Originally released May 26, 1959
Reissued May 28, 2021
Craft Recordings
1xLP
Recorded at the dawn of the Civil Rights era, Abbey is Blue captures Abbey Lincoln partnered with a team of marquee jazz names like Kenny Dorham, Stanley Turrentine and Max Roach to record a vocal album that sets her apart from the pack by adding a political bent to her interpretations of jazz standards. Taking cues from iconoclasts like Billie Holiday, Lincoln in-turn inspired the next generation of firebrand jazz singers like Nina Simone on this album that sounds gentle at it’s surface but brims with a pained undercurrent that informs the injustice she is singing about.
IYL: Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, moving past Tin Pan Alley