Sweet Megg - Bluer Than Blue
Sweet Megg - Bluer Than Blue
(Turtle Bay Records, 2024)
Sweet Megg is a New York City product with a creative jones for the Greenwich Village scene, circa 1960. In 2001, she moved to Nashville and began honing her little sliver of the music pie arriving at an eutection of western swing heavily informed by New Orleans. Her initial recordings Under the Moonlight (Data Records, 2020) and I’m in Love Again (Turtle Bay Records, 2020) are simmered in the classic, pre-war jazz already an integral part of her shows in New York. After the release of I’m in Love Again, the singer moved south to Nashville TN, from where she recorded My Window Faces South (2022 Turtle Bay), codifying what she defined as “Real Hillbilly Jazz.” A stint with Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox was further instrumental in Sweet Megg’s musical evolution.
Bluer Than Blue finds the singer drilling down further into the style she is developing. Megg’s performance on the title tune reveals potent elements of NOLA in the horn arrangements, while her vocals (and vocal asides) reveal a listen or two to Bob Wills’ Tiffany Transcriptions. “San Antonio Rose” is tightly arranged in the first half before roaring into the solo sections. This would be a show-stopper in performance with Chris Scruggs’ taut lap steel and Dalton Ridenhour’s piano to prepare the way for trumpeter Mike Davis to tear things up. Megg’s coda verse is robust and focused. A first listen to “Please Help Me I’m Falling” and “In A Sentimental Mood” recall the same for Ray Price’s Night Life (Columbia, 1963).