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Artist News Releases
Chrissie Hynde announces jazzy covers album
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 26 April 2019
Chrissie Hynde has announced a new covers album, ‘Valve Bone Woe’, which will see her tackling songs originally performed by The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Nick Drake, The Kinks and more in a jazz style.
“A few years back when I saw an obit in the paper for the valve-trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, I mailed my jazz sax-playing brother saying ‘RIP Bob Brookmeyer'”, explains Hynde. “Terry, a man of few words, responded with ‘Valve Bone Woe’, a kind of Haiku beatnik prose”.
“I thought that was a perfect title for the album I’d been working on with producer Marius de Vries”, she goes on. “I’m not hugely interested in branching out into other musical genres, being a devout rock singer as such, but jazz is something I grew up around – thanks to my bro – and I’ve always had a soft spot for it”.
“I often bemoan what I regard as a decline in melody in popular music and I wanted to sing melodies” she adds. “Plus, I have a penchant for cover songs, it’s the surprise of singing something that I didn’t think of writing myself that turns me on”.
Concluding, Hynde muses: “Jazz got side-lined by rock n roll in the 60s, but now the demise of rock seems to be heralding in a newfound interest in it, the most creative and innovative musical forms of the 20th century. I’m happy to jump on the bandwagon”.
Rock is dead then. Long live jazz. Listen to jazzed up versions of The Beach Boys’ ‘Caroline, No’ and already pretty jazzy jazz standard ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’ here.