Music Feeds’ Love Letter to a Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins gives kudos to ‘Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, Vol. 1 & 2‘ as well as Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ and Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue‘.
It comes hot on the heels of the release of her third full-length album ‘My Light, My Destroyer’, which the artist says came from stems from a place of “insatiable curiosity”; “If ‘An Overview…’ showed me how to bend, ‘My Light…’ helped me break open, with a magnifying glass and a telescope in tow,” she explains in a press statement. “It is a product of frustration and discovery and a writing process that at times resembled scientific method. At times language failed, and I allowed music to step in to fill the gaps. I surrounded myself with everything I love, let myself feel invigorated and challenged by it, until I finally began to love something of my own creation.”
Cassandra Jenkins – My Light, My Destroyer
Cassandra Jenkins: The first thing that comes to mind [when I think about an album that has influenced my life] is Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, Vol. 1 & 2 – this was always on in our house growing up, and as I got older, they were always there with me. We listened to it constantly.
Fitzgerald’s voice and expression has had a singularly large impression on me, especially the way she handles and improvises with melodies. Cole Porter & the American Song Book loomed larger than anything in the household (maybe next to the massive Beatles Book that always sat atop the piano). We have shelves of sheet music in our family home that have held a place like a hearth. My entire family is musical, and we grew up playing together, so it’s hard to imagine my life without those songs.
Also in heavy rotation were the Planets & Gloria Estefan & James Taylor & Loons of the Adirondacks. Kind of a great sampling of the music living in my earliest memories. Whether it was the Fitzgerald records or the others I mentioned, we put them on nightly, sometimes for dinner music, and others for coordinating complex dance routines in our tiny apartment, letting the music be the soundtrack to play and expression.
Otherwise– I want to write about a pairing. The first two records my dad gave me were Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and I love that he chose colour as a common thread two albums that represent a spectrum of music that has had a deep impact on me. I remember when he gave them to me, it felt like a right of passage, like he was pulling them from the vault and sharing them with me when he felt I was ready to hear them.
Cassandra Jenkins’ new album ‘My Light, My Destroyer’ is available now. Buy/stream it here.
Further Reading
Rolling Stone Founder Jann Wenner Apologises for Reductive Comments About Female and Black Musicians
Joni Mitchell Plays First Headline Show In 20 Years w/ Annie Lennox, Sarah McLachlan, and More
Love Letter to a Record: Hannah Cameron on Joni Mitchell’s ‘Court and Spark’
