Antoinette Montague, Behind The Smile

Antoinette Montague is a jazz singer who has been playing the New York City jazz clubs regularly the past few years, both fronting her own bands and also sitting in wherever and whenever she can. The hard work has paid off on her second album, Behind the Smile, which shows she can hold her own with most of the other female jazz singers currently working today. When she was starting out she was mentored by four singers from the preceding generation -- Carrie Smith, Etta Jones, Della Griffin and Myrna Lake. There were undoubtedly a lot of lessons to be learned from those ladies.

One lesson seems to be that you can take any song and make it your own, and also transport it into the world of jazz with the right arrangement and good jazz musicians behind you. Antoinette fronts a strong jazz quartet (piano, sax, bass and drums) and does not shy away from attacking a very wide variety of material from the church-like Duke Ellington arrangement of the "23rd Psalm" to "Somewhere in the Night" which was the theme song for the 1960s television show "The Naked City." Even more incredible are Montague's readings of a pair of Sixties soul classics -- Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" (who would have thought this could be sung as jazz?) and Smokey Robinson's "Get Ready" (an R&B hit and a rock hit back then by two different acts).

Montague can be loose and free-wheeling one moment, and tight, right-on-the-money the next. Her singing is warm and personable. She gives her top-notch band room for some solos. The final result is some very strong jazz from some surprising source material. Grade those lessons from her past with a gold star.