Lisa Rich - Long As You're Living
(Tritone Records, 2024)
What is to be done with a life and a career interrupted? If you are Lisa Rich, you make the best of it. That way of thinking is distilled into its essence in the title song of Long As You’re Living. Written by Julian Priestier, Tommy Turrentine, and Oscar Brown, Jr., “Long As You’re Living” is a de facto theme song for Rich, who began a promising career with no horizon in sight, releasing Listen Here! (Discovery Records, 1983) with the Claire Fischer Quartet and Touch of the Rare (Discovery Records, 1985). These songs were well received and Rich’s sky was the limit. In 1987, Rich recorded Highwire, a project comprising Chick Corea compositions never recorded by a vocalist.
Then life intervened and health concerns upended the singer’s plans. She withdrew from the stage and devoted her time to full-time vocal teaching. Highwire was shelved, remaining unreleased until 2019, when the flicker of a comeback for Rich developed. With her close friend Jay Clayton, Rich returned to the studio with a dozen songs addressing the very idea of “making the best of it.” The pair wasted no time assembling a dozen standards well suited for Lisa Rich in the Twenty-First Century.
One thing that Clayton asked of Rich was for her to go to and woodshed on scat singing and vocalese. For Rich it was time well spent, yielding solid results expressed in the title song, “Isotope,” and “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Most impressive is Rich’s singing on “New Morning Blues.” Composed by Clayton. The melody derives from a Paul Desmond saxophone solo. The performance is just short of free jazz. Mathematically speaking, it is the limit of swing as the style approaches late Coltrane. Rich’s performance is elegantly radioactive.
The other thing that producers Clayton and Rich accomplished was scheduling one of the finest rhythm duos, pianist Marc Copland and bassist Drew Gress (with accompaniment by trumpeter Dave Ballou on several selections). Each was emphatically tuned in to Rich making Long As You’re Living an exceptional listening experience.