Excerpt from the Village Voice July 2006 by Francis Davis who writes not only for the the Village Voice in NY, but also the N

Excerpt from the Village Voice July 2006 by Francis Davis who writes not only for the the Village Voice NY, but also the NY times and Atlantic Monthly.

Good singers are coming along today, too - they're just not the ones you hear the most about. Dianne Reeves has been around for years. Earlier in her career, from one overproduced album to another, she sounded like a mannered soul singer embracing jazz as a step up in class. But she came into her own on A Little Moonlight (2003), and her performances in George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck are idiomatically true to the 1950s setting and a pure joy. Rebecca Kilgore and Daryl Sherman are the finest of a number of female singers who revive forgotten songs of the swing era and surround themselves with musicians who love Billie Holiday, Lee Wiley and Mildred Bailey as much as they do. Bryan Anthony, whom I know only from a CD he released to little fanfare in 2001, evokes memories of the young Sinatra without trying to pass himself off as a reincarnation. (The nouveau crooner Michael Buble supposedly makes you squeal, "I can't believe it's not Sinatra!" Well, actually, I can.)

Francis Davis is a columnist on jazz for The Village Voice. His latest book is Jazz and Its Discontents: A Francis Davis Reader. From The Atlantic Monthly.