Product Description
This is the sound of an artist at the absolute summit of his talents! After 30 years, this is the baritone romancers first live album (recorded at Birdland) and it is a scorcher.
About the Artist
More than any other singer, Jon Lucien captures the essence of romance. His voice is rich and expressive, his best songs are perceptive poetic tales of devotion, trust, hope, harmony and spirituality. Three dimensional parables of love lost and love found and relationships filled with the promise of a new day. He seems to possess an innate ability to evoke an atmosphere and create images not only through his lyrics but the colors of his music.
In the 28 years since the release of his debut album, connoisseurs and assorted in-the-know types have spoken his name with the utmost hushed reverence. His seamless melding of jazz, R&B, Caribbean rhythms and Brazilian music proved to be a decisive early influence on what would be simplified and marketed as the twin formats of "quiet storm" and "smooth jazz," although very few artists working in either format approach Lucien's level of artistry or innovation, not to mention originality.
That last quality owes a lot to his Caribbean background, having been born on the island of Tortola in 1942, and raised in St. Thomas by a guitar-playing dad and greatly inspired by Nat "King" Cole. Arriving in New York by the mid-60s, he set about sharing the music in his head with the world at large. His 1970 RCA debut, I Am Now, was a formative step in the direction for which he would subsequently be known, presenting him as a romantic crooner with an exotic accent, but sticking largely to string-laden easy-listening arrangements. By the release of his second album, Rashida, in 1973, he had arrived at his artistic cruising speed, creating a style of R&B where the "B" stood more for bossa nova than blues, with languid samba rhythms, understated nylon-string acoustic guitar, fluid bass lines and his trademark unique scatting, occasionally eschewing lyrics altogether. This approach yielded a number of classic cuts like "Would You Believe In Me," "Lady Love" and the title track, which all found a home on the airwaves in those waning days of progressive FM.
For the follow up, 1974's Mind's Eye, Lucien and producer Dave Grusin crafted an album that fulfilled and expanded upon Rashida's promise, a scintillating song cycle combining the diverse sources of Lucien's inspiration in a seamless manner. Unfortunately, this album would mark the beginning of Lucien's rather adversarial relationship with the music business establishment, with tracks like "Listen Love" and "World Of Joy" being considered too hard to pigeonhole for any one radio format.
A move to CBS the following year yielded Song For My Lady, an effort to reach the broader audiences that had proven elusive to his previous RCA efforts. Recorded with an array of studio session heavy-hitters, Song fared somewhat better, with "Creole Lady" receiving significant air play on the AC format of the era, although still falling a bit short of making Lucien a household name. The album remains, however, fondly remembered by all who've heard it, as does its 1976 follow up, Premonition, featuring such evergreen favorites as "Laura" and "Hello Like Before" with a similar stellar session lineup. After two albums, however, it became increasingly apparent that CBS scarcely understood Lucien's music and where he was trying to go with it better than RCA, especially with the disco onslaught then beginning to take place.
Feeling a tad disillusioned that music as easily likable as his should experience such difficulties gaining a wider and wider audience, Lucien stopped recording for a while and was not heard from again until the release of 1991's Listen Love on Mercury, followed by 1993's Mother Nature's Son. Both albums went a long way toward refreshing his original fans' memories of his unique artistry, picking up some new ones along the way as well. Jon explains, "Wherever I perform, I hear all the time, I'm 18, I'm 19, but my mom turned me on to your music when I was 10, and this is the first chance I got to see you.' "
After a 4 year absence fr
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