Steel, Ivy - Reincarnation

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	What a Little Moonlight Can Do	03:28
	2	God Bless the Child	04:58
	3	Travelling Light	03:59
	4	Willow Weep for Me	04:44
	5	Boudoirs	02:50

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Now or Never	02:35
	2	Don’t Explain	04:26
	3	Robbin’s Nest	03:27
	4	Prelude to a Kiss	04:55
	5	Easy Living	05:03

Photos

Videos

Information/Write-up

Ivy Steel was a Canadian jazz vocalist whose warm, lyrical delivery and deep interpretive sense drew comparisons to Billie Holiday, yet remained distinctly her own. Born and raised in southern Ontario, Steel grew up far from the cultural centres of jazz, in what she described as a “less-than-hip” environment. She came to the music almost academically, discovering its history and repertoire before experiencing it live. Unlike many singers influenced by Billie Holiday, Steel did not hear Holiday’s recordings until she was already a working vocalist, studying Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in the 1970s.

Steel began performing as a child on CHEX-Radio in Peterborough and in her teens appeared regularly on CHEX-TV. By the late 1960s, she was active in Toronto’s Yorkville scene, singing folk and soft blues, but her ambition was always to work in jazz. She absorbed knowledge and inspiration from American musicians passing through the city, including trumpeter Art Farmer during his final days with saxophonist Sam Stewart.

Her breakthrough into the Toronto jazz community was aided by strong critical notices. In 1980, Melody Maker’s Max Jones heard her perform “Don’t Explain” and remarked: “…it’s true you can walk into a room when she’s starting one number and decide in a minute that Billie’s kid is spinning.”

In 1981, Steel recorded her sole known album, Reincarnation, at McClear Place Studios for Innovation Records. Produced by Phil Sheridan, the album’s concept was to introduce Billie Holiday’s muse to Steel’s repertoire, preserving the emotional depth of Lady Day’s work while updating the sound for a modern setting. The record featured a first-class Canadian jazz lineup: Joe Sealy (piano, musical director), Pete Magadini (drums), Dave Young (bass), and Eugene Amaro (saxophone). Steel’s program mixed classics like “God Bless the Child,” “Willow Weep for Me,” and “Don’t Explain” with lesser-known standards and her own composition, “Bouldoirs.”

Broadcaster Ted O’Reilly (CJRT-FM) praised Steel for combining lyricism with a quiet, mysterious strength, noting that while she carried the spirit of jazz greats like Lester Young and Ben Webster, she always sounded like herself.

Ivy Georgina Steel passed away at her Toronto residence on September 12, 2017, survived by her daughters Georgia Steel and Kathryn O’Neill, and her granddaughters Saturn Steel-Mendez and Lana Mendez. Though her recorded legacy is small, Reincarnation remains a testament to a singer of uncommon subtlety, sensitivity, and musical intelligence.
-Robert Williston

Ivy Steel: vocals
Joe Sealy: piano, musical director
Pete Magadini: drums
Dave Young: bass
Eugene Amaro: saxophone

Produced and engineered by Phil Sheridan
Recorded at McClear Place Recording Studios, Toronto, Ontario
Distributed by Trend Records & Tapes Ltd., 47 Racine Rd., #6, Rexdale, Ontario

Photography and cover design by Gerry Yesdresvay

Liner notes:
I know the popular image of Billie Holiday is ‘Lady Sings the Blues’. What I always heard in Lady Day was joy. As I was raised in a less than hip WASP part of southern Ontario in Canada, I had to learn jazz almost academically. As a result, I heard the joyful, optimistic, call for life instead of tragedy. Ivy Steel has a similar background to me, except that she didn’t hear Billie until she was much older and already a singer.

As a child, when people told Ivy of the sound similarity, she had naturally concluded the mysterious ‘Billie’ was a male. The formal introduction to the sound of Lady Day, as Ivy puts it, came while studying Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, in the seventies.

Radio appearances as a child on CHEX-Radio and later in her teens on CHEX-TV led Ivy to the Toronto jazz scene. Ivy learned from the American jazzmen playing in town like Art Farmer in his last days with Sam Stewart, who recently retired, and from the jazz critics like Max Jones, jazz critic for Melody Maker wrote: “…it’s true you can walk into a room when she’s starting one number DON’T EXPLAIN and decide in a minute that Billie’s kid is spinning.” November 29, 1980.

Ivy began to mix with the musicians and to break into, specifically the jazz side, so ivy fell into some folk and soft-blues gigs in the mid-sixties hey-day of Toronto’s beatnik-coffee-house-hippie-heaven era in Yorkville, but jazz was the music she wanted to do. Since then her approach has become more in the standards tradition, the act here, according to producer Phil Sheridan, was to introduce Lady Day’s muse to her repertoire. He wishes to keep the essence of the songs, but present them as close to Lady Day was the today sounds. As with these meetings between the musicians, Wilson heard these tapes and thought the idea of introducing the audience to the Attimas Era especially interesting. “He has all the good people in him, but he sounds like himself.” Wilson reported.

Ivy wanted Gene on the date, knowing he could handle any style of tune with the flavours of Ben Webster and Lester Young. And, as Ivy points out, “Gene could always be oblique in the way that’s only right, yet doesn’t get in the way of my phrasing.”

Pianist Joe Sealy is a real find, from Montreal, Quebec, originally. He’s empathetic to the vocalist, adding strength without distracting from the vocal line, but not boring, Joe’s especially strong on EXPLAIN, a composition written and performed here with voice and piano.

Dave Young is originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, but started his career as a collector of great ideas and has travelled the globe playing duets with Oscar Peterson. He has the kind of musical mind that never spoke with Dave before, he had not yet been the kind of music.

Drummer Pete Magadini has been heard by jazz fans in any number of settings from combos to ballads. He realizes that even the top vocalists in the business need a drummer who knows when to put away the sticks and play with the brushes. …

Magadini is a young drummer in his mid-twenties and already a master of the subtle, well-reputed jazz drummer’s art.

Great musicians on great tunes present strong material, good ideas, and the quiet ground to the lady, lyrical in personality, yet with the mysterious strength to hold and caress the music in the palm of her hand as in this album will never pose a problem.

Ted O’Reilly,
Host of ‘The Jazz Scene’
CJRT-FM, Toronto, Canada

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