This Is Book’s Music

In jazz circles it is said that if you have the musician on the album cover with their instrument, it limits their sales potential. If you see them with a saxophone, guitar, or drums, it immediately says “jazz”, which normally isn’t something to complain about but sometimes it can mean the difference between decent sales and selling something in the 5 or 6-digit range. Bassist/vocalist Mimi Jones has released a great album called A New Day (Hot Tone Music) and she is seen on the cover with her left hand on the neck of a stand-up bass. Beautiful, right? It is, but she could’ve easily used the photo on the inside tray card, a nice portrait of her standing. With a big enough push, it’s an album that could break her into new markets.

I’m sure you’re asking “what does this have to do with the music?” Let’s be honest here, some of the best music sells well by marketing, without proper promotion you’re selling in the 4-digit range. But as I played this album a number of times, I’m thinking to myself that Miss Jones should be playing on The Today Show, The Carson Daly Show or even Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. In other words, she is deserving of mainstream success and I’ll tell you why.

The music on A New Day is like a cross between Cassandra Wilson and Me’Shell NdegeOcello, not so much in their vocal style or tone but in the passion they put into their music. There’s a newness to the music that is nice and refreshing without having to overcompensate by adding hip-hop beats or dollar store keyboards over it, it’s very professional sounding and she sounds well versed in jazz as she does in soul and funk. The funk is not done overly so, a lot of times artists will push it just to say “heyyyyy, I’m funky”. No, it’s subtle and in that subtlety is where her talent shines.

The album is a mixture of instrumentals and vocalized tracks, so one gets a chance to hear her play incredibly. Then when she sings, you want to stop everything that you do and take her in. I like a seductive voice that’s also strong, maybe that’s the man in me but it pulls me in. I hear someone who sings and plays with confidence and I want to put faith in that and become a believer in what she does. You hear what comes out of the speakers but there’s also that something more, that unknown quality that you can’t describe well but you know that this is someone with talent, and someone who knows this and wants to make sure people are impressed while also being humble in the mission to get her music across.

In 2009, marketing can make the worst sounding music sound like the best thing you ever heard in your life. But marketing cannot take away pure talent, and Mimi Jones is someone who has this in abundance. Soothe and groove but never too rude… well, sometimes she gets locked into a groove that may be rude but discover that for yourself.

(A New Day will be released on September 15, 2009. You can find out more about her by visiting MimiJonesMusic.com.)