Lyn Stanley - Black Dress Ballads

(A.T. Music, 2024)

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Lyn Stanley has been building a repertoire and discography dedicated to performing the Great American Songbook as the composers imagined. These songs were popular tunes and show songs before assimilation into the modern jazz bandbook of 1945 to 1955. The use of the Songbook by jazz demonstrated both the durability and longevity of the material.

Each generation needs faithful performances of the Songbook to remind us what the music was originally. In the early 1980s, Linda Ronstadt made a trio of recordings that did exactly that. What’s New (Asylum, 1983), Lush Life (Asylum, 1983), and For Sentimental Reasons (Asylum, 1986) introduced the late Baby Boom Generation to an entirely new world, one that is being introduced to the first quarter of the twenty-first-century by Lyn Stanley.

All of Stanley’s previous releases since her debut recording in 2013, Lost In Romance, have led to this splendid reprising of the ballad material from these releases. The singer presents “Teach Me Tonight,” “You Go To My Head,” “My Foolish Heart,” and “Body And Soul” as if written for her. Stanley’s performance of “Misty” is essential listening. The singer also plumbs later music with a beautifully contemporary take on George Harrison’s “Something.” The real treat of this collection is her new performance of “The Man I Love” recorded with strings. It is a treat.

Supported by the best musicians and recorded under the best of circumstances, these ballads express the best in music-making. Lyn Stanley has a keen ear and mind for this music.

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A Lyn Stanley Discography

Lost In Romance (A.T. Music, 2013)

Potions (From the ‘50s) (A.T. Music, 2014)

Interludes (A.T. Music, 2015)

The Moonlight Sessions, Volume 1 (A.T. Music, 2017)

The Moonlight Sessions, Volume 1 (A.T. Music, 2017)

London Calling: A Toast To Julie London (A.T. Music, 2018)

London With A Twist - Live At Bernie’s (A.T. Music, 2019)

Live At Studio A (A.T. Music, 2020), with the Jazz Mavericks

Novel Noël (A Jingle Cool Jazz Celebration) (A.T. Music, 2022), with the Jazz Mavericks

Black Dress Ballads (A.T. Music, 2022)