Georgia On My Mind

Georgia Anne Muldrow
Album: Early
Run Away

The term "old school" in music means different things to different people.   For most it simply refers to musical tradition.  To the cynical it suggests a bottom line approach, a calculated imitation of production values and styles of an earlier time in order to sell records.  Duffy, for example, is Motown incarnate.  Amy Winehouse too.  Neither of these commercially successful artists would have looked or sounded out of place in the mid 60s.  Still others use "old school" in a pejorative sense, to mean something outdated and stale.  And a very few take the old school and turn it into something else altogether.  Something radically new.  Georgia Anne Muldrow is one of those artists.

Within a few seconds of listening to Muldrow I had that shivery sensation of hearing something unique.  The funk / soul / R&B vibe hit me first.  There I sat on my comfortable couch in my comfortable living room in my comfortable home, mellow as can be, nodding my head to the fat bass lines and honey drenched keyboards.  And then...damn!  Those vocals hit me, knocked me out of my comfort zone.  Then coaxed me into a new musical space altogether.

Georgia Anne Muldrow is criminally under-appreciated.  More so, I would say, than any other artist I have featured in this blog.  She has the type of voice that should sell out stadiums.  Why she is still a niche performer is beyond me.

Muldrow has a wonderful sense of melody and phrasing, and it is a real joy to listen to her creatively tease out the melodic line.  She stretches the rhythms within the phrases too; there is a fluidity to her delivery that reminds me of the best hip hop MCs.  And her harmonies!  Wow.  Stacking 3rds into delicious Debussy-esque territories, sounding more like Wayne Shorter than Alicia Keys, Muldrow is consistently interesting to listen to.

Buy her album, Early.  She will not disappoint.