Jazz Vocalist Susie Arioli Goes ‘All The Way’

Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross has been listening to jazz singer Susie Arioli since she first heard Arioli’s 2002 album Pennies From Heaven. Arioli is Canadian and has a big following there, but she’s not well known in the U.S., and hasn’t toured in many American cities. So when Arioli and her longtime guitarist and arranger, Jordan Officer, stopped in for an in-studio concert and conversation, Gross was thrilled.

Before Arioli and her band had made a record, they were asked to open for Ray Charles. She thinks they got the gig because they played “Lonely Avenue” at one of their first outdoor shows. In 2001, Arioli recorded her first album and has since been nominated for three Juno Awards — the Canadian equivalent to the Grammy.

Arioli’s new album, All the Way, is a collection of jazz standards from the canonical Great American Songbook. It was a chance for her to pay homage to the artists who’ve influenced and inspired her — among them Frank Sinatra, Irving Berlin and Chet Baker, the American jazz trumpeter and singer. She first tried to do an imitation of Baker, but realized she had to find a different approach. “One thing [Chet Baker] does is he holds his notes super long … but when I was trying to completely imitate him, I sounded cold, detached from the song; I just didn’t sound like me.” In the process of putting the album together, she says she found elements of each song that brought out aspects of her own voice.