SuperBlue: The Iridescent Spree

2x GRAMMY® Award-winner Kurt Elling is without question today’s preeminent male jazz vocalist, renowned worldwide for his unparalleled virtuosity and flair for trailblazing artistic exploration. From his stunning reinvention of timeless standards to his own captivating original songcraft, the Chicago-based musician has fused his dazzling talents across a panoply of musical approaches, emblazoning each with signature imagination, insight, and emotional intelligence.

Where many male jazz vocalists at this stage in a much vaunted career have tended to stick to the tried and true, Elling seems to be growing more ambitious and experimental with the passing of time, a tendency evidenced by his stunning new LP, SuperBlue: The Iridescent Spree (Edition Records). The followup to 2021’s remarkable SuperBlue, the album once again sees Elling joining forces with producer/guitarist Charlie Hunter and multi-instrumentalist duo drummer Corey Fonville and bassist-keyboardist DJ Harrison (of Richmond, VA-based jazz-funk fusion quintet Butcher Brown) for a kaleidoscopic collection of new songs, surprising covers, and dynamic reinventions.

Order / Stream

Edition Records | 2023

Track Listing

  • Black Crow
  • Hung from the heat / Drugged from the day Let night’s velvet glove / take you away
    Pounding that beat / making your play
    When push comes to shove / step right this way

    Freeman Square / grab that groove and climb the square All the best folks meeting there / out of the glare

    Vibe all night / let that high life treat you right light your inner Buddha sight / shiny and bright

    Dig how the night’s an ocean teaming around you
    Calling for you to be as free as your dreamy spirit wants you to be It’s not just black & white / it’s also golden-bright now
    And it’s a green as ever was seen / a pyrotechnic kinda’ sheen
    –A laughing clown / a fountain of eau-de-vie, now An iridescent spree now
    And it’s crimson & yellow & orange-o / & violet
    like Violet B was With her ever-lasting gob / stopping mid chew When she found a purple-berry pie / when the intro of a
    very weird gum chew as done, over & through

    Let’s be kings of the nighttime scene / two mannish cats who Bust out of the seams of what it means
    Listen, sonny / we need no money
    I’ve got a stock of lines within me / guaranteed to open what’s shut
    What? I’m a cat who struts uncut / stalking the halls of every club you can conceive, imagine or dream up / I’ve got an Ali Baba syllable team-up / greases up a doorman’s id satisfaction / a califacaent

    Mixing a tonic fix / to overcome any guest list diss twist Upon a late arrival / it’s club survival

    And when the sun is bumping up / I can dig Sonny strutting into the light / you’re boogien’ & cooking with the grooviest women there.
    Shutting down the night: it’s Sonny!
    You might now want to electively put your butt in your chair To help the thinking that you’re drinking sink in.

    There’s nothing Willie can come through with that you cannot crew with within your own mindset and

    Unless you’re Miles Davis there’s always some brother / Some mother smoother than you. So don’t you worry ‘bout a thing. You’ve got plenty of bells to ring
    Bring that bad thing you bring & swing on down to Freeman Square

  • Naughty Number Nine
  • Little Fairy Carpenter
  • Bounce It
  • Only The Lonely Woman
  • Right About Now
  • Hey, Baby!

    You sure look good to me…

    Over in another sliver of time / or universe
    Baby, I’m your undercover lover and your private passion
    In a different design / I knock you first
    when true temptation overrides my mind

    And there’s an alternate reality line / of multiverse
    Where I’m all granite – cut & classic like an Atlas statue
    I am the diamond you grind / until it hurts / the mighty rock that realigns your spine

    But not here / and not now
    Even though it’s clear / that we’re compounding in a parallel sphere

    With my super-positional view I comprehend / we’ve got a cosmic love connection in the fifth dimension
    In a Heisenberg Hideout for two / our bodies blend / and we do everything we want to do

    Just not here / not here & not now
    Baby, even though it’s clear / that we are smashing in a parallel sphere

    If there’s a true-simultaneous fire / then there’s one sure bet
    that just the smallest interaction starts a chain reaction
    But there’s a price we’d pay for desire / so with regret
    I’d better leave you with a quick goombye

    Spoken :
    Oh, yes, Ophelia. I am keen. “It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.” (Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2)

    Just not now / Not now and not here
    Baby, though it’s clear / that we are smashing up a parallel sphere

    If there’s a true-simultaneous fire / then there’s one sure bet
    that just the smallest interaction starts a chain reaction But there’s a price we’d pay for desire / so with regret
    I’d better leave you with a quick goombye

  • The Afterlife

Personnel

Kurt Elling – Voice

Charlie Hunter – Hybrid Guitar

DJ Harrison – Keyboards

Corey Fonville – Drums

Huntertones Horns on “Naughty Number Nine”, “Bounce It” and “Not Here / Not Now”:

Jon Lampley – Trumpet

Dan White – Saxophone & Horn Arrangements

Chris Ott – Trombone

Elena Pinderhughes – Flute (on “Black Crow”)

 

Produced by Kurt Elling, Charlie Hunter, Corey Fonville & DJ Harrison

Executive Producer: Bryan Farina, Dave Stapleton

Recorded at Montrose Studios Richmond, VA February 2022 by Adrian Olsen & Curtis Fye

Vocals for ‘Not Here/Not Now, recorded at Transient Sound Studios in Chicago, IL by Vijay Tellis-Nayak

Mixed by Adrian Olsen at Montrose Studios

Mastered by Dave McNair at Dave McNair Mastering

Album artwork & Art Direction by Oli Bentley, Split

Photography by Angus McDonald