You don't see me cover a lot of jazz vocalist or smooth jazz records, so you may wonder what is up with this piece about a record from smooth jazz's premier vocalist, Michael Franks? When I informedour own Mark Saleski my intention to cover Franks his reaction was to disgusted “ewwwww!" but that didn't faze me one bit. I've already long ago admitted that Franks' music was a guilty pleasure of mine, so it's not like I'm going to back down, now.
I guess the appeal is due in part to the fact that I've I go back a long ways with Mr. Franks. First catching the Art Of Tea tune “Mr. Blue" on a college radio around 1980, the soft crooning of clever lyrics mated to above-par sideman work got me hooked. With his tales of whirlwind, wit-filled romances usually at some of the world's most exotic getaway destinations, Franks could be thought of as crossover jazz's own Jimmy Buffet.
But with his unhurried, breathy delivery, I find him to be more like a modern-day Chet Baker (Baker the vocalist, not when he's playing trumpet). By the middle of the '80s, he became a favorite among the college set who found R.E.M. too harsh, and he was even a semi-fixture on VH-1. The music also got more pop-oriented and, I dare say, louder. As the 90s wore on, he slowed down his pace and the tempo of music. Time Together is his first one since Rendezvous in Rio five years ago.
Time finds Franks still decelerating, with production even lighter than Rio even though five different producers were used on this record. Perhaps ironically, he's slowed down to the gentle tempos of his 70s music, but with arrangements about as lean and feathery as its ever been...and a better fit for him, I might add.
Time finds Franks still decelerating, with production even lighter than Rio even though five different producers were used on this record. Perhaps ironically, he's slowed down to the gentle tempos of his 70s music, but with arrangements about as lean and feathery as its ever been...and a better fit for him, I might add.
Franks doesn't resort to the sly double-entendre's or outright silliness of “Popsicle Toes" or “Baseball," but many other hallmarks of his classic style are firmly in place. He still writes all the songs, and keeps to romantic/escapist themes and even on the one serious-minded song, “Charlie Chan In Egypt," he avoids the heavy-handed lectures, always finding a way to make his message easier to accept.
The breezy, Brazilian feel found on pretty much every album since 1977's Sleeping Gypsy pervades this one, too. So are the references to the straight jazzers or Brazilian jazzers—on this album, he's named checked Ahmad Jamal, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Astrud Gilberto—even when the music is often only tangentially jazz. Other times, he does cross right into piano bar chanteuse territory ("One Day In St. Tropez," “Charlie Chan," “My Hear Said Wow"), something he's quite comfortable doing, with all-acoustic (or nearly so) instrumentation.
The breezy, Brazilian feel found on pretty much every album since 1977's Sleeping Gypsy pervades this one, too. So are the references to the straight jazzers or Brazilian jazzers—on this album, he's named checked Ahmad Jamal, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Astrud Gilberto—even when the music is often only tangentially jazz. Other times, he does cross right into piano bar chanteuse territory ("One Day In St. Tropez," “Charlie Chan," “My Hear Said Wow"), something he's quite comfortable doing, with all-acoustic (or nearly so) instrumentation.
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