KANDACE SPRINGS: The Women Who Raised Me (Blue Note)
Verdict: Sultry standards
Rating: 
NINA SIMONE: Fodder On My Wings (Verve)
Verdict: Gems from the vaults
Rating:
Kandace Springs isn’t the first female singer to count Prince as one of her mentors.
Chaka Khan, Sheena Easton and Laura Mvula all worked with the maverick American, and indie star Lianne La Havas even hosted an intimate gig by His Royal Badness in her London living room six years ago.
But Springs was one of the last to benefit directly from his artistic guidance. She played at the 30th anniversary of the Purple Rain album and film in 2014 and visited Prince at his Paisley Park studio in January 2016, just three months before his death.
Prince, in turn, praised his protegee for having ‘a voice that can melt snow’.
Tennessee-born Kandace Springs, 31, (pictured) who is also a talented classical pianist, is comfortable with a range of styles
He wasn’t a bad judge. Tennessee-born Springs, 31, who is also a talented classical pianist, is comfortable with a range of styles. The daughter of Nashville session musician Kenneth ‘Scat’ Springs, one of Aretha Franklin’s backing singers, she’s equally at home playing jazz, soul and hip-hop. On 2018’s Indigo, she dipped into contemporary R&B.
Her third album, out now, embraces her jazzier side by paying tribute to a string of female singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Bonnie Raitt and Dusty Springfield.
There’s also a number, I Put A Spell On You, widely associated with Nina Simone, whose largely unheralded 1982 album Fodder On My Wings is reissued today.
Some of Kandace’s musical choices — the Roberta Flack hit Killing Me Softly With His Song; Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit — are a little obvious, but her natural warmth and virtuosity ensure she puts her own distinctive stamp on almost every tune.
Veteran jazz man Larry Klein, who directed Springs’ 2016 debut Soul Eyes, returns as producer, bringing with him a talented backing group that includes saxophonists David Sanborn and Chris Potter.
There’s also a cameo from Norah Jones, Kandace’s ‘ultimate inspiration’ and a perfect duet partner on Ella Fitzgerald’s Angel Eyes.
For those looking for something to soothe the soul, there’s plenty here to help us through troubled times. Some of the less obvious choices stand out.
Solitude, a tribute to jazz singer Carmen McRae, is eerily appropriate at the moment, while Springs salutes Brazilian bossa nova star Astrud Gilberto on Gentle Rain.
She also covers Sade’s Pearls — although her take pays a little too much respect to the 1992 original.
Nina Simone, whose music blended soul, jazz and blues, remains a beacon of inspiration to singers such as Springs, and the repackaging of her 1982 album Fodder On My Wings (pictured) is timely
Simone (pictured), who died in 2003, was always willing to experiment, and this album owes plenty to the African musicians she met in France. I Sing Just To Know That I’m Alive augments her honeyed voice with buoyant brass
Some tracks are blunted by their sheer familiarity. Raitt’s country weepie I Can’t Make You Love Me has been revamped with greater finesse by Adele and Bon Iver, but Springs does bring something fresh to I Put A Spell On You by incorporating elements of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata into her sultry arrangement.
She should have been playing a major London show tonight at the Alexandra Palace Theatre. That concert was this week put back to October.
But The Women Who Raised Me is still a good starting point for anyone looking to lighten the current gloom with a smoky voice, mellow jazz piano — and a touch of Prince’s spontaneity.
Nina Simone, whose music blended soul, jazz and blues, remains a beacon of inspiration to singers such as Springs, and the repackaging of her 1982 album Fodder On My Wings is timely.
Made in Paris, and a hard-to-find, late-period gem since its initial vinyl release on French label Disques Carrere, it’s out again today on CD and vinyl and also available to stream for the first time.
Simone, who died in 2003, was always willing to experiment, and this album owes plenty to the African musicians she met in France. I Sing Just To Know That I’m Alive augments her honeyed voice with buoyant brass.
On Liberian Calypso, she sings of dancing naked at a disco: ‘I slowly began to strip, everyone thought I was so hip.’
Despite quality contributions from percussionists Paco Sery and Sydney Thiam, it’s an uneven record. Stop, a bonus track on a 1988 CD reissue, is an odd song voicing Nina’s distaste for Stephen Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns. But a headstrong cover of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again (Naturally), its lyrics rewritten to address her father’s death, reiterates her artistry.
n Kandace Springs is due to play Alexandra Palace Theatre, London, on October 31 (ticketmaster.co.uk).
Full stream ahead for Billie and co
Pop’s live streaming craze continues to offer light relief during the lockdown, with Billie Eilish and Camila Cabello among the latest to deliver new music while isolating at home.
Sitting on a couch and sporting a baseball cap, Eilish was joined by her brother Finneas for an unadorned acoustic version of her hit Bad Guy as part of Fox’s Living Room Concert For America.
The clip, with family pics in the background, is on YouTube. The TV special, hosted last weekend by Elton John, also featured Cabello duetting with boyfriend Shawn Mendes.
Sitting on a couch and sporting a baseball cap, Eilish was joined by her brother Finneas for an unadorned acoustic version of her hit Bad Guy as part of Fox’s Living Room Concert For America
Gary Barlow’s ‘crooner sessions’ are also proving a regular delight. Posted at 5pm each weekday on YouTube, the series features the Take That songwriter duetting with other musicians via video calls.
Katherine Jenkins, Rick Astley and Olly Murs have all guested, although the pick of the bunch so far has seen Barlow and Beverley Knight going the full George Michael and Aretha on a show-stopping I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me). Madonna’s quarantine diaries also continue along their bizarre path, with last week’s bathtub rant followed by more rambling monologues and an impromptu version of Big Spender.
Elsewhere, Manchester band Blossoms compensated for the cancellation of their spring tour by putting a recent Stockport gig online in full last Saturday, while fellow Mancunian JP Cooper has posted an ‘i-soul-ation’ cover of Justin Bieber’s Yummy on his website.
New releases
M. WARD: Migration Stories (Anti-)
Rating:
Matt Ward has long been the guitarist of choice for the U.S. indie-pop elite. Here he teams up with members of Arcade Fire to dispatch travellers’ tales from an America of dusty highways and old railroads. A slow start leads to something interesting as he croons cowboy ballad Along The Santa Fe Trail.
M. WARD: Migration Stories (Anti-)
REN HARVIEU: Revel In The Drama (Bella Union)
Rating: 
Hotly tipped for her debut album in 2012, the Salford singer saw her career derailed after a serious back injury. Now recovered, she returns with a modern spin on classic pop melodrama, all strings and torch ballads co-written with Romeo Stodart, of The Magic Numbers.
REN HARVIEU: Revel In The Drama (Bella Union) Rating:
Classical
PURCELL: The Fairy Queen (Signum SIGCD 615, two CDs)
Rating: 
It is difficult to think of this delightful score by Henry Purcell being better performed than it is here.
Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort and Players have been performing The Fairy Queen for a quarter of a century and have evolved their own very convincing edition.
PURCELL: The Fairy Queen (Signum SIGCD 615, two CDs)
The best-known soloists are baritone Roderick Williams and soprano Carolyn Sampson — she is lovely in the two finest arias, The Plaint and Hark The Echoing Air.
You would not guess from most of this masque that Purcell and his colleagues based it on A Midsummer Night’s Dream: there are fairies aplenty but the play would be spoken.
The orchestral music is superb and it is good to be reminded that the word ‘punk’ was being used in Purcell’s time — eat your heart out, Johnny Rotten.
