A. Scott Galloway,
Tunnel past the meshy linings of time and space into the musical world of Roz Ellington and prepare to feel refreshingly off-kilter - gently shaken from the norm of plasticity into an aura where harmony runneth over. Like Kahlua over crushed ice, Roz' music is sumptuously rich yet bracing, as hauntingly familiar as wee hours doo wop underneath a streetlight yet uncannily and defiantly her own. In other words, you're definitely not in Kansas anymore, but this Wonderland ain't Alice's either!
In fact, it's not even in color. It's film noir black and white, backlit by blues with an incandescent mist of funk. Everything is on the one, but it took a helluva struggle to get over. So close your eyes, open your ears and experience what just a taste of freedom was able to inspire in one sassy sista from Chi-town. Roz Ellington's world is an old one, yet her vision extends far into the future - to a place where music is returned to its true purpose: the pure expression of human emotion. She is a singer, composer, arranger and performer who produces every note of her music down to the tiniest detail. And it's no wonder, seeing as her layered harmonic sense was awakened by the inventiveness of Stevie Wonder. It's no surprise, when we consider that her intricate approach to vocal instrumentation extends from the quirky works of Bobby McFerrin. And it's elementary, once you understand that it was the mass appeal soul of Michael Jackson that broke her off with the confidence to keep her vocal concept dangling - dangerously - on the edge.
She's been singing since the age of four, beginning with gospel, and considers her gift destined and God-given. Her arrangements for voice approach orchestral dimensions, reminiscent of glorious ensembles. Roz respects music far beyond its most common uses for dancing and romancing. Once, for a Board of Education-sponsored summer youth program, Roz utilized music to help kids confront the pressures they face in our smaller, increasingly complex world. Today, on her debut album, Touched, Roz Ellington is using the art of song to illuminate the power and complexities of love. The a cappella "My Beautiful Man" marks the origin of her largely self-driven style. "It came about as an accident," she explains modestly. "I was at home working out the vocal parts on a four track. Since I didn't have a bass guitar or drums, I just sang those parts, too. When I took it to the studio, I sang each part separately, listening only to a click track. After my engineer, Maurice, played them back, we came to an immediate agreement: we weren't changing a thing!" Her method makes things especially interesting come concert time, where she uses several background vocalists and often forgoes keyboards altogether. "Keys are like another vocalist to me, so we tend to clash. With the format I use, I have total freedom to go wherever and sing whatever I want and be very spontaneous."
Indeed, Roz is renowned among fellow musicians on the Chicago music scene for creating a whole new song during a concert breakdown with the audience thinking it's just part of the show. The things she hears in others' songs are astounding. Observe the wash of varied voicings she applies to Paul McCartney's timeless "Yesterday," and the slower, funkier mood she brings to Janet Jackson's rocker, "Black Cat." Check how she boldly dispenses with lyrics altogether in her interpretation of Stevie Wonder's "Each Other's Throat" (penned for Spike Lee's film Jungle Fever), merely using the harmonic movement of the chord progressions as the backdrop for her and bassist Maurice Houston to explore the song's theme of a domestic dispute solely through music. Roz even polishes diamonds in the rough into gleaming little gems. Note songwriter Steve Grissette's ballad, "Help Me." "He wrote that back in '83, didn't see much potential in it and set it aside," Roz shares. "He let me hear it and I fell in love with it. I loved the melody and could clearly hear myself in it. I told him, 'One day I'm going to do an arrangement of this song.' " She sure did. Roz' version is pure acoustic gold. Where her renderings of other artists' works shows the breadth of her skills and imagination, it is through her originals that you truly get a sense of who Roz Ellington is.
The title track, "Touched," which comes from a very deep and personal place, Roz says, "is about a man who taught me something very important about myself." The album opens with "Jo's Girl," a jazzy take on emotional delirium that features the muted trumpet empathy of Walter Henderson. Of this, Roz elliptically comments, "Most of the songs on the album are about Jo..." Throughout Touched's 14 songs, Roz escorts you through a kaleidoscope of love and longing on numbers like the yearnin' "Crazy," the swingin' "Things U Say," and the sensual "Can U Feel Me Yet." On the inspiration behind "Prayed 4 Love," Roz offers, "Most of us look for love in all the wrong places. But if you pray for love, the only thing God is going to send you is real love. He's not gonna give you any mess! Now, whether you listen to him is a whole 'nother story." And of the irresistibly slinky "A Man of My Own" - already a fan favorite - she laughs, "I wrote that one for all age groups, but I kept that bluesy thang in there for the older people. I make sure my background singers have as much fun as I do. Their parts are as important as my leads, with a whole lot of important stuff to do!"
But there's more to life than love, and Roz addresses issues such as stress on "Time Bomb" and unity on "Freedom," which she penned during a trip to California after seeing yet another newscast about people killing each other. "I have a lot of different sides that I'd like to show," she says invitingly, which gives us all something to look forward to after devouring this first of what surely will be many fine albums to come. And if life somehow ceases to supply Roz with straw to be woven into silk, there's always her VCR. "I'm an old movie buff," she chuckles. "I love films like Laura and The Heiress. Back then, even though a guy was calling a girl a dame, she was looking her classiest and he always treated her like the classiest. I like that. I've always had an old spirit." The shadow of that spirit looms large in the name Roz chose for her publishing company: Eccentric Dame. "Somebody called me that once," she muses. "And he was right." That's why the lady is...a champ.
