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A Minister of Music

A Minister of Music

Ask Steven Bernstein what he appreciates about Catherine Russell and the bandleader is quick to heap on praise. “As a vocalist, she’s pure humanity, but then she has all the technique, on both the sonic level and a rhythmic level, to put her in this very special group of musicians who operate at that high of a plane,” says Bernstein, a slide trumpeter and founder of the avant-jazz ensemble Sexmob, among other groups. “Truth be told, she’s a minister of music, but with the absolute chops and knowledge necessary to be just as great as any musician can possibly be.”

On the recent Good Time Music (Royal Potato Family), Russell fronts Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra through a rousing set of six early jazz and blues numbers. The record spotlights the sassy vocals that have put Russell on the call sheet of such A-list acts as David Bowie, Paul Simon, Wynton Marsalis, and Donald Fagen—she contributed to both 2021’s Northeast Corridor: Steely Dan Live! and Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly: Live. Russell also shared a 2012 Grammy Award for her raucous spin on Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire soundtrack, earned a pair of Grammy nominations for her solo albums, and appeared in the 2019 film Bolden, a dramatic portrayal of New Orleans jazz-cornet legend Buddy Bolden.  

NPR once opined that Russell has “a voice that wails like a horn and whispers like a snake in the Garden of Eden.”

Her newly released eighth solo album, Send for Me (Dot Time), continues in that vein. It features romantic swing songs by Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Betty Carter, Joe Liggins, Helen Humes, and Louis Armstrong, among others. “A good story makes a good song—one that you can live through while you sing it,” Russell says. “I like a good melody.”

Send for Me also includes “At the Swing Cats Ball,” co-written by her father, Luis Russell, the pioneering Panamanian jazz pianist, composer, and orchestra leader who served for several years as Louis Armstrong’s music director. It’s Russell’s latest tribute to her father. “The first song I recorded on my very first album, Cat, is called ‘Sad Lover Blues,’ which my father’s orchestra recorded in 1946,” she says. 

After Luis’ death in 1963, Catherine’s mother, Carline Ray—a classically trained vocalist and guitarist—encouraged her then-young daughter’s interests as a dancer and musician. “I knew my father for the first seven years of my life,” Russell says. “My mother was a professional choral singer at that time, as well as being a session bass player, so I used to go to recording sessions with her as well as classical choral rehearsals. It was very exciting to see how everything was done. After my father passed, mom and I would listen to our little radio in the kitchen every morning, and we’d listen to the popular music of the time on a [WNEW] show called ‘Make-Believe Ballroom.’ This is where I heard everyone from Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Bobby Darin to Ella Fitzgerald and Eydie Gormé. Then we’d watch TV variety shows at night with many of the same artists. My mother also took me to jazz gigs, so I heard Thelonious Monk, as well as attending Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. We also listened to classical music and opera at home, and attended opera performances. I had a good cultural upbringing in New York City.”

In the 1980s, while visiting a Manhattan nightclub, guitarist and bandleader Jimmy Vivino invited Russell onstage to perform with Fagen. She made an impression—in 1992, Fagen asked her to join his New York Rock and Soul Revue. She stayed for a couple of years before moving on to Bowie’s Heathen tour and sessions for his Reality album. In 2004, after failing health sidelined Bowie, Russell signed to Harmonia Mundi and recorded her solo debut. Each successive solo album brought praise from the pundits—in 2016, Jazz Times declared that her rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Harlem on My Mind” qualified Russell as “a post-millennial answer to Dinah Washington.”

In 2008, Bernstein contributed two horn arrangements to Russell’s second album, Sentimental Streak, recorded at Levon Helm’s Barn in Woodstock, New York. The following year, he asked Russell to join his Hot 9 band on its critically acclaimed tour with New Orleans pianist and vocalist Henry Butler. It was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. “They can play anything, which gives me the freedom to express myself in different ways within the same song,” Russell says of Bernstein’s band. “It’s really fun!”

Bernstein is no less effusive: “She’s singing from a higher power and from a higher place,” he says. “She is the rarest combination of spirit and science, and the kind of human who makes the world a better place just by being in the room.” 

Tags: MUSIC

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