A not so funny thing happened to Debby Yeager on her way to her second recording. She had garnered some nice press, along with attention from jazz radio programmers and nightclub owners, for her swinging debut, 1996’s Mood Swing. That ear-grabbing gem featured her syncopated take on Horace Silver’s “Señor Blues” and her beautiful balladic reading of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and included a guest appearance by vocal legend Bob Dorough on “Nothing Like You.” With the momentum of that first successful recording out of the gate, Yeager was poised to make the next incremental leap in her career with her follow-up album. But then the earth swallowed her up. She was abducted by aliens. She went somewhere over the rainbow, went into the witness protection program, was wished away into the cornfield. Call it whatever you want, Yeager checked out. Like, Gonesville.
Suffice it to say, for the past 20 years Yeager has been dealing with repressed memories of horrific childhood events and struggling with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that followed in the wake of her dark revelations. But Yeager is a survivor, a fighter. She’s a jazz singer, damnit! Standing up in front of masses of people in nightclubs and at jazz festivals and singing your heart out is not an occupation for the faint of heart. And so, this album represents her triumphant return to the scene, 20 years later.
Precocious, Yeager’s long-overdue comeback album, finds the singer assuming the role of producer, lending her vocal talents to two songs — a Latin flavored “Nature Boy” and an alluring samba take on Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “It Might As Well Be Spring” — while also contributing a buoyant choir of wordless background vocals on the album’s opener, “Tippy Toe,” an original by saxophonist arranger Alan Rowe that carries some of the jaunty spirit of Benny Golson’s “Blues March” or even Neal Hefti’s “The Odd Couple Theme.” Yeager also wisely brought in a couple of L.A. session aces in guitar master Ron Escheté, who contributes several tasty, swinging solos here, and former Woody Herman Orchestra tenor saxophonist Jerry Pinter, whose robust tone and swagger imbues the opening “Tippy Toe.”
The stellar rhythm section on Precocious consists of pianist and consummate accompanist Tom Ranier, former Buddy Rich big band bassist Tom Warrington and renowned drummer Joe LaBarbera, best known for his stint in the Bill Evans Trio during the late ‘70s. “I honed in more on my skills as a producer on this one,” says Yeager.
Precocious also showcases the considerable talents of flutist Ali Ryerson, who solos with impressive facility and rhythmic assuredness in her call-and- response exchanges with tenorist Pinter on “Tippy Toe.” She offers an expressive solo on the ballad “Nature Boy” and swings with authority on Rowe’s “Realismus,” the Gershwin nugget “Soon” and a smoking rendition of Duke Pearson’s “Jeannine.” And she stretches on a version of Chick Corea’s oft-covered jazz waltz “Windows” (from his landmark 1968 album, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs), which also has Rowe stretching out on Fender Rhodes electric piano. Second flutist Kathy Moine provides some tight harmony lines alongside Ryerson throughout Precocious.
“I think there’s some magic in this project and I really believe in it,” says producer Yeager. “They played live in the studio, so it sounds like a throwback from the ‘60s. I’m getting positive feedback on that. It’s kind of edgy, a little raw.”
In keeping with the album’s title, Precocious, Yeager rounded up photos of each of the participants of the session from when they were kids. “I figured all these musicians must’ve been quite precocious, and so that’s how the cover came to be — a montage of the artists from their childhoods. It’s pretty cute.”
As a youngster growing up in Venice, California, Yeager recalls avidly listening to Inside Betty Carter and albums by Chet Baker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bob Dorough. “So I was getting some unintentional ear training from an early age,” she recalls. And she brings that kind of depth to all of her choices as both producer and singer on Precocious.
Clearly, she’s rebounded from her personal dark period and has emerged on the other side with this winning album. Stay tuned. Yeager is already working on her next album, a vocal project entitled Psychology of Jazz.
Regarding her newly-rebuilt life and jump-started career, Yeager says, “I’m ecstatic to be back in the studio and it feels like that’s the place I’m supposed to be.” — Bill Milkowski
Bill Milkowski is a regular contributor to Downbeat and Jazziz magazines. He is also the author of “JACO:
The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (Backbeat Books) and co-author of “Here And Now:
The Autobiography of Pat Martino” (Backbeat Books).