates, a Grammy nominated and Emmy winning pianist, Al Criado, who’s played bass for people like Nancy Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Dizzy Gillespie, and John Moak, who plays trombone and has performed with Ella Fitzgerald and toured with shows like Annie, and Hairspray. They get plenty of attention on this album too, with several instrumental solos, not to mention that Sandy’s voice always seems to come from under their music. Not that I’m complaining.

By now you may be wondering why did I even give this album a 5. The answer my friends is the song called They Say It’s Wonderful, and it is. This song is originally from the musical Annie Get Your Gun and was first sung by Betty Hutton. Never have I heard some one sing this song as beautifully as Sandy Dennison. Not even Betty Hutton herself. Some male artists have done a pretty good job like John Coltrane or Andy Russell but for the female’s version Sandy takes the lead.

So it’s not a great CD. I almost always find that when people remake older songs they usually don’t do as good a job… perhaps because we always have the original in our heads. Maybe next time she can get jazzed enough to create some new stuff that’s a little more in her range.