Customer Reviews

The Speed of Life

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If you are a fan of sophisticted, deep and witty jazz singing you'll fall in love with CD. Eastman is in the very top echelon of practitioners of the art. I especially like her soulful cover of Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free" and her contemporary treatment of "Up on the Roof." Highly recommended!

Eastman is a San Francisco Bay Area-based jazz singer. She swings, scats, teases a ballad and takes risks. She has a fine vibrato that she does not use often in the service of a song. She can be Betty Carter-daredevil one minute and be Dominique Eade-cerebral in another. Her version of "Get Happy" was unlike what we have heard of in years. She cuts the phrases and syllabicated some in unexpected ways. Her version of Carole King's "Up On A Roof" will make you realize how this woman can just about make any music sound jazzy.

Wow, what a sensational CD! I've always admired Madeline Eastman's wonderfully quirky musical slant---on "Speed of Life" she tops herself. As usual, you never quite know what twists and turns her music will take, yet there is a clear vision thru-out this album. All the elements I've come to expect of Ms. Eastman are in evidence; off-kilter phrasing, wry humor, a worldliness coupled with her uncanny ability to deliver the song's message. The highlights for me were: "Get Happy", "Do I Hear a Waltz?" and "Up On The Roof". Believe me, you ain't heard these songs till you've heard Ms. Eastman's versions! I've always admired Eastman's musical integrity drawing us in rather than beating us over the head with her music. Can't wait for the next release, in the meantime, I'm a fan for life!

Madeline Eastman reminds me of Roseanna Vitro or Helen Merrill (she even sounds a lot like Ms. Vitro): She's a jazz singer who has never received her due and is never going to receive her due, because she's not going to bend to what is trendy. She's a consummate old pro, and here, she puts on a jazz singing clinic.

Check out her "Alone Together" and "Wait 'Til You See Her", where she reshapes the lyric and bends it around the melody, more tightly than a python, in a manner that Betty Carter or Anita O'Day used to do.

Check out her "Get Happy", which sounds like a prayer and not the upbeat bravada of Judy Garland. Or check out "Do I Hear A Waltz", not done in 3/4 time, but with a rockish backbeat. Likewise, "Where or When" doesn't sound like a copy of anything anyone else has done (and that's a lot of singers!), but has a loosey-goosey, almost modal, feel about it.

This whole album is just full of subtle delights like that. I saw the word "intelligent" used below to describe this album and Madeline Eastman. Concur. This is one that you will want to listen to more than once. It grows on you. Recommended. RC