Good Morning Midnight

Scott Ellison hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1977 guitarist Ellison backed up country music star Jesseca James and in 1981 joined up with Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. In the mid 1980’s Ellison relocated to Los Angeles and found work with The Box Tops, The Marvalettes, The Drifters, The Coasters and others. He formed his own blues band in the early 90’s and opened for The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Leon Russell, and Buddy Guy. Ellison released his first albums “Chains of Love” in 1993 and “Live at Joey’s” in 1995.

It is difficult to imagine two greater opposites. On the one hand, Jazz, the rough companion who made ends meet in the big cities of the 20th century. On the other, Emily Dickinson, the quiet poet from a Calvinist family, who spent all of her life in the rural community of Amherst, Massachusetts. When Dickinson died at the age of 56 in 1886, jazz had not been born yet. It was no more than a dark premonition, lingering in the dank swamps of the Mississippi delta.
Do they go together? Without doubt. But to achieve this union requires a unique talent. Great musicianship. A feel for words, images, and sounds. It requires the ability to invent tunes that linger in the ear and move the heart. Only then can we fully appreciate the brittle, secretive art of Emily Dickinson…

With a constantly shifting series of musicians at her back, Purim turns in a correspondingly eclectic album, veering freely from the Great American Songbook to jazz-rock to Brazil and back again. However, this album begins in a somewhat unfocused manner – Flora does not sound completely comfortable with the songs in English – and only hits its stride somewhere in the middle, when the Brazilian elements really kick in. Of the standards, "Angel Eyes" is backed bittersweetly by the British saxophone quartet Itchy Fingers, and there is a leisurely, spare-textured "Midnight Sun" featuring George Duke.