Jasmine Kara - Blues Ain't Nothing But A Good Woman

You can hear it in the opening bars of the opening number. It's the sound of a real singer, in a proper recording studio taking on the blues and winning hands down.  21-year-old Jasmine Kara's ability to bare her soul is quite extraordinary in one so young.  Yet when you take into account the youthful, traumatic love affair that left her at her lowest ebb and her subsequent escape to New York, you start to understand how she can relate to these songs.
Her time in NYC was seminal.  On arrival in the city Jasmine gravitated towards its music scene, the jazz, blues and R'n'B clubs having a particular resonance for her.  These songs touched her and struck a chord with her own life struggles.
It wasn't long before Jasmine was brought to the attention of Tri-Sound Records and one of its co-founders became her mentor. Legendary records man Marshall Chess of Chess Records took on executive producer role for this debut album - 'Blues Ain't Nothing But A Good Woman Gone Bad'. It was Chicago's Chess Records, who took the music of black America from its Muddy Waters led electric birth, through to the heights of soul music and beyond.
Jasmine's album is a tribute to the songs - the great songs - that the label originated.
On 'Blues Ain't Nothing But A Good Woman Gone Bad' Jasmine takes a unique journey through the less obvious parts of the label's history avoiding direct comparison with the originals through distinctive flourishes added to her own versions. Such as the ska groove brought out in 'Try My Love Again' turning the song's original plaintive tone to a wonderfully joyous come on. Time and again you can only be impressed by her vocal control. This is evident not only on the more jazz tinged songs such as 'My Party' and Terry Callier's signature tune 'Ordinary Joe', both of which demonstrate a vocal sensitivity beyond
her years, but also on the up-tempo stormers of which the album's title track and the two-part 'In The Basement' are prime examples.

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