Florence Joelle Life Is Beautiful if You Let It

The Paris-born, London-based singer, songwriter and harmonica player returns with her third offering, "Life Is Beautiful". Recorded straight to tape on analogue equipment and mixed in mono at Gizzard Recording Studios, the album exudes warmth and authenticity"Life is beautiful, baby. If you let it". That's what Jimmy Scott, the legendary jazz singer, used to tell her. She wrote those words down and for years she kept them in her purse to remind herself. After he died in 2014 she wrote this song for him. "Life is Beautiful", in fact, is her most jazz-focused album to date. But though many of these ten new songs sound like classics, seven of them are Joelle originals. The three covers, all of them sung in her native French, are George Ulmer's early 1940s 'Si Tu Savais'; 'Chez Moi', a Paul Misraki/Jean Feline song from the late 1930s; and 'Johnny Tu N'es Pas Un Ange'. And the new band - Thierry Courault, guitar, Ian Marcus, double bass, flute, clarinet, Matt Jackson, drums & percussion, guests Rory More, electric organ and James Lawrence, trombone - will blow you away.