Comments for Wilson, Cassandra, Blue Light 'Til Dawn

A fine and challenging release that provided avant-garde progressive jazz artist Cassandra Wilson with her first taste of crossover triumph. Producer Craig Street matched Wilson`s smoky, sensual vocals with guitars, fiddles, strings, and lots of eclectic percussion (no ordinary piano for this lady). And the exciting instrumentation and production only makes the eclectic choice of material all the more thrilling. The jazz standrads "You Don`t Know What Love Is" and "Tell Me You`ll Wait for Me" are given beautiful readings; the blues classics "Come On in My Kitchen" and "Hellhound on My Trail" are interpreted with a fresh and soothing approach; and Ann Peebles` hit "I Can`t Stand the Rain" is given an innovative makeover that makes one wonder about the glorious, mysterious workings of Cassandra Wilson`s mind. Van Morrison`s "Tupelo Honey" is given a pop/light jazz treatment so fine it deserved to be a major adult contemporary single, and her version of Joni Mitchell`s "Black Crow" is so different and exciting that you just KNOW Joni loves it...and you will, too. "Blue Light" only contains a couple of missteps: her reading of "Children of the Night" is a bit muddled, and the title track, a Wilson original, contains a nice musical groove but less-than-extraordinary lyrics; "let`s get together/everybody`s in the house" is more a phrase you`d expect from a dance diva than a jazz chanteuse of Wilson`s caliber. But even these tunes go beyond listenability, and "Blue Light `Til Dawn" was, for a while, Wilson`s finest release...that is, until she recorded "New Moon Daughter"...