STX Jazz at its Best: Kevin Rames & CJ Baz Set the Night on Fire
- Mark Dworkin
- 11 minutes ago
- 3 min read
STX Jazz at its Best:
Kevin Rames & CJ Baz
Set the Night on Fire
M.A. Dworkin
When you bring together two of the best jazz singers on the island, let them bust loose and do their thing on the CMCArts Courtyard Stage at the final Simone L. Palmer Concert Series of the season, you not only raise the bar of great St. Croix entertainment to a level that thrills all who have come to hear, but the electricity created by Kevin Rames and CJ Baz sends a collective tingle up the spine of every jazz lover within earshot.
The legendary STX crooner Kevin Rames and the Wow! Wow! Wow!
incredible jazz voice of CJ Baz, backed up by the wild band sounds of the
Troublemakers, cooked the CMCArts crowd into a pot boiling stew labeled: “Made in Jazz Heaven.” No doubt, their combustible duets exist on the same hot jazz modern day menu as Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga a la “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
First off, when Mr. Rames does his bawdy opening riff on the Luiz Bonfa and Antonia Maria classic “Black Orpheus” you immediately know you are in the hands of a Master jazz singer. His style is so cool, so light to the touch, that the audience is willing to follow him down any dark alley, past any warning sign of “Trespassers Beware.”
CJ Baz, who is the principal singer in the hot jazz group Baz N Dem, is the epitome of the Jazz Songstress Supreme. This elegant and beautiful lady has all the style of the greats! She can put over a smooth song with the ease of Nina Simone and bust it out with the bravado of Ella Fizgerald. When she sings the Anita Baker smash hit “Sweet Love” every heart in the Courtyard falls for her. Every sweet note she hits makes you know you will follow her anywhere. And when she dives into Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You,” well, you just know you are listening to one of the great jazz voices of the times.
But of course it’s when you combine these two powerhouses of jazz that we come up with a singular sensation that blows the place apart, fills the skies over CMCArts with the chills of what jazz is all about, and causes all those Jazz Duet Angels, Sinatra and Ella, Satchmo and Ella, Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan, to fall from the sky and give a listen. Because ‘it don’t get much better’ than Kevin Rames and CJ Baz singing the Etta James classic “Tennessee Whiskey - I’d Rather Go Blind.”
As if the Troublemakers can’t make enough trouble on their own, bulked up with Shomauri Gumbs blowing that hot Trombone, Brian Hodge on the wildest Sax, Pollo on the kool Bass, Howard Phillips ticklin’ those keys ever so sweet, and Vernon Douglas, who is certainly one of the Best Drummers on island. Oh yeah, Trouble with a capital “T” is definitely their middle name!
So another great season of the CMCArts sponsored Simone L. Palmer Concert Series comes to an end. This year it was brilliantly curated by the incomparable Glen Alan Bevube, mastermind of the hit group Baz N Dem. The Concert Series makes a cool jazz exit off the Courtyard Stage and slides out over the calm blue waters towards the setting sun as it slips down across the Caribbean horizon.
No doubt there was a Green Flash to herald its success!
