Quincy Jones-Birth of A Band
Birth of a band loses out to Tierney Sutton's "American Road". Birth of a band is just a great record. I became aware of this record while reading Q's auto-biography and it took me years to search it out. This record is so swinging. The writing isn't ground-breaking per se, but it's just so well executed. I wish the liner notes were complete so I knew who was playing on it. Seek it out.
Abigail Washburn-City of Refuge
City of Refuge loses out to Boston's first album. Again this is a list of CD's I bought this year, and not a listing of titles that were issued or re-issued this year. City of Refuge starts with some strong songs, and finishes pretty well. It loses me in the middle act. There's some great cats on here, but most of the mixes are very dense. Hard to really pick out exactly what the individual contributions are. It's a decent record, but no where near as strong as the disc it went up against.
Lee Morgan-The Cooker
This was a toss up against Geoff Keezers "Falling Up". Lee was such a unique voice in Black American Music. PC and Philly Joe play right down the middle but nothing matches Brownie's intensity. The material choice is your pretty typical standards. Falling Up just brings sounds to my ear I haven't heard before. It's a tough call, but The Cooker won't continue
Sarah Jarosz-Follow Me Down
This doesn't pass as it comes up against tough competition from Yo-Yo Ma. Follow me down is grammy nominated in engineering and I couldn't agree more. The writing is solid, and Sarah wrote most of the tracks. There's an all star cast on this, and unlike City of Refuge, the individual players are present and you can identify them even without the aid of liner notes in many cases. Jerry Douglas, Viktor Krauss and Stuart Duncan all make major contributions. Plus there's plenty of one-track cameos to dig too. An outstanding set of music.
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