For those unaware, Jazz vocalist Jeffrey Gimble’s long-awaited sophomore album Brand New Key (due out April 4th, 2025) features a handful of standards, not-so-standards, some gems from the 70’s and a few songs that deserve to be standards.

This is the vocalist’s long-awaited endeavor since the release of his 2013 debut album Beyond Up High. All About Jazz said, Vocalist Jeffrey Gimble makes one heck of an entrance into the jazz world, with an impressive debut that’s beyond good; it’s quite frankly, terrific in style, swing and swagger.

Brand New Key features top LA players, including acclaimed pianist and composer, Josh Nelson, who produced the album, guitarist Larry Koonse, bassist Dan Lutz, and drummer Dan Schnelle. Gimble had wanted to work on a recording with Nelson for some time. Josh is such a brilliant pianist and arranger. We kept talking about doing a project together and given that he’s one of the best pianists in town (and he’s also one of my closest friends), I thought, how could I not?

The new album calls attention to a few musical gems that deserve broader recognition and explores his passion for the grooves and sounds of the 60’s and 70’s. It heralds Gimble’s personal feelings about his growth as an artist.

1. Bye Bye Blackbird
2. Tryin Times
3. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was
4. A Ra
5. The Nearness of You
6. Brand New Key
7. In the Glow of the Moon
8. Quietly There
9. Somebody Groovy
10. Music’s the Only Thing That’s On My Mind

This elegantly sculpted new recording opens on the soulful 20’s standard Bye Bye Blackbird and then brings us an incredible, low slung Roberta Flack song Tryin Times (which addressed the civil disorder of the era), the Rodgers & Hart’s classic I Didn’t Know What Time It Was (from the 1939 musical Too Many Girls), the smoothly seductive bossa-hued, Portuguese-vocalized A Ra (A Frog) and the emotively impassioned The Nearness of You.

Along next is his alluring version of Melanie’s early 70’s cut, and the title track Brand New Key which is in turn backed by a moody, sultry even In the Glow of the Moon, the sheer gossamer of Quietly There, the music rounding out on a funky-pop-jazzy version of The Mamas & the Papas’ Somebody Groovy, closing on the gentle Jimmy Rowles track Baby Mine (an elegant duet with guitarist Larry Koonse).

www.jeffreygimble.com