Over Christmas, I bought myself a new car. Well, nearly new—enough that I drive it everywhere like a partially-sighted senior, terrified of even the lightest contact with anything but fresh air. To help avoid any paintwork-punishing incidents, I’ve switched up my driving music: nu metal, classic jungle, and hot jazz are out; city pop, vaporwave, and sweet swing are in. Tempos faster than 120 bpm are banned from the in-car MP3 player, as are tracks featuring drum machines or Gene Krupa.
Under this new, authoritarian audio regime, Judy Whitmore’s new album gets a pass from the Ministry of Motoring Music. Come Fly With Me could just as easily have been called Come Drive With Me, as it turns out its twelve tracks make ideal ear fodder for the kind of hectic highways encountered on a New Year’s Day. There are no distractingly deep cuts on this disc, which features big band renditions of a dozen travel-themed standards: “April in Paris,” “Moonlight in Vermont,” and “Georgia on My Mind” join the title track and others, whisking the listener away on a low-stress, globe-trotting aural adventure.
At the fore is Whitmore: cabaret performer, recording artist, bestselling novelist, theater producer, licenced therapist, and a qualified commercial jet pilot. (Yes, really.) One might reasonably ask whether one person can actually be so talented. Well, I can only speak for the si
