—David Menconi, Down on Copperline
The third and newest album by Katharine Whalen’s Jazz Squad is called “Let’s Get Lost: Songs Chet Sang” (Modern Harmonic Records), a homage to the late great jazzman Chet Baker, with covers of 13 songs he made famous. It follows up the last Jazz Squad album, 2021’s Billie Holiday covers set “To Hide a Heart That’s Blue.” And yet it came together with a lot more fortunate circumstance than calculation.
“Honestly, it came down to practicality,” Whalen says. “We were looking for public-domain material that we already knew and loved, and it turned out that what we settled in on were songs he had done. So it just kinda happened that way.”
A legendary trumpet player known as “The Prince of Cool,” Baker also had a deadpan sweetness as a vocalist up before his mysterious death in 1988 (he fell out of a window from hotel in Amsterdam). Getting these songs right took a fair amount of effort for Whalen this time around.
“Chet Baker is very different from Billie Holiday,” Whalen says. “He sang with a sort of flat affect, which is so hard to pull off. Where Billie Holiday came naturally, his material was much harder for me. I had to wait until I was older and more worn-down.”
Whalen and band cut the new album in a single session at Eno House in Hillsborough, with Jerry Kee, Whalen and Jay Millar co-producing. And in another contrast with the digital-only Bandcamp release of the Holiday collection, “Let’s Get Lost” will be coming out on vinyl – with a cover picture that recreates the cover of 1958’s classic “(Chet Baker Sings) It Could Happen to You,” no less.
“I’m really excited to have it on vinyl, which is the holy grail to me,” Whalen says. “It’s a lot more timeless than CDs, which don’t hold up once they’ve been living on the floor of your car for a few years. We had the Zippers records on vinyl, thank God, so I can relearn those songs if I have to.”
Whalen is referring to her old group, 1990s hitmakers Squirrel Nut Zippers, who were inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2016 after a career that was kismet personified. The Zippers started out less as a band than a potluck party, with friends getting together to play old-time jazz. Whalen was one of the group’s primary vocalists, showing an uncanny ability to evoke old-time vibes across a range of styles while playing a mean banjo. Her voice had a lot to do with the Zippers becoming one of the least-likely platinum-selling bands ever.
Nowadays Whalen plays standup drums while singing with a core group of collaborators that includes guitarist Austin Riopel, trombonist Danny Grewen and pianist Robert “Grifanzo” Griffin. Some subset of that foursome comprises all Whalen’s groups, Certain Seas and Swedish Wood Patrol in addition to jazz Squad. When she’s not singing, you can find Whalen working at the Habitat Restore in Hillsborough – the “Treasure” section, of course.
“Working in a thrift shop, dream come true!” she cracks. “But in a lot of ways, this is the peak of my career. I’m working with the nicest people and things are manageable. Things coming to me organically is kind of the only way that can happen now. I don’t have a manager or booking agent, so it’s all just me and happy accidents.”
Katharine Whalen’s Jazz Squad plays First Friday at Eno Mill in Hillsborough on Sept. 6; and Sept. 26 at Yonder in Hillsborough.
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2019 Piedmont Laureate David Menconi’s latest book, “Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music,” was published in 2023 by University of North Carolina Press.
