Jazz Scanner: Kissing Cousins

Welcome to the Google Music jazz Scanner, where we surface the most exciting new music and reissued gems in bop, blues, bossa nova, vocals and beyond, all of which can be added to your locker for free.

Esperanza Spalding may have gained a mainstream audience, but she continues to blow away the faithful, too. The phenomenally talented bassist, vocalist and bandleader became the first jazz artist to win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist earlier this year. And even as Spalding continues to collaborate with jazz elders and tour in support of her 2010 best seller Chamber Music Society (a ravishing swirl of post-bop, classical music and bossa nova), she is busy laying down tracks for an album aimed directly at the pop mainstream.

"I'll Look Around" Esperanza Spalding

"Can't Live Without You" Allan Harris

"Racquet Club" Jimmy McGriff with Hank Crawford

"Breeding Of Mind" O'Donel Levy

“I’ll Look Around,” a cut from the star-studded Tribute To Billie Holiday album offers a glimpse into how Spalding is approaching her upcoming record. Instead of going retro, she tailors the Lady Day standard to her specific talents, replacing the original song’s heartbreak with a more upbeat vibe, going as far as to lose Holiday’s borderline nihilistic comments, read by Angela Bassett, that finish the track. This mixture of audacity and accessibility explain why, of all acoustic jazz artists, she’s gaining a larger mass audience.

While Esperanza Spalding is the very definition of a virtuoso, vocalist/guitarist Allan Harris has earned high praise from the likes of Tony Bennett for his seemingly effortless, laid-back music. Of course, a lot of hard work goes into tunes as effervescent as Harris’ “Can’t Live My Life Without You,” which shows how well the musician sprinkles a little of Nat King Cole's smoky magic dust into a blues tune that swings.

This is nothing new. Artists have always been integrating jazz with pop. We started this Scanner series with one of Jimmy McGriff’s funk tunes from the 1970s. Check out another side to the Hammond B-3 master when he teams up with Hank Crawford, one of two saxophonists who became soul jazz stars during tenures with Ray Charles. “Racquet Club” is a slinky, extended blues number that finds Crawford tipping his hat to highly influential saxophonist Johnny Hodges.

While McGriff and Crawford had wide ranging careers that influenced R&B, funk and even smooth jazz, guitarist O’Donel Levy is probably heard more in various hip-hop samples than on his own records. That’s a shame because Levy is a seriously gifted guitarist whose funky bop playing recalls the 4 Horsemen of Modern Jazz Guitar: Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, George Benson and Grant Green. Levy’s “Breeding of Mind” puts almost psychedelic strings against his searing guitar lines in a way that recalls Montgomery and Benson's crossover sets for Verve and A&M Records. – Nick Dedina

"I'll Look Around" Esperanza Spalding

"Can't Live Without You" Allan Harris

"Racquet Club" Jimmy McGriff with Hank Crawford

"Breeding Of Mind" O'Donel Levy