Randy Crawford and
Joe Sample go back a long way;
Crawford was featured on
the Crusaders' 1979 hit "Street Life," a gem that held up pleasingly well 30 years later. And even though
Crawford has generally been more of an R&B singer than a jazz singer, she is certainly quite capable of singing jazz -- which is what she does to a large degree on
No Regret, a session
Crawford co-leads with pianist
Sample. It would be inaccurate to say that this 2009 release, which
Sample produced with
Tommy LiPuma, is the work of jazz purists. The musical recipe is jazz meets soul meets the blues -- in other words, soul-jazz -- and
Crawford and
Sample (who are joined by bassist
Christian McBride and drummer
Steve Gadd) enjoy a strong rapport on material that ranges from
Memphis Slim's "Every Day I Have the Blues" and
Clyde Otis' "This Bitter Earth" to
the Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself" and
Mel & Tim's "Starting All Over Again." There are some interesting surprises on
No Regret;
Crawford and
Sample also tackle
Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" with memorable results, and they even find the soul-jazz possibilities in
Charles Dumont's
Edith Piaf-associated "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien." That French classic, which was a major hit for
Piaf in 1960, has a lot of history attached to it; it is considered
Piaf's anthem (much like "My Way" was for
Frank Sinatra), it has been adopted as an anthem by the French Foreign Legion -- and of course, it's a great song to crank when you want to give the middle finger to all the racist, wacky neo-cons who have an obsessive and downright irrational hatred of France (evidently, neo-cons forget where the Statue of Liberty came from). But
Crawford doesn't try to emulate
Piaf; she embraces an English-language version, and a song that came out of French pop works surprisingly well in a soul-jazz setting.
No Regret is a consistently rewarding follow-up to
Crawford and
Sample's previous collaboration Feeling Good. ~ Alex Henderson