Suzy Bogguss is a highly popular country star, and something of a Nashville maverick. Which means she got famous enough before Music City was totally taken over by the big labels and the suits that she can continue to make the kind of music she wants. With Swing! she does what pop stars in many genres — from Willie Nelson to Harry Nilsson to Linda Ronstadt — have done before her. She reaches way back into her roots to record an album of mellow, urbane swing and jazz standards and contemporary songs written in that mode.
This album is a success from start to finish. It’s beautifully recorded, with lots of air around all the instruments and vocals, with a crisp clarity that allows every sound to come through. Bogguss has an achingly pure, sweet voice and she sings these songs without a trace of affectation or distracting mannerism. She’s not at all breathy, and she hits those notes that should be hit, and slides to the ones that she should slide to.
The songs are well selected, whether they’re standards or contemporary, in a good variety of tempos. Nearly all of them highlight the kind of clever wordplay that makes the best of this kind of romantic vocal jazz. It helps that Bogguss is backed by a top-notch band, led by Ray Benson (of Asleep at the Wheel) and ace pianist Floyd Domino. But the focus is on Bogguss and her vocals, and she definitely holds up her end of the deal.
The two best-known numbers are the opening track, Nat “King” Cole’s first big hit, “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” and the Duke Ellington standard “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me.” The bulk of the songs, however, were composed by April Barrows, a contemporary Nashville jazz-pop singer-songwriter. The most endearing is “Burning the Toast,” a frothy song of newlywed love that I suspect would have been covered by Doris Day at her peak. Bogguss and Benson turn in a swell duet on “Cupid Shot Us Both With One Arrow,” and the whole gang brings the record to a rousing climax on the sprightly “Stay Out of My Dreams.”
Other standout tracks are Paul Kramer’s “Picadilly Circus” and Ken Burgan’s “Sweetheart (Waitress in a Donut Shop).” The one track that doesn’t quite swing with the rest is one Bogguss co-wrote, “It’s Always New to Me.” But Bogguss’s Swing! could well be the romantic record of the year.
(Compadre, 2003)
