I have loved the work of Joe Jackson for as long as I can remember. He has become quite eccentric as of late, spearheading a pro smoking campaign and being the tough opinionated dude he has always been (with a bit more angst).
Information has just been released that Jackson will be paying homage to Duke Ellington in an upcoming release.
"I revere Duke Ellington, but I didn't want this to be a reverent album," Jackson said, but don't look for straight up recreations of songs like Take the A Train and Sophisticated Lady. Per the press release "Jackson filters the material through his own musical imagination while exploring an assortment of unexpected grooves and textures. The resulting album is a seamless fusion of sounds and styles, whose abundant sense of playfulness is consistent with Ellington's boundary-breaking attitude."
Jackson added "Ellington didn't consider his own arrangements to be sacred. He constantly reworked them, sometimes quite radically. So I think my approach is in the spirit of the man himself."
The album to be titled "Razor and Tie" has a boatload of cool cats joining in Iggy Pop (It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)), Sharon Jones (I Ain't Got Nothin' But the Blues), Sussan Dayhim (Caravan in Farsi) and Zuco 103 (Perdido). Jackson solo's on I'm Beginning to See the Light, Mood Indigo and I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good). Overall, 15 of the Duke's songs are mined on ten tracks.
A release date is not yet noted.