2012 · Album
1619 Broadway: Brill Building Project
Recorded 2012 · Not specified in verified sources · Produced by Not specified in verified sources
Elling Rewrites the Songbook at the Brill Building
Elling strips the Brill Building catalog down to its emotional core, letting the melodies breathe.
The opening moments settle into a warm, mid-tempo groove with Elling's voice floating above a piano that sounds like it's been lived in. There's no rush here. The Brill Building songs—standards written by the greatest pop songwriting teams of the 1950s and 60s—arrive without fanfare, delivered by a vocalist who treats each lyric like he's discovering it for the first time. The instrumentation stays lean: piano, bass, drums, and occasionally a single horn. It's a jazz album that sounds more like a conversation than a recital.
Elling has been mining the Great American Songbook for years, but this project feels different because the Brill Building writers—Lieber and Stoller, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Carole King and Gerry Goffin—wrote for radio and the jukebox, not jazz clubs. They built hooks and emotional directness into these songs, and Elling honors that without condescension. He doesn't deconstruct them or layer them in irony. He simply sings them, and lets the melodies and lyrics do what they were designed to do. It's a smart move from a vocalist comfortable enough in the standards repertoire to recognize that sometimes a great song needs space, not reinvention.
This isn't a record that will rock anyone's world. AllMusic gave it 3.5 stars—solid, capable work that lands somewhere between a standard jazz date and a songwriter's documentary. But if you're already drawn to Elling's voice and his approach to standards, this is a natural fit. It's also one way to actually hear what the Brill Building sounded like when it mattered most.
Who's playing
Clark Sommersbass
Laurence Hobgoodpiano
John McLeanguitar
Tom Luertenor saxophone
Joel Frahmtenor saxophone
Kye Palmerflugelhorn
