Sunday, January 9, 2022

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.

6 comments:

  1. Jones is one of the best vocalists we have working today. I love how she ranges from jazz through county and even punk. This looks like it'll be a fun listen. I'm guessing it's an edit from McPartland's radio series where she dueted with an amazing variety of musicians, mostly jazz, of course. The repartee between McPartland and her guests was always entertaining and informative but I can understand why you edited it out for repeat listens.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is great, thanks so much. Any chance that you plan to compile an album of the collaborations that Norah released in 2019? There were a bunch I believe.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for all the Norah Jones !

    ReplyDelete
  4. Did some of the tracks maybe get mixed up on the two Norah Jones / Marian McPartland albums? It sounds like they're all the same tracks. (Exactly the same runtime, and on a quick listen identical performances).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Or, rather, all the songs that exist in both albums appear to be the same recording.

      Delete