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REBECCA DUMAINE & THE DAVE MILLER TRIO - Someday, Someday 

Summit Records CD 777 

Rebecca Dumaine (v); Dave Miller (p); Chuck Bennett (b); Bill Belasco (d) 
Oakland CA, no dates listed. 

This father and daughter group was going well in 2019. Regular gigs in a handful of venues and bookings at local and New York City festivals. They had even bought their plane tickets to New York. Then Covid -19 hit suddenly and, like the rest of us, everywhere, all plans had to be put on hold. In the sleeve notes Rebecca talks about 2020 being a dark year and says she found herself gravitating towards more melancholy songs. She also started writing  and two of her charts are included on her new CD. Both Someday, Someday and Time To Get Unstuck are bright, bouncy tunes that are hardly melancholy. She is that kind of singer though, everything she sings is lively and usually, upbeat. The title tune here is a steady swinger which she sings with a bounce and it has the makings of a future standard if enough vocalists pick up on it. On A Clear Day is given a fresh treatment with some flowing piano work by Dave Miller. 

Rebecca is particularly good on solid standards and here delivers a not usual but effective mid tempo version of Just Friends. Alone Again is more in her melancholy region but again she gives it such a personal reading and so obvious an understanding and interpretation of the lyric that I feel she upstages the composer, Gilbert O’Sullivan. As to Cry Me A River and La Vie En Rose she again sings them with a personal, lively reading that makes her sound like a very original jazz singer. Cry Me gets a fast jazz waltz treatment rather than the usual dirge readings we hear frequently. The Gentleman Is A dope suits her well and she swings it nicely, helped along enormously by Dad’s brisk piano solo and comping. The rhythm team support well, giving solid backing at all tempi. They have been together for some years now so know each other’s requirements well. As Rebecca says in that note she still tried to keep it ‘ultimately hopeful’ and I think she succeeds here. Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams and Sunny are just the right choices to finish a sixth father and daughter collaboration in style. 

Reviewed by Derek Ansell

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