Riverside Abbey Lincoln (v), Kenny Dorham (t), Sonny Rollins (ts), Wynton Kelly (p), Paul Chambers (b), and Max Roach (d). Rec. 28 October 1957

That’s Him was 27-yearold Abbey Lincoln’s first recording for Riverside, following her 1956 debut Abbey Lincoln’s Affair – A Story of a Girl in Love on Liberty. While the debut featured her in an orchestral setting, this followup sees the singer in the company of a truly stellar line-up: Rollins and Roach had recorded Saxophone Colossus the previous year, Chambers was a member of the Miles Davis quintet (Kelly was to join in 1959) and Dorham had replaced Clifford Brown in Roach’s own trailblazing quintet. It’s fascinating to note how the album’s lead-off song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s ‘Strong Man’, gives the most overt nod to one of Lincoln’s greatest influences, Billie Holiday.

In fact, listening to the behind-the-beat phrasing and tight vibrato of the opening line (“I’m in love with a strong man”), for a split second you think it could actually be Billie Holiday. Lincoln’s powerful storytelling gift – unfolding the narrative in one long, expressive arc – is entirely her own, heard to especially moving effect on an unaccompanied ‘Tender As A Rose’, the Nash/Weill title track and the Holiday-penned ‘Don’t Explain’. Two bonus tracks present alternate takes of ‘I Must Have That Man’ and ‘Porgy’. If the Riverside albums that followed, Abbey Is Blue and It’s Magic, proved even stronger statements, That’s Him remains a key work in Lincoln’s discography. Peter Quinn