Jazz singer Diane Schuur honors her mother on a brand new disc of classics

A cursory glance at the track list of Diane Schuur’s newest disc Some Other Time is apt to draw the following response: “ah yes, yet another delectable ode to the Great American Songbook.” The recording, released in February, hosts such nostalgia-steeped classics as “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” “My Favorite Things,” and “Beginner’s Luck.”

And although these standards have been given the inimitable Diane Schuur treatment, a Grammy award-winning style that is part Broadway-showmanship, part tender intimacy beset by flawless pitch and consummate scatting technique, even the 54-year-old jazz singer acknowledges their well-worn familiarity.

“A lot of these tunes were like putting on a pair of gloves, that’s what it kind of felt like,” says Schuur. “You know how it goes— ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens’ —I think about those mittens when I do any of these songs.”

But a closer listen reveals a deeply personal motivation for the project. The songs, which Schuur says were selected “with great care,” were assembled in tribute to her mother who died from cancer at age 31 when Schuur was just 13 years old. “She died over 40 years ago,” Schuur says. “I wanted to do something for her and the legacy of music she passed onto me.”

The disc’s most arresting tune, “September in the Rain,” falls near the end. Its introduction, a smattering of jaunty piano chords, sounds far away and then Schuur starts to sing, her voice big and bold, charming and expressive—hardly a reason for pause today, but striking considering she was only 10 years old at the time of the recording. The day it was made, Schuur was at a Holiday Inn with her parents in her hometown of Tacoma, Washington. “I was auditioning to perform there every weekend and I got the job,” she recalls. “It was a Saturday afternoon, January 4, 1964.

Today we heard on the radio that I would’ve been a perfect American Idol candidate if I’d done that now,” she continues, exposing her feisty sense of humor. “Pretty good. I know that Simon wouldn’t have had a bad thing to say about that. No, I don’t think he would’ve criticized it at all.”

Also on the disc is a recording of the classic Irish folk ballad “Danny Boy.” The track begins with a snippet of dialogue between Schuur and her mother, who asks if she knows the song. “I will record this, Momma,” says Schuur, prophetically. “Just for you.” And she does, in a beautifully gentle rendering—honest, emotional and moving.

Accompanying its more tender moments, Time also holds its share of joyous showstoppers. “Blue Skies,” which sneaks in aloft a flourish of playfully minor chords and crests at peak-ebullience with fervent scats and trembling cymbals, even continues to win Schuur over. “Especially when I’m holding that C note forever and it’s just going crazy with the drums and all the instruments,” she says. “It’s just so cool, like we take off in this great big jet.”

As for her next project, Schuur is kicking around a few ideas, but nothing is set in stone. “Maybe I’ll do a blusier CD, maybe the songs that have some double-entredres.” In the meantime, Schuur has plenty to keep her busy. Last month, the singer, who has been blind since birth, became the national spokesperson for the Disability Rights Legal Center where she is currently speaking out against legislation that would outlaw Braille.

Schuur is also swinging a breakneck tour schedule. GT caught up with her by phone just minutes before she left for the airport to embark on a five-stop, 11-day tour through Europe and Russia. “We’re like a band of gypsies here, we’re loading into the car,” she says, a little gleefully, a little breathlessly, rushing around. She adds, “All I know is that I’m living in today and enjoying the heck out of it.”

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