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trumpet seamlessly melds with Jewel’s elegantly soft vocals. ‘Flatitude’, is a wonderful
demonstration that Jewel has not lost her cutting edge attitude towards the more avant-garde
approach to jazz with the spoken work entwined with bongos and dreamily mellow trumpet
and horns underpinning Jewel’s questioning vocal.

Delightfully different!

Brian Harman

Teresa James—With A Little Help From Her Friends—Blue
Heart Records BHR 041

Most of the Beatles catalogue, has over the years been re-imaged,
re-imagined, orchestrated and turned into instrumentals,
ballads, wallpaper music and muzak so, that apart from the
opinions of purists, any newer interpretations could, at the very
least, be fascinating.

This album was recorded at The Hum Depot in San Clarita,
California, The Rock House in Franklin, Tennessee and Mystic
Mountain Studios in Saugas, California. Texas native, Teresa
takes lead vocals and her friends in the studio, are Terry Wilson
(her husband); bass and guitars, Kevin McKendree; B3 and piano with Richard Millsap on drums.
Her guests are; Yates McKendree, lead guitar on ‘Oh, Darlin’’, and Lucy Wilson and Nicki Bluhm
who provide backing vocals. In the producers’ chairs are Terry Wilson and Kevin McKendree.

‘Ticket To Ride’, is the opener and it is given a pleasingly dirty and scruffy, Texas bar room
piano-led, with a looser, rambling, Rolling Stones approach, which is, extremely enjoyable. The
nowadays popular George Harrison’s ‘Taxman’ is absolutely drenched in an enticing mixture
of Indian mysticism and LSD, underpinned with a splendidly slippery, sliding, slide guitar
behind the hazy echoing vocals.

The lesser known ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, is treated as a lovely thick, swamper and immersed
within it is a splendidly claustrophobic Southern slide. ‘Oh Darlin’’, retains its main theme but,
is given a late night floor dusting, slow burning blues twist, complete with searing organ and
spine tingling evocatively picked guitar. ‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And
My Monkey’, has had its frantic, manic edge taken away and has been replaced with a strangely
enticing, smoother, bubbling keyboard and guitar Southern soul base.

‘No Reply’, satisfyingly achieves the influences of Latin, traditional black gospel, and rhythm
and blues that John Lennon amply displayed on his solo album ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’. ‘You’ve Got To
Hide Your Love Away’, is transformed from a tale of embarrassed love to becoming a late night,
seventies soul drenched floor smoocher.

Strangely pleasing!

Brian Harman