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New Moon Daughter

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New Moon Daughter
Studio album by
Cassandra Wilson
Released1995
Studio
  • Turtle Creek Barn at Bearsville (Woodstock, New York)
  • Sound on Sound (New York)
GenreJazz, blues
Length61:26
LabelBlue Note
ProducerCraig Street
Cassandra Wilson chronology
Blue Light 'til Dawn
(1993) 		New Moon Daughter
(1995) 		Rendezvous
(1997)

New Moon Daughter is a studio album by American jazz singer Cassandra Wilson that was released by Blue Note in 1995. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard magazine jazz album chart and also won the Grammy Award as the Best Jazz Vocal Performance.[1]

Background

[edit]

In an interview for New York magazine, Wilson explained that the album's name comes from an old Ashanti proverb—"Sickness comes with the waning moon; the new moon cures disease". The album contains twelve songs, five of which were written by Wilson.[2]

Reception

[edit]
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[3]
DownBeat[4]
Entertainment WeeklyA−[5]
The Guardian[6]
Houston Chronicle[7]
Los Angeles Times[8]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz[9]
Rolling Stone[10]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[11]
The Village VoiceB−[12]

Critical reception to New Moon Daughter was highly positive, with many critics comparing it favorably to its widely-celebrated predecessor, Blue Light 'til Dawn, and hailing it as one of the year's best. Gary Giddins wrote in 2008 for The New Yorker that both albums "uncovered her Mississippi roots, hardly noted in her earlier work, and freed her to revisit more recent pop songs, from the Monkees to U2...She also emerged as a nonpareil blues singer—a natural, reclaiming the Delta tradition of Robert Johnson and Son House. Even today, those albums convey the excitement of an artist coming into her own, testing her mettle and rejoicing in its supple strength."[13]

Howard Reich of The Chicago Tribune wrote that "Blue Light 'til Dawn was so original and haunting that one wondered whether the singer would be able to match it with her next release. Somehow, she not only has equalled the classic 1993 recording but has topped it with an even more daring album. Like its predecessor, New Moon Daughter explores a broad range of musical influences...yet Wilson bridges all of these idioms, and then some, with the incantatory nature of her phrasing, the deep amber quality of her alto and the lush and exotic instrumentation that has marked her work in recent years."[14]

Regarding her choice to include more pop material, Peter Margasak of The Chicago Reader argued that "whereas jazzers feebly covered Beatles tunes three decades ago, Wilson transforms these covers to fit her own aesthetic. Her take on U2’s Love Is Blindness turned the song into a sumptuous evocation of luminous, primordial sorrow, sculpting a highly original, moving piece of sensual beauty."[15]

A reviewer for Gramophone was generally positive about the album, praising Wilson's voice and her interpretations of the standards included. However, they said that compared to the originals, Wilson's versions may not be as powerful. They noted that with this album, Wilson appears to move away "from jazz heartlands or cutting edges and towards the embrace of 'pop cult' status." The reviewer particularly enjoyed "Skylark" (calling it "sublime") and "Last Train to Clarksville" ("a delight").[16]

In a positive review of the album, Rolling Stone's Geoffrey Himes noted its similarity to Wilson's previous album Blue Light 'til Dawn, but added that New Moon Daughter has more feeling and a darker tone. He wrote that Wilson makes Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" "her own". Himes noted the album's overall slow tempo as a weakness, wishing for a little more rhythmic diversity.[10] Scott Yanow of AllMusic described Wilson's voice on the album as "quite bored and emotionally detached" but noted that she was "stretching herself".[3]

Village Voice critic Robert Christgau was less impressed, claiming that too many jazz singers like Wilson "have trouble figuring out what to make of their material" and arguing "most of these songs escape her attentions without a mark on them. Which isn't to mention the 'Strange Fruit' that establishes the surpassing weirdness of Billie's original, or the disastrous Monkees cover, designed to prove [Wilson] has a sense of humor I'm now convinced isn't there."[12]

Appearances in other media

[edit]

The song "Death Letter" from the album was used as an opening theme in the third season of television series True Detective released in 2019.[17]

