Madeleine Peyroux's recording career has been a stop-start affair, with The Blue Room just her sixth album in 17 years. So, in The Blue Room, we have the ultimate interpretation collection, channelled by a Ray Charles influence.
Peyroux and her producer, Larry Klein, used the groundbreaking Charles 1962 album ModernSounds in Country and Western Music as inspiration.
Peyroux creates her own spin on Charles' record with Take These Chains from My Heart and I Can't Stop Loving You.
True to herself, her phrasing is unique, not too reliant on the original but still delivering the feeling and passion attached to these major all-time hits.
The same applies to the rest of the songs, with Vince Mendosa's string arrangements the defining connection with the Ray Charles classic. Interpretations of the Everly Brothers' Bye Bye Love, Buddy Holly's Changing All Those Changes, Randy Newman's Guilty, Leonard Cohen's Bird on a Wire and Warren Zevon's Desperadoes Under the Eaves are all class and delivered in Peyroux's unique style. In my view this is her best collection since her first release, Dreamland, an opinion I'll debate with any takers.
