Dig It, Daddy-O!

Hong Kong isn't known as a city of swingin' hepcats, but it does play host to a small, surprisingly busy jazz scene and a newly launched international jazz festival. It's against this homespun backdrop that the album Raw Jazz emerges, with a kind of indomitable energy that's entirely fitting for the place in which it was born. Introducing Singaporean vocalist Hanjin Tan, a producer and composer of Cantonese pop by day, this low-frills, high-moxie album is a collection of 11 jazz standards, each recorded in a single take along with the help of local jazz luminaries Skip Moy on guitar, Paul Candelaria on bass and Jason Cheng on piano.

"The spirit of jazz is to sing it the way you feel, react to the way the players are playing," says Tan, about the ensemble's approach to recording. This spontaneity comes across in the listening. From the easy swing of first song "Sweet Lorraine" to the skittering ebullience of "Spain," the album's closer, Raw Jazz sparkles with the brio of live performance. Standout tracks include a jive-worthy version of "Honeysuckle Rose" and "That Old Black Magic," in which Candelaria's bass grounds Tan's larger-than-life channeling of the already larger-than-life Sammy Davis Jr. Exuberant and unexpected, this album reveals a little-known side to a town that clearly knows how to swing.