It all started with a Box! Well let me back up a little, it all started when my pal Kurt Reichenbach got me booked at Ken Poston’s “West Coast Cool” weekend in October of 2018. They were looking for someone to do Bobby Troup and Kurt said “I have the guy.” You see about 14 years ago I had released a CD of Troup songs and I’ve been singing his stuff ever since.

In the audience of the show that day was were Bobby’s daughters Ronne and Cynnie, and Ronne’s husband Bob Bayles. After my first Troup CD was released, I’d gotten a lovely e-mail from Bob saying how much he liked my CD which I have saved to this day.

Now, here’s where the box comes in. After the show, they surprised me by giving me a box of Bobby’s personal sheet music. It contained a lot of his own songs and some of his favorites that he hadn’t written. The sheet music covers alone were amazing—a fantastic Jayne Mansfield in full “curvy” for “The Girl Can’t Help It” and The Manhattan Transfer sporting mullets and shoulder pads doing “Route 66.”

Their Box and it’s contents proved magical, because somewhere in the middle of my first day diving into the sheet music and playing the songs, I knew I wanted to do another Bobby Troup record. and, here it is! My second CD of Bobby Troup.

Here’s some thoughts about the making of two of the songs.

Route 66 — I wasn’t going to do “Route 66” on the new CD. I had done it on the first one, then Cheryl Bentyne and I had done it on our “West Coast Cool” CD a few years ago. But about a month before making the CD, I was shaving and this jazzy song came on with a cool Freddie Green strut to it- kinda slow and sexy and I started singing Route 66 to it. I had never heard it sung so slow and sexy—but when you think about it—2000 miles of a road cutting through the country can be kinda slow and sexy. I took it to my arranger and we had great fun doing just that. We also did some neat re-harmonizations in the bridge—But, until I heard the whole band play it on tracking day, I didn’t know it was going to work. But when Grant Geissman started playing it all fell into place-

Triskaidekaphobia – Kurt Reichenbach introduced me to this little Troup ditty and from the first I loved it. It is so quirky and hip. Once again, Rich Eames and I got to work arranging it (he does all the heavy lifting) and at first we sort of had some classical parts in the tune- which were neat, but as the arrangement progressed Basie won out over Beethoven! I’m a big fan of my drummer Dave Tull’s voice and asked him to duet with me on it- and it turns out he had played drums with one of the last incarnations of the Paige Cavanaugh Trio who had recorded Triskaidekaphobia in the first place. Duets can be hard, but for some reason singing with Dave was lots of fun! His hipster vibe was just what was needed- and I love how we get a little jazz bitchy near the end of the tune! Once again kudos to Rich Eames- but then again- thanks to my “Core Four” Rich Eames on Piano, Gabe Davis on Bass, Dave Tull on Drums and Grant Geissman on guitar.