Cécile McLorin Salvant - Dreams and Daggers (2017)

Cécile McLorin Salvant’s ascension cannot be slowed. WomanChild, the New York-based singer’s first album on Mack Avenue Records and second release overall, was nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award for best jazz vocal album; her next release, For One to Love, took home the 2016 Grammy in the same category.
Following up her Grammy win, McLorin Salvant release her third album on Mack Avenue Records, called Dreams and Daggers, a double set of discs mainly recorded live with her band over three nights at the Village Vanguard — the venerable Greenwich Village jazz club. A handful of tracks in the collection of 23 were later recorded in studio with a string quartet.
“I wanted there to be contrasts thematically,contrasts in terms of texture and sound, and beyond that, I really didn’t want it to be contrived,” she told Centre Daily Times. “It’s a various perspective album dealing with questions of identity, questions of all these steps of conscious things that happen in a woman’s mind, dealing with love, standards of beauty, fears, pain, fun, laughter — all of that went into the album.”

To listen to Dreams and Daggers’ songs is a little like sitting down to a one-woman play: McLorin Salvant includes interpretations and twists on songs like “Mad About the Boy,” plaintively blurting out the word “mad” during a hushed moment at the four-minute mark (pulling laughter from the audience), and including tongue-in-cheek takes on “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues” and Josephine Baker’s “Si j’étais blanche” (“If I was White). The album’s songs include original compositions, French and vaudeville songs, jazz standards and even some work by Langston Hughes.

“I think it’s important in life but also in art to be able to laugh,” McLorin Salvant told Open Mind host Alexander Heffner. “And you can get a lot of interesting messages across when you say them with a laugh, and when people laugh at them.”

Tracklist:

CD1:

01. And Yet
02. Devil May Care
03. Mad About The Boy
04. Sam Jones' Blues
05. More
06. Never Will I Marry
07. Somehow I Never Could Believe
08. If A Girl Isn't Pretty
09. Red Instead
10. Runnin' Wild
11. The Best Thing For You

CD2:

01. You're My Thrill
02. Didn't Know What Time It Was
03. Tell Me What They're Saying Can't Be True
04. Nothing Like You
05. You've Got To Give Me Some
06. The Worm
07. My Man's Gone Now
08. Let's Face The Music And Dance
09. Si j'??tais blanche
10. Fascination
11. Wild Women Don't Have The Blues
12. You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me