Sarah King & The Smoke Rings - Sarah King & The Smoke Rings (2016)

Sarah King ( vocals / ukulele ) Alex Levin ( pno ) Scott Ritchie ( bass ) Ben Cliness ( drs )

Pianist Alex Levin came upon Vocalist Sarah King in Brooklyn carrying her ukulele he approached her and asked to play a song for him, he realised her voice had that old fashioned quality. Some time later they set up a rehearsal and recorded three songs with the trio who were already an established group. A video of this rehearsal was posted on You Tube and offers of work started coming in.

The group finds work at nightspots Festivals and attracting a wide audience singing and playing songs from the Great American Songbook. They have now been working together for four years and their brand of Retro music goes down well with a live audience. This album appears to be self produced recordind and probably sells well at live gigs whether this will transfer to the general CD buying public is another question.

All the tracks on the album are well tried standards and a look back in the vast catalogue of the songbook may well be a productive exercise.
Sarah King has a good voice if you like your songs sung in a retro manner and they are a more than competent trio and they probably go down well at live gigs otherwise they would not receive repeat bookings but it it requires a little more than that to sell albums in any number.

There are some fairly good tracks such as “Some Other Spring” which owes much to the Billie Holiday recording and the two final songs on the album, “I Don’t Know Why” and “Up A Lazy River”.

There maybe a market for this style of music but I would think it is not very wide.~Reviewed by Roy Booth