Until I Met You  (Audio CD) 
by Melissa Morgan

Melissa Morgan is a newcomer with an old-school pedigree. Her earliest exposure to jazz was by way of her grandmother's record collection when she was growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey. Some of the first jazz voices she ever heard from among those old LPs - Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson - were also some of the greatest. Two decades after first hearing those classic voices, Morgan's tastes still run to that heyday of the great jazz divas. Her debut recording, Until I Met You, captures that organic, old-school sensibility and reintroduces it to an entirely new generation of listeners.

"I can't say enough wonderful things about all of them," says Morgan. "A few of the tracks were the first and only takes. We might have done one or two more in some cases, but the ones that ultimately made it onto the record were the first takes, and we didn't touch them. I think that says a lot about us as a group, and how we all get along and how well we play together." The camaraderie is evident in the music.

Whether the individual song is bittersweet or lighthearted, Morgan sees the music in general as part of a larger story, one that she's anxious to tell - provided she can do it in a way that's meaningful to the listener. Listen to Until I Met You and catch the first chapter of Melissa Morgan's promising story.