Sue Tucker - May I Come In (2003)

Good things come in small packages! With May I Come In, Minnesota jazz singer Sue Tucker provides nine standards and two original compositions with a first class group of musicians. She harkens back to an era when girl singers, like Chris Connor or June Christy, just sang without gimmicks or artifice, melisma or multi-tracking. Also, there are no show-stopping vocal techniques or three octave range'and if you're looking for improvisational vocalese or scatting techniques, they're not here. What makes this album work is that Sue Tucker knows how to swing these tunes. Tucker comes from a musical family. Her father, Jack Oatts, was one of Iowa's first jazz educators; her brothers are trumpeter Jim Oatts and the much recorded reedman Dick Oatts. The singer also has woodwind training and experience.

The presence of such A-List personnel as Dick Oatts, Ted Rosenthal, Joe Magnarelli and John Mosca also enhance the album. The session begins smartly with Irving Berlin's "The Best Thing For You," with a tasty Mosca trombone solo, and continues with Tucker's own ballad "If You Don't See It Too," with Oatts taking a lyrical alto spot. The title tune, a rather obscure Fisher-Segal ballad, is followed by a number of brightly arranged visits with the Great American Songbook. The torch song "I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out Of My Life" is taken at an usually bright tempo but it seems to work. Her two compositions mesh perfectly with the other tunes. An earlier recording, Meant to Be , from 2000, was also self-produced and likely difficut to find. (Michael P.Gladstone)