Abbey Lincoln & Hank Jones – When There Is Love (1993)

Abbey Lincoln – Hank Jones
When There Is Love
1993 Gitanes Jazz Productions / Verve Records – 314 519 697-2
Genre:Jazz || Style:Bop, Post Bop

I have been wanting to do some posts about the great Abbey Lincoln ever since I started this blog, and yet for some reason it’s never happened.  Let this be the year, then.  I also never would have imagined that I would choose this atypical album as her first entry here.  But there is something very warm, charming, and relaxing about this collaboration with Hank Jones that seems to fit the mixture of exhaustion, laziness, and regeneration of energy to face a new and unknown world that’s marked these first few days of 2019 for me.  We can get into Abbey’s more intense material later, but right now this will do just fine.

1 A Part Of Me / There Are Such Things 4:35
2 When There Is Love 4:43
3 Black Butterfly 3:26
4 Angel Face 5:36
5 The Nearness Of You 5:38
6 Can’t Help Singing 2:31
7 Close Your Eyes 3:06
8 I Should Care 5:45
9 You Came A Long Way From St. Louis 3:55
10 C’est Si Bon 5:43
11 The Jitterbug Waltz 3:16
12 Time After Time 4:33
13 You Won’t Forget Me 5:12
14 First Came A Woman 5:41

Recorded At – Studio Davout
Mastered At – BMG Studios, NY

Credits

Art Direction – Patrice Beauséjour
Design – CB Graphic
Engineer – Claude Ermelin
Engineer [Assistant] – Hubert Salou
Mastered By – J. Newland*
Photography By – Carol Friedman
Piano – Hank Jones
Producer – Jean-Philippe Allard
Vocals – Abbey Lincoln

From the liner notes:

In 1992, after “Devil’s Got Your Tongue” was done and in the can, our producer, Jean-Philippe Allard, told me it was probably the only album of music he’d heard without a love song for a man and a woman.

It’s true that I do have a sombre outlook and assessment of the world in which we live, but I also have love, love for the beautiful man that makes life bearable in an otherwise unbearable world.  So this is my offering on the altar of conjugal love.

“When There Is Love” is a collection of songs, some of which I have sung over the years, and some of them are brand new, because for me there has always been love. — Abbey Lincoln

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