Customer Reviews

Everybody's Talkin' Bout Miss Thing

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When Johnny Otis gave his blessings to Lavay and the boys a few years ago it just confirmed what saavy listeners in the Bay area knew already. They smoke! This CD is a great sophomore effort (avoiding the dread slump afflicting so many bands in almost every genre). Great song selections, arrangements, lush vocals with just the right amount of bite by Lavay and a joyous swing vibe throughout. If you don't want to dance to this music, you must be dead. Also a serious tip of the hat for the superb analog like (meant in the best sense) sound quality, it's HDCD mastered by Paul Stubblebine (an SF audio engineer legend). Buy this CD, take your significant other out for a spin and enjoy a glorious Spring season.

In the tradition of great jazz, R&B, and blues singer Helen Humes, Lavay Smith carries on where Humes left off when she passed away not all that long ago. Smith has a saucy way of singing much like Bessie Smith and the Smith girls(Mamie, Clara, & Trixie. all unrelated) Smith sings a lyric with feeling, weather it be seductive, humorous or raunchy. Though hr 1st CD "One Hour Mama" was more the the traditional blues, her newest release "Miss Thang" is more in the 40's R&B style, where Smith pays tribute to Humes with "Voo-It" and she also pays tribute to Mr. Five by Five Jimmy Rushing in "Sent For You Yesturday." If you want to hear a new jazz/bluus singer who truly can swing and sing in the tradition of the real thing(1920's-40's), go see Lavay smith next time she's in town, and buy all her Cd's. Her backup band can play anything from classic blues to be-bop oriented material. If you are into jazz this is for you. Lavay Smith & her red hot skillet lickers are the best new(meaning old 20's, sounding) thing today, they are great.

I bought this CD on a whim - having never owned a swing album - and I have not regretted it for one second! The creativity in the band name alone is worth 5 stars! Lavay Smith's smokin' hot vocals will hook you from the get-go and the musicians are equally as incredible sounding. My personal favorite songs are the upbeat "Big Fine Daddy", the sultry "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You" and "He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped", but there is not a bad song on this CD. It is the one CD that everyone who has heard it wants to borrow from my collection.

We have loved Lavay's music for several years now and own both her CD's ("One Hour Mama" her debut in 1996). We have just seen her in concert last evening and this lady is gorgeous! The Boys (Red Hot Skillet Lickers) opened her set with two jumping numbers then Lavay took the stage with a smoldering rendition of "Big Fine Daddy". The rest of the show was awesome with Lavay doing little shimmy dances between musician solos and truly enjoying herself on stage.

This CD is awesome as well. It's her best work to date. So many great tunes and her slow sensuous ballads such as "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You?" and "I Want A Little Boy" are pure Lavay! The Boys are gifted, talented musicians with decades of experience amongst them. The oldest being in his 70s and the youngest in his 20s. It's a tight group led by an incredible pianist Chris Siebert who along with Lavay Smith formed the group in 1989.

If you like jumping hot Swing-Jazz music without frills then this group is for you. Also see Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers live if you can. It's a great show!

I will start my review with this simple fact: I own just over 36,000 CDS and this is my favorite.

Lavay Smith is a bawdy songstress backed by the finest jumping jazz ensemble in America today. An undulating copulation of seasoned and inventive musicians pay homage to 1930 and 1940's classics and not-so-classic cocktail culture jazz with heavy swing and upper Mississippi music (Kansas City-Chicago) with spectacular arrangements.The title track is a bounty of naughty, a torch song for the unabashed sexuality that jazz has always promoted. "Roll the Boogie" has a running piano (Chris Siebert) that nearly melts the CD.

A truly flawless presentation that, amazingly, upstages their previous tour de force, "One Hour Mama"

Lastly, this is the ultimate good mood music. You can't be angry or down-in-the-dumps when Lavay belts out "Honey Pie". Buy this CD, then thank me for the rest of your natural born life.

There isn't a bad track on this cd. It's very danceable, and has a much more developed and authentic sound than a lot of neoswing bands ever accomplished. If you're even the least bit curious about neoswing music, this would be a great album to get.

Although both albums are good, I prefer this one to the band's first effort, <i>One Hour Mama</i> because the arrangements make more use of the horn section -- about the only complaint I've heard about the first album is "Too much piano! Too Much Boogie Woogie Piano!" Don't get me wrong, the piano's still there and still sounds great to those who like that sort of thing, like myself, but the more balanced arrangements should help other folks from getting boogie woogie overload.

So yeah, buy the cd. You won't be sorry.

This isn't as strong a release as her all standards 1st(One Hour Mama) cd, however this one features Lavay in the same setting and the same band but with more original material, and more jump blues, early R&B, sounding a bit like mid forties Helen Humes. This cd is exellent and features Lavays tight band, jumping and swinging very hard, and yet taking extensive jazz solos throughout. Smith sounds eerilie like Billie Holiday on Now Baby or Never and like Dinah Washington on the opening numner, but otherwise has her own style and identity, but sounding as though she came out of 1946. This cd was a #1 seller at Borders Books & Music Stores for jazz, and also stayed on the jazz billboard charts for a long time, showing that the late 90's Swing revival wasn't just a fad. This cd will be enjoyed by swing dancer and jazz fans everywhere.

I bought this CD on a whim, on an Amazon recommendation. Well, thank you Amazon for introducing me to Lavay and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers! This is one of the best CDs I've heard in years -- superb musicianship that SWINGS, a mixture of blues, swing, and r&b that is as thrilling as it's eclectic, and, in Lavay, one of the sexiest voices since Billie Holliday. The original songs hold their own with the reworkings of numbers pioneered by Dinah Shore, Count Basie, Jay McShann and Dizzy Gillespie. I often think that Amazon reviewers are profligate with the "5 Stars," but this deserves every one. Bravo!

Although Miss Smith has her own sound, she captures the authentic mood of a mid 50's Ruth Brown record, liek Hello little Boy, although tah tsong is not here, this album sounds similar to the sound of theta classic Brown record. This cd is loaded with energy, and there are obvious tributes to Dinah Washington in Big Fine Daddy, Billie Holiday in Now Or Never, and Helen Humes in Everybody's Talkin' Bout Miss Thing.

This cd features classic r&b arrangements and a tight band, with just enough room for thoughtful swing oriented jazz and r&b solos, for the saxes. This cd is exellent, and Lavay's voice is like honey. We should be thankful to her parents for migrating with her from the Philippines, to San Francisco as a young girl. She started singing 1920's bawdy blues with the Bo grumpus Trio, in SF, and named herself Smith, presumably after Bessie, Clara, Trixie, & Mamie, who were all exellent blues singers from the 1920's. a great cd, and a great singer!

Caught Lavay and the boys at their recurring gig at the Top of the Mark in San Francisco this Summer and was so impressed I ordered up this, her more recent CD, as soon as I got home. A great live act and an excellent recording --time to get back in the studio, Skillet Lickers! Seeing Lavay at the Top of the Mark is a wonderful San Francisco experience. Despite Armistead Maupin's dissing of the club in Tales of the City, the views of the town are amazing and the cover charge is reasonable ($10 when I was there, and they forgot to add it to the bill). Add Lavy Smith to the mix, and it was like riding a time machine back to a more elegant time. Not a lot of performers putting out big band swing these days (a few do western swing nicely, such as Asleep at the Wheel). Lavay and her group play their music in a way that is respectful of the past but not cloyingly imitative (don't always feel that way about that Setzer dude). It's hard to distinguish their originals from their covers from the 40s. A great group that deserves even more recognition outside of their home town.