VOA标准英语2010年-Catherine Russell Releases Blues Influ

（单词翻译）

Vocalist Catherine Russell is always searching for that next great melody.  She's found more than a dozen of them to sing on her latest album, Inside This Heart Of Mine. 

Catherine Russell is a perfectionist when it comes to choosing her material.  Her first rule is it has to swing, as heard on her interpretation¹ of Ray Gilbert's "All The Cats Join In."

Catherine's love for the stage began at home.  She says her parents, noted² jazz composer Luis Russell and singer and bass⁴ player Carline Ray, introduced her to music and dance without any pressure of following in their footsteps.   

"They didn't want to be 'stage parents', so they went with what I wanted to do more than [what they wanted me to do]," she says.  "I had a mean piano teacher when I was little so they didn't make me study with her.  My mother was playing for dance classes at Katherine Dunham's dance studio, and then I actually got the opportunity to study dance, and join her company as a result of that.  So, it happened organically [naturally] rather than people forcing me to be on stage."

Catherine launched her career as a backup singer for Jackson Browne, Steely Dan, Paul Simon and others.  Since the release of her first solo album in 2006, Catherine has carefully chosen songs with a personal connection.

"I like so many different kinds of music," she says, "and I've been influenced by so many different kinds of music that I do a lot of research; because doing this project has really encouraged me to listen to a lot of different things all the time, and really find songs that I like.  The process is if I like a melody, the story of the lyric⁵, and the harmonic structure of a tune⁶, then that makes me want to learn it, and sing it and research it.  So, that's pretty much how I find everything."

Among Catherine Russell's diverse collection of vintage jazz and swing is a tune titled "Spoonful" by legendary⁷ Chicago bluesman Willie Dixon.  Catherine says all of her songs have some element of blues⁸ in them.

"It seems to me that blues is a way of working out how you feel.  So, blues has always been very personal for me because it really is a process of how we explore our feelings and feel better about ourselves in the mist of that sadness.  That's what it kind of means to me," she says.  "[In the] history of the blues, people were just making themselves feel better in adverse⁹ circumstances."

Also featured on Catherine's new CD are works by Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Lillian Hardin Armstrong, and Catherine's father Luis, as well as the Tin Pan Alley¹⁰ classic by Harold Arlen and Ted³ Koehler, "As Long As I Live."