Cryptology Stallings

After a decades-long hiatus from the jazz scene, forty years after being vocalist with Basie's band, Mary Stallings is back, and on her own terms. Recorded fresh from a series of performances at New York's prestigious venue Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Mary Stallings' latest HighNote title places her firmly in the pantheon of great female jazz singers of this, or any other time. So respected is her art and musicianship, Mary was chosen to be the first jazz performer to ever appear at the venerable and heretofore classical-only National Theater in Prague. A singular honor, to be sure and the latest in a series of awards and distinctions that Stallings has been gathering since her first HighNote release in 2010.

Writing about Mary Stallings The New York Times declared that “perhaps the best jazz singer singing today is a woman almost everybody seems to have missed.” Bay Area jazz lovers chuckled ruefully over yet another blast of East Coast parochialism, long recognizing Ms. Stallings as a singular jazz treasure. Her talents were also recognized by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Cal Tjader, Ben Webster and Wes Montgomery, who all went out of their way to showcase this supremely soulful singer.