Bay Area-based vocalist Roberta Donnay is best known for her work with Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks; her solo releases, however, are impressive in their own right. Her voice is sort of a cross between a husky Betty Boop and Mildred Bailey; she
has an incessant sense of rhythm and a tinge of wry wit and playfulness always seems to eek out at just the right time. She’s here with a band that mixes traditional swagger with a dash here and there of more modern (meaning post WWII) harmonies and rhythms. She basically sticks to Depression Era-Tin Pan Alley material, such as “Rocking Chair” or “I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling” and mixes a sense of nostalgia with a mischievous glisten in her eye. Her piano and vocal duet on the intro to “You Go To My Head” shows that she can take a lyric and atmosphere quite seriously, while her treatment of novelty tunes like the barroom brawler “Mama’s Gone, Goodbye,” or “One Monkey Don’t Stop Now Show” have a vaudevillian flavor. The whole release emits a mood of a smoky low ceilinged juke joint, and when she rollicks on the hep cat “You Got To Swing and Sway,” the roof almost pops off. More than musical time travelling, Donnay makes music fun again.
Motema Records.