re: #85 Charles Johnson

I really like Annie Lennox, but that was a sadly tone-deaf summary of such an important song. I went to iTunes and listened to some other sample tracks from her “jazz” album, and wow, did she ever miss with this one. Not just “Strange Fruit,” although that’s the worst - her interpretations of other jazz standards do not swing at all.

Won’t be buying this album.

There’s a singer from Singapore named Olivia Ong who sings a lot of songs from the Great American Songbook. Her voice is good, pronunciation is OK (though she pronounces “all” more like “aall” than “awl”), tone is mostly spot on. But she doesn’t swing them too well, and I don’t really get the sense she “feels” the song like Diane Krall, for example, does.