This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.

For every music lover, I think there are two basic forms of pleasure.

The huge satisfaction of something you love done just perfectly, and then the thrill of hearing something altogether shockingly

new. When an artist does both things at once your head comes open a little bit

which is what happened when I first heard Cecile McLauran

Salvon.

Here am I lounging on the sands of my hourglass feeling my mind slip off a cliff.

I lost my mind my mind.

She's a jazz singer for sure, someone on the level of Sarah Vaughn or Ella Fitzgerald,

but her repertoire and her approach to performing are totally her own.

A standard from the American songbook might be followed by a tune from hundreds of years ago and across

an ocean, as we'll hear shortly.

And no two shows are ever alike.

I once went to see her expecting things like how high the moon

and how deep is the ocean, but the first thing out of her was a century old

murder ballot, some half an hour long.

Winton Marcellus has called her the kind of talent who comes along only once in a

generation or two.

Cecile McClure and Salvon has been touring the country

and in-between shows came to talk

and to sing in our studio at WNC. Don't tell me not to live just sit and putter life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter

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