Track listing

[edit]
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Strange Fruit"Lewis Allan5:33
2."Love Is Blindness"Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr.4:53
3."Solomon Sang"Cassandra Wilson5:56
4."Death Letter"Son House4:12
5."Skylark"Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer4:08
6."Find Him"Wilson4:37
7."I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"Hank Williams4:50
8."Last Train to Clarksville"Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart5:15
9."Until"Wilson6:29
10."A Little Warm Death"Wilson5:43
11."Memphis"Wilson5:04
12."Harvest Moon"Neil Young5:01
Japanese bonus track
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
13."Moon River"Johnny Mercer, Henry Mancini5:22
EMI Digital (2003) bonus track
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
13."32-20 Blues"Robert Johnson5:23

Personnel

[edit]
Music[18]
  • Cassandra Wilson – vocals, acoustic guitar
  • Cyro Baptista – percussion, Jew's-Harp, shaker
  • Dougie Bowne – percussion, drums, whistle, vibraphone
  • Gary Breit – Hammond organ
  • Kevin Breit – acoustic & electric guitar, banjo, bouzouki
  • Brandon Ross – acoustic & electric guitar
  • Charles Burnham – violin
  • Tony Cedras– accordion
  • Graham Haynes – cornet
  • Lawrence "Butch" Morris – cornet
  • Jeff Haynes – percussion, bongos
  • Peepers – background vocals
  • Mark Peterson – bass
  • Lonnie Plaxico – bass
  • Gib Wharton – pedal steel guitar
  • Chris Whitley – guitar (1)
Production[18]
  • Craig Street – producer
  • Danny Kopelson – engineer, mixing
  • Greg Calbi – mastering
  • John Chiarolanzo – assistant engineer
  • Bill Emmons – assistant engineer
  • Scott Gormley – assistant engineer
  • Fred Kervorkian – editing, assistant engineer
  • Steve Regina – assistant engineer
  • John R. Reigart III – assistant engineer
  • Tom Schick – assistant engineer
Design[18]
  • David Mayenfisch – photography
  • Berkeley Barnhill Stewart;- graphic design

Chart positions

[edit]
Year Chart Position
1996 Billboard Top Jazz Albums 1
Billboard The Billboard 200 141
Billboard Heatseekers 9

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Cassandra Wilson". GRAMMY.com. 19 November 2019. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  2. ^ Norris, Chris (March 18, 1996). "Queen Cassandra". New York. Vol. 29, no. 11. p. 28. Retrieved February 3, 2019.
  3. ^ a b Yanow, Scott. "New Moon Daughter – Cassandra Wilson". AllMusic. Retrieved July 20, 2010.
  4. ^ Mandel, Howard (April 1995). "Cassandra Wilson: New Moon Daughter". DownBeat. Vol. 62, no. 4. p. 45.
  5. ^ Browne, David (March 8, 1996). "New Moon Daughter". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  6. ^ Atkins, Ronald (March 22, 1996). "Jazz CD of the week: Cassandra Wilson". The Guardian.
  7. ^ Hamlin, Jesse (March 24, 1996). "Wilson's 'Moon' Adventurous". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved May 7, 2020.
  8. ^ Kolhaase, Bill (March 3, 1996). "Cassandra Wilson, 'New Moon Daughter', Blue Note". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  9. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2002). "Cassandra Wilson". The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (6th ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051521-6.
  10. ^ a b Himes, Geoffrey (March 21, 1996). "Cassandra Wilson: New Moon Daughter". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on October 1, 2007. Retrieved July 20, 2010.
  11. ^ Moon, Tom (2004). "Cassandra Wilson". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. p. 881. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  12. ^ a b Christgau, Robert (December 3, 1996). "Consumer Guide: Turkey Shoot". The Village Voice. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  13. ^ Giddins, Gary (June 16, 2008). "Reluctant Diva". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  14. ^ Reich, Howard (March 17, 1996). "Wilson Explores". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  15. ^ Margasak, Peter (May 23, 1996). "Pure Alchemy". The Chicago Reader. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  16. ^ KS (April 1996), "JCassandra Wilson New Moon Daughter.", Gramophone, Haymarket, p. 145, retrieved July 20, 2010[permanent dead link‍]
  17. ^ Coates, Tyler (2019-01-14). "'True Detective' Season 3's Theme Song Sets the Eerie Tone for the Mystery Series". Esquire. Retrieved 2019-01-17.
  18. ^ a b c "New Moon Daughter > Credits", Allmusic, Rovi Corporation, retrieved July 20, 2010
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