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Naama Gheber: I’m A Fool To Want You
By Track review of "I'm A Fool To Want You""I'm A Fool To Want You" was composed by Frank Sinatra, Jack Wolf, and Joel Herron, originally released in 1951 on the Columbia 78, 39425. The song ostensibly was written about Ava Gardner, with whom Sinatra was having a very public affair, one that badly damaged his family and career at the time. It became one of Sinatra's most popular performance songs. But it is another performance of the song that informs Gheber's performance, that of Billie Holiday on her near valedictory Lady In Satin (Columbia, 1958). Here, Holiday was singing on fumes, all grit, and emotion. Her voice shot, closing in on the end (she was to die of cirrhosis a year later), Holiday demonstrated how the consummate artist concludes...never with the expectation that is what she was doing.
Gheber distills Holiday's plush, orchestra-driven performance to the small concentrated confines of the jazz singer supported only by piano. Pianist Ben Paterson establishes a darkly hewn environment of regret that Gehber readily inhabits, channeling Holiday's resigned phrasing ever so lightly. Gheber's voice is well-balanced presenting the self sympathy, resignation, and crushing loss as densely realized experiences. Gheber's performance could serve as an appropriate preamble to what happens to the protagonist of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," the bitter end of an evolution toward loss and despair. This is what the best singing accomplishes.
Personnel
Naama Gheber
vocalsBen Paterson
pianoAlbum information
Title: If I Knew Then | Year Released: 2022 | Record Label: Sassy's In Town
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Naama Gheber
Album Review
C. Michael Bailey
I’m A Fool To Want You (Naama Gheber)
Sassy's In Town
Veronic Swift
Cecile McLorin Salvant
Jane Monheit
Ben Paterson
Billy Strayhorn