Meant To Be! – Ray Bryant & Fleurine Mehldau

"Tina May Sings The Ray Bryant Songbook" was recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs.

Don Sickler: "In 1995 Fleurine, a young vocalist/lyricist from Holland, contacted me. She wanted to do an album featuring the music of jazz artists, and she wanted to write the lyrics. She'd already contacted a couple of jazz artists and had written lyrics to their music, but she was looking for other music to consider. I loved her enthusiasm, so we had a meeting and went over some music I publish that I felt could have lyrics. I told her that the composers would also have to approve any lyrics, and she went to work. She was really focused and soon produced lyrics to seven Second Floor Music compositions. All but one were included on her CD. Her new title for Ray's composition was Meant To Be!, the title of her CD. I arranged Fleurine's voice recording for a trio: Fleurine (voice), bass (Christian McBride) and tenor sax (Ralph Moore). It's a half step higher than Tina May's recording.

"Years later, when Tina May approached Ray and I with her idea for the Ray Bryant Songbook project, Ray thought Meant To Be! would be a good song to include. As it turned out, we recorded more songs than would fit on one CD, and Meant To Be had to be left off. Now, we can make Tina and Ray's recording available through jazzleadsheets.com. Note: this is the only time Ray ever recorded this composition. He hadn't even recorded the instrumental Chicken An' Dumplins (see my notes). The session was engineered by the legendary Rudy Van Gelder. Read more about the Tina May/Ray Bryant project in the Historical Notes for Fantasy For Two."

You can purchase Fleurine's version at iTunes.