Samara Joy - Linger Awhile (Limited Edition) - LP

TAS Rated 5/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the February 2023 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

The New York Times Best Jazz Albums of 2022 - Rated 6/10!
Fred Kaplan's The Best Jazz Albums of 2022 - Rated 10/10!
JazzTimes The Top 40 Jazz Albums of 2022 - Rated 15/40!
AnalogPlanet's Top Jazz Albums of 2022!

Samara Joy is a 2x Grammy winner for Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Album for her Verve Records debut, Linger Awhile. At just 23 years old, her voice, tone and phrasing harken back to legendary jazz vocalists such as labelmates Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday. She is poised to be a household name, synonymous with timeless jazz music.

Available on transparent blue vinyl. Limited Edition.

Samara Joy sings some of the best jazz music you can hear today.

A by-the-book, here's-what-I-can-do major-label debut. Fortunately, Samara Joy's harmonic ideas are riveting enough and her voice so infectious that it doesn't feel like an exercise. On 'Nostalgia,' just try not to crack a smile at the lyrics she wrote to the melody of Fats Navarro's 1947 trumpet solo while you simply shake your head at her command.

Her voice is smooth and gorgeous, she knows how to phrase a lyric for an effect, and she's backed by a first-class rhythm section including spicy Kenny Washington on drums.

Her lush, unpretentious alto doesn't require a great song to excel, but her warmth, sensitivity, and stalwart band accompaniment take command for well-known standards 'Guess Who I Saw Today,' 'Misty,' 'I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)' and ''Round Midnight.'

Technically Joy is flawless, but there's something extra, something no musicologist will ever be able to explain, and that's the sense that Samara Joy was meant to be a jazz singer. You can't teach that, but you certainly can hear it. There's a deep sense of history throughout the record, but the performances never sound stale or academic. Instead, you hear evidence that jazz is a living, breathing art form.