Requisites

Abbey Is Blue is the fourth album by jazz vocalist Abbey Lincoln featuring tracks recorded in the Spring and Fall of 1959 in New York City for the Riverside label. The album was produced by Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews, the latter also writing the liner notes The album was mastered by Jack Matthews and the cover photograph was taken by Lawrence N. Shustak. The design of the cover was created by Harris Lewine, Ken Braren and Paul Bacon. 

Abbey Lincoln had mastered Billie Holiday’s skill at inhabiting the lyrics of a song and projecting its emotional content outward, and these songs, all of which deal with sorrow, are stark and harrowing accounts of loss and injustice.

• Afro Blue (Mongo Santamaría) – 3:20
• Lonely House (Langston Hughes, Kurt Weill) – 3:40
• Let Up (Abbey Lincoln) – 5:32
• Thursday’s Child (Elisse Boyd, Murray Grand) – 3:31
• Brother, Where Are You? (Oscar Brown) – 3:10
• Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Ted Fio Rito, Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young) – 5:24
• Come Sunday (Duke Ellington) – 5:13
• Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise (Oscar Hammerstein II, Sigmund Romberg) – 2:46
• Lost in the Stars (Maxwell Anderson, Kurt Weill) – 4:11
• Long as You’re Living” (Oscar Brown, Julian Priester, Tommy Turrentine) – 2:33

• Abbey Lincoln – vocals
• Kenny Dorham (tracks 2, 4 & 7-9), Tommy Turrentine (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10) – trumpet
• Julian Priester – trombone (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10)
• Stanley Turrentine – tenor saxophone (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10)
• Les Spann – guitar (tracks 2, 4 & 7-9), flute (track 5)
• Wynton Kelly (tracks 2, 4, 5), Cedar Walton (tracks 3 & 6), Phil Wright (tracks 7-9) – piano
• Bobby Boswell (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10), Sam Jones (tracks 2, 4, 5 & 7-9) – bass
• Philly Joe Jones (tracks: 2, 4, 5 & 7-9), Max Roach (tracks: 1, 3, 6 & 10) – drums

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