by Steph Cosme
Eclecticism can be an asset, but it can also leave an album searching for a center. On Eklektika, Carolyn Lee Jones solves that problem by making herself the center. Across nine songs, she moves through standards, swing, cabaret, bossa, soul-jazz, and contemporary groove without adopting a new vocal personality for each setting. Instead, her warm timbre, crisp diction, rhythmic assurance, and instinct for communicating a lyric’s story remain consistent. That continuity gives meaning to the ‘Fresh Vintage’ description that has followed Jones throughout her career: the vintage and the fresh are not competing sides of the record, but interacting vocabularies.
Jones, who also produced Eklektika, makes that interaction clear immediately with “Skylark.” Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer’s standard arrives not in a misty ballad setting but over Young Heo’s buoyant R&B-inflected bass, Andrew Griffith’s pronounced two-and-four, Brad Williams’ keys, and Roger Boykin’s guitar. Against this more contemporary rhythmic frame, Jones keeps the classic character of her singing intact. Her diction is clean and her tone inviting, while melodic and rhythmic variations loosen the familiar contours without obscuring them. Reharmonized ensemble figures further modernize the setting, and Boykin’s blues-tinged guitar language extends the bridge between older jazz vocabulary and the arrangement’s newer groove.
“Detour Ahead” opens with a Williams’ piano introduction, Willie Wrinkle’s softly walking bass, and Griffith’s brushes establish an unmistakably traditional jazz-ballad environment. Jones responds with a rich lower-register warmth, shaping the lyric through dynamic changes, vibrato, turns, and flexible cadences. Yet the performance does not feel like an attempt to reproduce another era. Jones sounds comfortable within this language that its vintage qualities become resources rather than costumes.
That ease is in “Take Me Where the Moon Lives,” where a theatrical, almost showtime entrance opens into medium-up swing. Jones’ enunciation and personality fit the cabaret dimension naturally, while the transition to walking bass and a more propulsive jazz pulse widens the arrangement. Mario Cruz’s saxophone brings a soulful, blues-oriented voice to the instrumental passages, and Williams answers with harmonically active piano work. When Jones returns, her melodic variations preserve the song’s character while adding just enough individual inflection to make the reprise feel lived in rather than repeated. This shows that “vintage” includes not only standards repertoire but the broader performance tradition of cabaret, nightclub jazz, and singer-led swing.
The album’s contemporary language becomes explicit on Roger Boykin’s “That’s What Being in Love Is All About.” Heo’s straight-eighth bass foundation, Williams’ Rhodes-colored keyboard textures, Griffith’s backbeat, and Boykin’s bright guitar sound move the music toward soul-jazz and adult contemporary territory. Jones works from an interpretive foundation heard elsewhere, using held notes, shifts in dynamics, subtle vibrato, and small alterations in phrasing to keep the repetitive rhythmic construction alive. Later vocal harmonies augments the texture.
That ability to remain recognizable as the musical surroundings change is one of Eklektika’s consistent qualities. It also prevents the record from becoming a catalog of genres. “Tell Me All About It (Reprise),” for example, expands the palette through bossa, Afro-Cuban coloring, light guitar, percussion, and soul-jazz atmosphere. Jonathan Fisher’s bass, Todd Parsnow’s guitar, Jorge Ginorio’s percussion, Griffith’s drums, Williams’ piano, and Shelley Carrol’s saxophone create a supple rhythmic bed in which montuno-like figures and a persistent sixteenth-note undercurrent give the arrangement forward motion. Jones relaxes into it with an unhurried vocal feel, allowing the groove to surround the melody naturally.
This flexibility extends throughout the supporting cast. Piano can provide traditional accompaniment, harmonic commentary, Rhodes texture, or the intimacy of a duet; bass can walk, play in two, bounce against a contemporary groove, or anchor a soul-oriented pulse. Griffith moves easily between brushes, swing, sticks, and backbeat, while the guitar and saxophone voices generally favor lyrical statements connected to the songs rather than solos that pull attention away from them. Recorded and mixed by Kent Stump at Crystal Clear Sound in Dallas and mastered by James Driscoll at Hot Tonic Mastering, the album maintains enough clarity for those changing instrumental relationships to register without diminishing the singer at their center.
The sequencing also reveals that Jones does not require a full arrangement to establish the album’s identity. Peter Rioux’s piano-vocal setting on “Embraceable You” strips the music down to an intimate exchange, while “Out of Nowhere” and “Morning in Crown Heights” restore ensemble movement and swing-oriented interplay. Those contrasts prepare the album for “Hearts Desire,” where Jones and Williams close the program alone.
It is an effective final perspective. Williams surrounds Jones with romantic harmonic movement, contrary motion, and a relaxed sense of space; Jones answers with clear diction, darker tonal shading, dynamic shaping, and an unforced sense of intimacy. As the performance gives way to Williams’ closing piano cadenza, the stylistic range heard across the preceding tracks no longer seems like Eklektika’s defining point. The singer does.
That is ultimately why ‘Fresh Vintage’ works here as more than a convenient phrase. The freshness comes through rhythmic reframing, Rhodes textures, R&B and soul-jazz gestures, bossa and Afro-Cuban color, reharmonization, and contemporary ensemble choices. The vintage element resides in standards, swing, cabaret atmosphere, walking bass, brushes, traditional jazz harmony, and Jones’ classic approach to communicating a song. Eklektika is is convincing when those elements occupy the same musical space.
Jones does not create cohesion by making nine songs stylistically uniform. She creates it by remaining an identifiable interpreter while everything around her is allowed to change. This gives ‘Fresh Vintage’ a sound rather than simply a name. That’s the short of it!
