The Time Jumpers
"Kid Sister"
(Rounder (ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK))
Willie Nelson
"For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price"
(Legacy (ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK){)
The Time Jumpers are a 10-member Nashville ensemble of musician's musicians that includes superstar Vince Gill and specializes in vintage country styles, especially Western swing.
There's plenty of that swing and similarly exuberant music on the band's third album. But "Kid Sister" is also suffused with a sense of loss, specifically that of Time Jumpers vocalist Dawn Sears, who died in 2014 of lung cancer. Her final contributions surface on two tracks. What gives the album its emotional heft are such Gill-penned and -sung ballads as "I Miss You" and the title song. And Sears' husband, fiddler and singer Kenny Sears, weighs in with his own shuffle, "This Heartache."
The Time Jumpers are among the musicians backing Willie Nelson on his spot-on tribute to his old boss, the late Ray Price. Nelson masterfully covers both of Price's signature styles: the hard-country shuffle rhythm of "Heartaches by the Number" and "City Life," and the more pop-oriented approach of "Make the World Go Away" and Willie's own "Night Life," which are immersed in strings and smooth backup vocalists.
_Nick Cristiano
