Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, July 6, 2008 - Bob Karlovits
Singer Shea Breaux Wells manages to sidestep one of the great flaws in jazz albums. She loads her album "A Blind Date" with familiar songs such as "Blue Skies," "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Night in Tunisia," but manages to give them life. That is primarily because she has a fine voice and sense of song. She also has surrounded herself with a crew featuring pianist George Cables, bassist Cecil McBee, drummer Billy Hart and sax player Craig Handy. She even tosses in an original, "Dark Matters," that fits well into the hard-bop nature of the album. Wells has a strong voice that she is able to restrain nicely on Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Corcovado." Her sense of song also is sincere enough that she is able to put lyrics to "I Remember Clifford" without making them sound hokey. That is true, too, for "All Blues," a song others have butchered vocally.
Singer Shea Breaux Wells manages to sidestep one of the great flaws in jazz albums. She loads her album "A Blind Date" with familiar songs such as "Blue Skies," "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Night in Tunisia," but manages to give them life. That is primarily because she has a fine voice and sense of song. She also has surrounded herself with a crew featuring pianist George Cables, bassist Cecil McBee, drummer Billy Hart and sax player Craig Handy. She even tosses in an original, "Dark Matters," that fits well into the hard-bop nature of the album. Wells has a strong voice that she is able to restrain nicely on Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Corcovado." Her sense of song also is sincere enough that she is able to put lyrics to "I Remember Clifford" without making them sound hokey. That is true, too, for "All Blues," a song others have butchered vocally.
