Jodi Stevens

One of Jodi Stevens' press releases described her first jazz album, Girl Talk, as "Ann-Margret crashing a Blue Note session," and there's a grain of truth in that. Although the East Coast singer/actress can handle jazz, she isn't a hardcore jazz singer in the way that Kitty Margolis, Judi Silvano, Karrin Allyson, Carla White, and Judy Niemack are hardcore jazz singers -- when Stevens sings jazz, she is mindful of cabaret, Broadway, and pre-rock traditional pop. Stevens swings, but not in an abstract, cerebral, hell-bent-for-bop fashion; she doesn't come across as the sort of v...