SOME NOTES ON THE MUSE OF SAN FRANCISCO: JACQUI NAYLOR AT "CHEZ HANNY"

Chez Hanny is "a longstanding Jazz Salon in the historic Fillmore District." Laid out like a college flat, its bookshelves are filled with books of the oddest variety from Ellery Queen to Auden to pulp horror. The shelves are also lined with a pawn shop variety of odds and ends: a collection of the "Capitol Jazz Sessions," a picture of Woody Allen embracing a love doll, a mannequin hand, and above the fireplace mantle, image after image of the three muses. Chez Hanny is the Fillmore Street apartment of "Frank," Frank Hanny. Earlier today, Sunday, August 28th, Jacqui Naylor performed at Chez Hanny with her pianist Art Khu.

Naylor recently released a live album entitled EAST/WEST. In this two disc set, one disc was recorded at Birdland (on the East coast) and the other at Yoshi's (on the West coast). I've been listening to EAST/WEST non-stop for four days now: at the office, in the car, while at home...

"Live East," the first disk, is proficient and technical. It is laced with perfections that indicate Jacqui Naylor's gifts. But Live East's cool proficiencies and almost intellectual aloofness--songs that put other such vocalists to shame--pale in comparison to the moody, emotional aesthetics of Naylor's "Live West," the second disk.

My take on East was not far off the mark based on my conversations with Art Khu. While, Khu, (clearly a perfectionist) did get the sound right at Birdland for East, he said there were technical struggles in getting the sound and recording set up properly. He felt there may have been evidence of that tension in East. I told him there were no flaws in East, it just wasn't as good as West and he agreed. East had to be assembled from two or three nights of performances while West was done, essentially, in one evening. He also mentioned that the band on East played perfectly but lacked the long term synergy and artistry that results from experience together--such as the chemistry possessed by the band on West. I was pleased to have my intuitions about the collection reinforced.

It is based on the expressiveness of "Live West" that I sought out an opportunity to see Naylor live. If I was going to write about Naylor's EAST/WEST a "live" album, I thought I should actually see her live in order to be able to adequately assess the live recordings. Serendipitously, the day I looked for such a performance, Friday, August 26th, I found a scheduled performance in my own San Francisco backyard at Chez Hanny.

Chez Hanny is the most intimate of settings. I sat literally inches away from Jacqui--I was practically in her lap (there could be worse fates). With drop dead gorgeous looks that would put Sheryl Crow to shame, with a flick of wrist she could tilt the room and set it spinning. In her beige sequined skirt embroidered with a mandala across the front--she struck a modest figure despite what she called her 'diva' shoes. But good looks and humility don't a jazz singer make.

As most readers of my blog know, I don't throw around applause casually. Even more to the point, if I don't like something I don't hesitate to share my distaste here at TGAP. To not be disliked is often the best I can do for much that I talk about in reviews and discussions. Most objects of my curiosity while of value often have their share of flaws. Typical issues such as an artist reaching beyond their limits, being overly sentimental, artists getting stuck in their own self-consciousness and so forth usually surface when I'm in the experience.

This is not the case in hearing Jacqui Naylor live. Never does her voice overreach or under serve the music. Never does she let her well-endowed voice flood the requisite melody. Never does the smokiness of her voice express personality over fluidity of harmony. If musicians have perfect pitch, Naylor has "perfect taste," sensitivity to vocal restraint in harness that shows in its vocal imagery more than it tells. The emotion never exceeds its cause and that makes the emotion expressed more deeply felt. The emotion is deeply felt because of its balanced tone, its shuddered vicissitude, its indirect glow.

When I think of comparisons to Naylor, I think of Sade with real range. I think of Chet Baker's subdued cool. I think of Tracy Chapman without the overwrought melodrama. Carole King probably has more range and is more innovative in her song writing but King can't hold a stick to the candle of Naylor's true jazz spirit. The comparison between King and Naylor is almost unfair to both--neither aspires to the same artistic objectives save but one: taking the listener to deep and sometimes unexplored emotional territories.

At Chez Hanny's Naylor opened with Jimi Hendrix's "Angel." Naylor has made a habit during her career of taking rock tunes and delivering them in her jazz-standard style. The odd sensation of hearing a Hendrix song you recognize handled by Naylor's smoky smooth vocals feels molten, fluid, yet intended--as if Hendrix had gotten it wrong, as if Hendrix had really written Angel to be sung by Naylor. Naylor's sound and style has intensified over her career...I think much of its latest virtuosity comes from her voice's fortunate pairing with the prowess of her pianist Art Khu.

