Something Cool

Tierney Sutton | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 24, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Telarc
• ASIN: B00006J9T0
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,403 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #56 in Music > Indie Music > Jazz > General

Track Listings

1. (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66!

2. Something Cool

3. Wouldn't It Be Loverly

4. I've Grown Accustomed To His Face

5. Show Me

6. Comes Love

7. Reflections

8. Alone Together

9. Out Of This World

10. All Or Nothing At All

11. Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead

12. Walkin' After Midnight

13. Crazy

14. The Best Is Yet To Come

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blissful, January 17, 2003

By 

Christopher P. Dunn (The Aloha State) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Something Cool (Audio CD)

Thanks, tippinin44, for bringing us back to reality! And thanks to Tierney Sutton for allowing me to escape it for 60 minutes!

Jazz vocals seem to be all the rage these days, with the charge being led, unfortunately, by "sub-standard" performers/singers like Diana Krall. However, there is another group of singers and performers (Tierney Sutton, Christine Tobin, Paula West, Patricia Barber) that brings us is closer to the music.

Ms. Sutton, I agree, has a well-trained voice. For god's sake, she should; she's head of the jazz vocal dept. at USC. And why that should be a strike against her is beyond me. She has a wonderful voice, can set virtually any mood from sultry to sweet, and has surrounded herself with outstanding musicians.

I must admit to being more fond of her CD "Unsung Heroes" than this one, but the way she catwalks through "Route 66," the way she croons on "Crazy," and the way she stomps and jives in her rendition of "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" is simply wonderful.

Just as there are different interpretations of classical music and debates about who is or who isn't the best pianist, violinist, conductor...so there are debates about jazz and vocalists. Great! There are enough for all tastes. Here's my "key" to the ones I mentioned: if you like a good crisp dry white wine, then Tierney is your woman. If you go for a scotch and a smoke, then it's Christine Tobin. If it's a dingy night club in San Francisco, try Paula West. And if your tastes are rougher, then Patricia Barber should do the trick.

In any case, happy listening. This is a great CD!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a demo-quality audiophile CD - and great performance, December 8, 2008

By 

rash67 (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Something Cool (Multichannel Hybrid SACD) (Audio CD)

I saw the sweet, clever, catlike Tierney Sutton perched on a stool at Blues Alley in a sequined top a few years ago. She puts on a great show. She has marvelous purring technique, she always hit notes dead center of the pitch. Without a pitch cue, she sang acapella for nearly five minutes before the rest of the band came in and came in right on pitch. Incredible. I asked her if she had perfect pitch, and she said "no", but it sounded like it to me. She never hits a note flat or sharp. She has perfect breath/ volume control, she breathes the song. (listen to the begining of Route 66.)

Best songs, most immediately appealing and enchanting are ballads and andante pieces. Ones with true emotion. "Something Cool" on the other hand, when she wants to, shows her ability to hold an audience in the palm of her hand. "Comes Love", "Refections", "Alone Together" "Out of this World" are luminous!

The French for singing, "chant", has the same root as "enchanting". Entertaining music should be enchanting, cast a spell. Tierney & group, on some of these tracks, shows off technique and imaginative arrangement. "Ding dong the Witch" (scat) is irritating, but it wouldn't be memorable if it were sung straight! So some wonderful songs, some that take getting used to. Her great technique is captured on this album. Back-up band is spot-on perfect, especially Trey Henry on bass.


I found after I listen to this album, more, I guess I get used to some of the things, which initially seemed jarring, so it really grows on you. Her rendition of "Route 66" shows wonderful control of pitch and volume and is one of my favorites. What Tierney and gang are trying to do, as a Jazz group, not Pop, is to find innovative ways of presenting songs we are quite familiar with, to catch our attention. Mostly, they succeed.

Recording quality is truely State of the Art, recorded with the listed audiophile equipment, especially on the SACD version.
These is a prolonged "roseny" string bass note and solo at the end of "Route 66" that will really show you what SACD's (and a hi-end stereo) are all about! Accuracy in the first two octaves - 20-40hz and 40-80hz - are amazingly difficult to achieve, but done spectacularly well here!

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grown up and happy, December 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Something Cool (Audio CD)

Tierney Sutton is a miracle. There isn't a jazz singer of either gender in her class. She has wit with sensitivity, musicality with visceral feeling, sass with lyricism, and a wonderful voice - actually THREE wonderful voices, because one of them is like corn-silk, another like honey, and a third that swings with panache. She inhabits the title-song with such imagination she virtually narrates it, using phrasing and melody with piercing precision. This precision, by the way, is the marker of TRUE sensitivity, not the mawkish yowling of so many singers pathetically eager to show us their "feeling" by wearing it on their sleeves.

So why only 4 stars? This is a purely subjective quirk of mine. I loved Sutton's previous two discs (Blue In Green and Unsung Heroes) because they risked being "dark" and often indeed displayed a haunting quality. Something Cool is brighter, more extroverted; many will prefer it. I like it too, but there are few if any musicians who so easily inhabit that place where darkness meets lyricism, and it's the thing I cherish the most about this superb singer.

Finally, this is a BAND, and it shows. Christian Jacob is just fantastic here (pinao), and there's a cohesion and some indefinable spirit of FAMILY about this recording. Listen to the great arrangement of I've Grown Accustomed To His Face and see what I mean. It sounds effortless because the deeper efforts have long since been made; these players know and love one another and now they can relax and swing and make beauty.

I predict that many years from now, students of jazz singing and simple lovers of great music will look back and wish they had lived in The Era of Tierney Sutton. She's that good, and that precious.