Album Reviews

Back in 2002 the adventurous, eclectic jazz singer Cassandra Wilson returned to her home state of Mississippi to record this album in the Clarksdale train depot as well as in an adjacent boxcar not far from the now immortalized "crossroads" where, as legend has it, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil.

Wilson, who also produced the album, parked next to the station Wally Heider's Remote #2 mobile recording studio. If her goal in recording analog using a "vintage" mobile recording studio was to capture the Delta atmosphere, then mission accomplished. High humidity seeps from the grooves of this sixty minute double LP set that's never before been issued on vinyl.

As on previous albums, Wilson's song choices are joyfully all over the map: everything from Robbie Robertson's "The Weight" to Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman" immortalized by Glenn Campbell, with stop in between by Bob Dylan ("Shelter From the Storm"), Antonio Carlos Jobim's ""Waters of March", James Taylor's "Only a Dream In Rio" and Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move." There are also originals by Wilson and a closer, "Hot Tamales" by Robert johnson.

The result is an album that seamlessly and comfortably moves between jazz, pop, rock and blues, stitched together by Wilson's sultry voice, magnificent phrasing and the sure backing of her core group of Kevin Breit and Marvin Sewell on guitars, Mark Peterson on bass and percussionists Jeffrey Haynes and Cyro Baptista aided and abetted by a varied cast of extras.

The instrumentation and arrangements are imaginative and varied throughout and intimately and warmly recorded. Three-dimensionality and purity reign supreme here, with Technicolor instrumental timbres, tactile textures and full bodied dynamics. Wilson's voice is richly presented and artifact-free. The perspective is intimate and close-up.

Ron McMaster's lacquer cut is superbly transparent and appropriately intimate and the Pallas pressing as usual does not disappoint. This one may sound even better than Pure Pleasure's outstanding reissue of Wilson's Blue Light Til Dawn.

A musical and sonic treat not to be missed! If you can only own one of these two, be sure to buy both!