Sasha Dobson - Girl Talk (2021); Dobson's Vocals and Compositions Join Peter Bernstein's Incredible Guitar To Set the Sixties On It's Ear to Make a Must Hear Jazz Album

March 13, 2022

Photos: Courtesy of the artist

They say that the best music towns are Nashville, Austin and New Orleans. I wouldn't argue the point except to add Los Angelos, Chicago and New York City to the list. A case could be made for NYC as the best music town of all. I've never had the pleasure of visiting The Big Easy, but I've been to all the others and I'm here to say that New York's volume of venues, of all stripes and sizes, has a lot going for it.

Back in the mid 1990s, I fell for a little group known as Once Blue and saw them play live a couple of times. Once Blue was composed of Jesse Harris and Rebecca Martin. You may know Harris from his work with Norah Jones and his Grammy winning composition "Don't Know Why." Once Blue only released one wonderful album before breaking up, but at the time I would have gone anywhere to see singer Rebecca Martin.

I think it was 1997 when I trekked up to NYC to see her at The Living Room's original Lower East Side location. Martin had gone on to a career as a jazz singer. The room was small, maybe 100 people, with a bar and a stage of sorts. Small venues in that neighborhood had a free admission policy that required only one drink per set and tipping the artist as you saw fit. Bands changed every hour making it conducive to seeing someone before and after the person you came to see. On that first visit, we got there early and just happened to catch a fine set by Richard Julian.

Fast forward a few years and The Living Room had moved and the Rockwood Music Hall had opened nearby. Both venues featured the same operating policy and it was easy to patronize both venues on the same night depending on each one's schedule. For more on this, check out my complete article L.E.S. Is More. The long and the short of it is that going back up to see Julian led me to Sasha Dobson who I then saw many times in the years that have followed.

Singer-songwriters were a dime a dozen at these venues, but there was always something a little different about Dobson's live performances. She was a singer-songwriter, to be sure, but there were threads of jazz and sometimes a little bossa nova in her mix. As such, it was no surprise to see Dobson gravitate to Norah Jones. In addition to being one-third of Norah's side project, Puss 'n Boots (sort of an all female version of Norah's other side project The Little Willies, which included Richard Julian), Dobson has also toured with Jones being both opening act and a member of her band.

Girl Talk is a delightful mix of new original songs and some extremely well chosen covers. Dobson is in fine voice throughout. Her excellent band includes a very jazzy electric guitar played by Peter Bernstein. He artfully backs her when she's singing, and then deftly goes to town with wondrous solos when she's not. On the Dobson penned original "Better Days" the superb rhythm section, lead by drummer Kenny Wollesen, is in perfect lockstep with the guitar.

The title track is one of the well chosen covers, featuring a backing vocal by Norah Jones, that works so well you might think it was an original.

I love the deliberately slow pace of another ingeniously chosen cover, "Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps." The song was written by Osvaldo Farres and was recorded by Doris Day for an album that came out in 1965. Incidentally, the Day recording appeared recently in the Disney film Cruella (2021). Dobson's take sounds phenomenal, comparing favorably to the version by British pop vocalist Mari Wilson, which was used on the BBC television comedy Coupling (PBS showed it here in The States). No matter who does it, the song has that '60s sheen to it, just ripe for a jazz rendition.

The cool covers on this album are all standards of pop and jazz. I don't know if there's a rule about what makes a standard, but if it has anything to do with cover versions, these songs have tons. Dobson produced the album herself and she rightly deserves credit for the excellent song selection and sequencing. What's more, her two original compositions fit right in. "Better Days" opens the album quite nicely.

"You're the Death of Me" feels right at home between "Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps" and "The Great City." The latter was written by Curtis Lewis and first appeared in 1961 on a recording by Nancy Wilson. It's one of those songs that when you hear it you know that you've heard it before, you just don't know when. It's another song that just smacks of the '60s.

"Softly as in a Morning Sunrise," the song that Oscar Hammerstein II and Sigmund Romberg wrote that dates from 1928, has something in common with "Time On My Hands" by Adamson, Gordon and Youmans, and it's not just that the later is from the same timeframe (1930). Both tracks feature the vibraphone of Sasha's brother, Smith Dobson. This first collaboration of these siblings pays off in a big way.

The classic "Autumn Nocturne" begins with a bass solo that becomes the solo bass opening to the song. The album ends on another '60s high note with Nancy Sinatra's #1 hit "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'". There have been a plethora of covers of this Lee Hazelwood tune, but I don't think I've ever heard one like this. The Dobson version suggests that this tune was made for jazz treatment, sounding perfect in all the right places.

The last thing I'll add is that the quality of Bernstein's musicianship cannot be overestimated, he is not just amazingly talented, but his guitar work is amazingly tasteful as well. If you're going to record jazz guitar, you really can't go wrong with Bernstein. His guitar and Dobson's overall artistry really set this album apart.