Good Morning Heartache

by Johnny Adams

Product Description:

Personnel: Johnny Adams (vocals); Walter "Wolfman" Washington (guitar); Joe Saulsbury, Jr. (alto saxophone); Tony Dagradi, Ralph Johnson (tenor saxophone); Edward "Kidd" Jordan (baritone saxophone); Clyde Kerr, Jr. (trumpet, flugelhorn); Jamil Sharif (trumpet); Maynard Chatters (trombone); David Torkanowsky (piano, keyboards); James Singleton (bass); Johnny Vidacovich (drums).

Recorded at Ultrasonic Recording Studios, New Orleans, Louisiana in April 1993. Includes liner notes by Michael "Mr. Jazz" Gourrier & Scott Billington.

This is billed as New Orleans legend Adams' first jazz album, which isn't 100% accurate if you count the fourth track, "The Jealous Kind." A great '60s Memphis soul ballad by first generation rock songwriter Bobby Charles, it's stylistically very similar to any number of things Adams has recorded over the years, and by no stretch of the imagination jazz. The rest of the album, however, lives up to the claim, with Adams fronting both a small group and a big band and sounding great in both settings, whether delivering "You Don't Know About Love" with a heartbreaking, hushed intensity, or swinging like mad through Sammy Cahn's "Teach Me Tonight."