Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland - Mechanics Hall, Worchester, MA, 4-10-2005

I recently posted an album from the start of Linda Ronstadt's music career. Here's one from near the end of her career. This is an unreleased concert of her singing jazz standards, backed only by the piano playing of Marian McPartland.

Marian McPartland was a jazz pianist for a long, long time. At the time of this concert, she was almost ninety years old! She died in 2013, at the age of 95. From 1978 to 2011, she hosted a music show on NPR radio called "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz." This is from an episode of that show. It was recorded in 2013, but for some reason it wasn't broadcast until years later. (I also posted a concert of Norah Jones on McPartland's show, which you can do a search here for.) 

In late 2004, Linda Ronstadt released a studio album of jazz standards called "Hummin' to Myself." It was similar in style to the three albums she made with Nelson Riddle in the 1980s, and she said many of the songs were ones she never got around to doing back in those years. Ronstadt's voice was still in fine form for the album and this concert. But as it turns out, that wouldn't be the case for long. The last album she did was in 2006, the last time she sang on stage was in 2009, and her last studio recording is from about 2010. She gradually lost the ability to sing, due to a degenerative condition called "progressive supranuclear palsy." 

This concert had a lot of discussion between Ronstadt and McPartland between songs. In fact, it was too much talking for my tastes. So I cut out a lot of it. Much of it was easy to cut, parts that consisted of McPartland identifying the name of her radio show and talking about NPR. But also, there were many minutes in which the entire life story of Ronstadt was discussed in detail, amongst other things. I wanted to keep the focus on the songs that were being played. So I kept the talking that was relevant to that, and got rid of everything else. If you want to hear the whole thing, there are other versions of this bootleg that can be easily found.

I was surprised that only three songs performed were from the "Hummin' to Myself" album: "Tell Him I Said Hello," "I Fall in Love Too Easily," and "Miss Otis Regrets." Most or all of the other songs are from the three albums she did with Nelson Riddle in the 1980s, mentioned above. There also is an instrumental near the end composed by McParland that doesn't involve Ronstadt.

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
02 Tell Him I Said Hello (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
03 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
04 I Fall in Love Too Easily (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
05 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
06 Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
07 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
08 Someone to Watch Over Me (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
09 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
10 Get Out of Town (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
11 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
12 Lush Life (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
13 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
14 What'll I Do (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
15 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
16 Miss Otis Regrets (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
17 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
18 Portrait of Linda Ronstadt [Instrumental] (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
19 talk (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland)
20 I'll Be Seeing You (Linda Ronstadt with Marian McPartland) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KmjYudaT

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/mvPCnFdHXrnQ5Af/file

The cover photo is from the Bridge School Benefit concert at Shoreline Amphitheater, in Mountain View, California, on October 29, 2005.

Norah Jones - Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with Norah Jones (2003)

I recently had a commenter ask me to fix some dead links of Norah Jones albums. I figured while I was at it, I would fix all the Jones albums needing fixing. So I edited all the albums that needed fixing, adjusting the volume balance between songs and fixing the mp3 tags. It turns out the vast majority needed at least some changes, so if that means anything to you, you might want to redownload those.

While I was fixing those albums, I noticed that I hadn't posted one of them that I'd thought I'd posted. So here it is. Around 2003, Norah Jones did a few collaborations with Marian McPartland, an expert piano player who already 85 years at the time (and passed away in 2013). During these collaborations, Jones pretty much exclusively sang jazz classics more than she's ever done at any point in her music career. I've posted another album of them doing classics together, but that was a live show. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/03/norah-jones-marian-mcpartland.html

This, by contrast, is a studio album. However, it's an extremely rare one, and usually is not included in Norah Jones discographies. Also, the performances come from a radio show rather than proper studio sessions. I've only included half of the album here, because there is about 22 minutes of conversation between the songs, and I've cut all that out. This is just the music, which greatly includes the repeat listening potential for the album.

All but one of the songs here are covers of classics. The one exception is "Don't Know Why," which also is a cover but first came out as a huge hit by Jones in 2002. The songs are just McPartland on piano and Jones on vocals.

Even with all the conversation tracks removed, this album is still 37 minutes long.

01 September in the Rain (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
02 In the Dark (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
03 Comes Love (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
04 For All We Know [Instrumental] (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
05 I Can't Get Started (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
06 Don't Know Why (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
07 Peace (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
08 The Nearness of You (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
09 Beautiful Friendship (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603469/NorahJ_2003_MarianMcPrtlandsPianoJzz_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I found a photo of McPartland and Jones singing together during McPartland's 85th birthday party. Jones actually was much further away, almost to the far end of the piano. But using Photoshop, I moved her closer to McPartland so I could have both of them appear larger in the photo.

Norah Jones & Marian McPartland - Tanglewood Jazz Festival, Tanglewood, Lenox, MA, 8-30-2003

Here, I continue my campaign to show that Norah Jones's musical career is much more interesting than her hit singles and albums would indicate. This shows her getting much more acoustic and jazzy than usual, as she plays songs from the Great American Songbook with a piano as the only musical backing.

This technically is a concert recording, but you'd never know it. The audience noise has been removed so thoroughly, and the sound quality is so excellent, that it should be considered more like a long in studio radio performance. Also technically, Jones plays all the songs with famed pianist Marian McPartland, but it's hard to tell. McPartland certainly never sings, and since they're both playing pianos, it's hard to tell who is playing what. The bottom line is it sounds like Jones plus a piano to me.

I've added five bonus tracks at the end, but it would be impossible to tell unless you closely examine the mp3 tags (or read this). The bonus tracks come from around the same time, and also were done just with Jones and McPartland on piano, so the sound is exactly the same. The only difference is that on the main recording, Jones does all standards from the pre-rock and roll era, while on the bonus tracks she does a couple of the songs she made famous, including her big hit "Don't Know Why."

It's interesting to hear her do her songs in such a stripped down fashion, but mainly this is about hearing Jones perform the standards in her unique style. It's a mystery to me why she hasn't actually released an album like this yet.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Mean to Me (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
02 Lover Man (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
03 Walking My Baby (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
04 Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
05 Melancholia (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
06 Tenderly (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
07 Summertime (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
08 Easy Living (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
09 A Foggy Day in London Town (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
10 In the Dark (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
11 Comes Love (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
12 Don't Know Why (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
13 Peace (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
14 The Nearness of You (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603480/NorahJ_2003_TnglewoodJazzFestivl__8-30-2003_atse.zip.html

The cover shows McPartland and Jones over a piano. But I don't know where and when it was taken. But it's most likely from 2002 or 2003, since that's when they collaborated.