Khu might just be that genius pianist you pass by at the piano bar at the Hilton but for Naylor. Without Khu, Naylor would have to strain to carry the arrangements because of the inadequacy of her backing. These two need each other. Their future greatness, their legacy, is assured if they stay together. A parallel from the pop music scene is Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. Each without the other are talented misfits...together they were legendary.

Naylor was relaxed and entertaining throughout her set, she launched into "Black Coffee" arranged to Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick" and then transitioned into one of my favorites, her original "City by the Bay." A song that will live long beyond Naylor, a song that sets her at the emotional core of the San Francisco life in the arts. A song that makes her my pick as a city treasure...she is the muse of San Francisco.

After her "City by the Bay" Naylor provided the intimate audience of 10 or so her interpretation of the standard "Blue Moon." When most singers sing this tune it is a rhapsody with undercurrents of lost love, when Naylor sings it, it is a rhapsody of lost love with a deeper theme of spiritual desire for fulfillment, for aesthetic bliss.

After "Blue Moon" Naylor sang one of my two favorite arrangements, Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" sung to Weather Report's "Birdland." The song is filled with humor, but again tinged with that spiritual quality that gives Naylor's jazziness its unique edge. Naylor's excellence became the status quo as she delivered time and again new and deeper aesthetic experiences with "Something Cool," "It Could Happen to You," "Me and Mr. Jones," Buffalo Springfield's "For What its Worth," and she finished her first set with her ars poetica, her follow your bliss statement, "It'll Be Fine."

One gathers from "It'll Be Fine" that it hasn't always been easy for Naylor but as she's followed her bliss it has all worked out as it only could. With the reprise "Do what you want to do..." the melody conveys both the grind of love's labors and the sheer joy of it. The song seems composed after one has discovered that if you just do what you love and do it with joy the rest really does fall in place. At the end of the first set I had that sense, that sense that everything has fallen, is falling, into place for Naylor.

I had to leave before the end of the second set but I did stay long enough to hear "Thank You Baby" the Naylor/Khu original that will be a modern classic. Ten years from now, audiences across the nation will be swooning to this tune as sung by one of a hundred new jazz divas in night clubs across America. You heard it here first.

She followed that up with my favorite of favorites, "My Funny Valentine" sung over AC/DC's "Back in Black." She has long avoided this tune as one always struggles to make it new. Also, hearing Chet Baker sing My Funny Valentine excludes the possibility of trying to deliver the song dark and sub-mellifluously--Baker has dibs on that territory. So, if you are going to make it new...one might as well re-invent the song, and that is what Naylor has done here. She has made "My Funny Valentine" absolutely her own, and once you hear the Khu/Naylor "Back in Black" version you'll never listen to that song the same way again. After the song, as she turned away, I snuck out the door...

As I rush out into the blue sky of day...an unheard of weather condition in San Francisco...I dash to my car late for an appointment in Berkeley. I felt like was leaving a loved one. I so desired not to depart. I could feel the music calling me back and as I hit bumper-to-bumper traffic heading across the Bay Bridge I had a half a mind to turn back around and rush back into Chez Hanny to hear more. This is the effect of a Naylor performance, intimacy and shared ecstasy.

Naylor honors the history and tradition of jazz through her renditions of jazz standards but also makes it new, as any true artist must. This deep reverence for the tradition, plus the raw talent and restraint of that talent in her voice, plus the mastery of Khu's arrangements combine for an experience unlike any other. And when one thinks that the failing of Khu/Naylor will be their originals, that their originals such as "City by the Bay" can't live up to the covers or the "combinations" the originals exceed expectation by becoming, in my estimation, future jazz standards themselves.

Naylor is a self-made artist releasing her music on her own Ruby Star Records Label. This do-it-yourself character flaw is her greatest strength as she is modern testament to creating your wealth and opportunity through fortitude and certainty of belief in what you are doing. Her future is assured, her fan base will grow exponentially in the next few years, she will be labeled a phenom and a jewel of the bay area...but to have seen her now as the star of her spirit emerges, before others have seen it, provides me great pleasure. Her artistic path including her business decisions now--not in the future I am certain will be hers---is a great lesson in taste, judgment, ethics, and joy.

Buy EAST/WEST. Hear some samples and find out more at http://jacquinaylor.com

Frank of Chez Hanny

Me and Mrs. Jones (Jacqui Naylor)