Diunna Greenleaf - Direct-To-Disc Sessions [Vinyl] (2010)

Personnel:
Vocals – Diunna Greenleaf
Guitar – John Richardson
Bass – Josh Preslar
Drums – Vernon Daniels

All tracks were recorded live, direct to disc at Blue Heaven Studios, Salina, Kansas.

This direct-to-disc release, recorded in the church sanctuary of Blue Heaven Studios, is so fresh and pure... Talk about up to audiophile standards! The immediacy, the dynamics - slam and delicacy alike - are just so startlingly real. There's nothing lost. It's positively lifelike.

Cutting engineer Kevin Gray, using Blue Heaven's Neumann VMS 70 lathe with an Ortofon cutter head and amplifiers, and recording engineer Katsu Naito have made available for your playback the closest thing possible to a live, in-person performance. With direct-to-disc recording, the signal from the microphone is transmitted directly to the cutter head, which then cuts the grooves into a raw lacquer. There's no middleman. No tape. No tape hiss. No distortion or other artifacts inherent in any other type of recording.

And the music? It's killer! The session was recorded the weekend of the 12th annual Blues Masters at the Crossroads in October 2009.

Diunna Greenleaf and her band Blue Mercy returned to Blue Heaven Studios in 2009 for the 12th annual Blues Masters at the Crossroads and to make this D2D recording. She'd closed the 2006 Blues Masters and absolutely floored the Blue Heaven Studios congregation. So powerful and dynamic and soul-stirring was her performance that many concert regulars have commented that Greenleaf remains their favorite act through all the years. To say she was back in 2009 by popular demand is a wild understatement.

Greenleaf, of Houston, Texas, has a background steeped in both blues and gospel. She's been influenced by the likes of Koko Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Rosetta Thorpe, Sam Cooke and Charles Brown, and she includes intricate patches of jazz and soul in her performances.