Lavay Smith's Crazy in Love with Patsy Cline

Scorching songtress Lavay brings a bracing, bluesy jolt of energy to the jazz/country crossroads with Crazy In Love With Patsy Cline, a project featuring her smoking Red Hot Skillet Lickers and special guest Bobby Black on pedal steel guitar. Jazz and country music are often cast as antithetical cultural forces, signifying a blue state/red state divide. But the styles have been kissing cousins since they each took shape early in the 20th century, even forming a blissful union with the rise of western swing in the late 1930s. In crafting jazz and blues-steeped arrangements of songs associated with Cline, Lavay and her band found inspiration in the seminal country & western recordings of Ray Charles, while also drawing on Duke Ellington and Count Basie for horn arrangements. With her big, luscious voice and sassy stage presence, she has what it takes to infuse sultry swing into Cline's tales of woe.