Album: Superhero Swinger Undercover (2003)

You’ll have to excuse me if I can’t properly recall where I first heard this curious song.  Maybe I was letting my mind absently listen through the less and less frequent repeats of Pandora, or maybe I just ran across it while surfing the world wide internet as I usually do.  When it comes to jazz, bebop, modal, my general focus tends to fall on more downbeat affairs.  To this day my favorite jazz piece is Miles Davis’s “Blue in Green”; I love it so much that it inspired a particularly melancholy scene in a short story I wrote so many years ago.  Also, at the time I first heard that song, I avoided anything that wasn’t an instrumental piece.

When I did fall in love with the jazz singer, it was primarily due to Nina Simone and, later, Jane Monheit.  Then I branched out, and somehow we find ourselves back to this point where I question exactly where it was I discovered “Sugar High” in the first place.  In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.  I found it, and it stands as a stark contrast to my usual affairs.  Where something like Jane Monheit’s rendition of “Like a Lover” is mellow and calm, “Sugar High”, sung by Cynthia Lyon, is full on swing with enough heart and joy to be as sickly sweet at the name suggests, and our songstress lead is only a part of that equation.

Collin Tilton leads the charge for the first minute or so, showing off some flawless technical prowess as he solos, tickling the sax (I’m going to trademark that phrase) and laying down a steady groove throughout that carries just as much foundation as the percussion.  But as great as he is, he falls back to accompaniment when Lyon begins to belt, and even when he gets a chance to shine once more, the powerful lead vocals make “Sugar High” the sickly sweet pleasure it is.

And that’s what it ultimately is in few words: a sickly sweet pleasure.  Content wise they aren’t touching on new ground: the “I love my man because he’s so (insert adjective here)” song is as common as a cold, but when you deal with familiar territory you have to do something different.  At the end of the day, I can’t say that Eight to the Bar does anything new, but they trend old ground so passionately that I can’t help but hit repeat anytime I put Superhero Swinger Undercover on.  This is swing music for a more modern mentality, an upbeat song that belongs in a serious noir movie as a welcome and pleasant, if deceptive, high.  You know, because noir films are usually pretty unwelcome and unpleasant.  And deceptive.

But to paraphrase the great LeVar Burton, you don’t have to take my word for it.  Granted, I’d appreciate it if you did, but click on the album cover and give it a listen.