Blue Note Records
2005
Christmas Fantasy
About This Album
Holiday titles live a bit outside an artist's standard discography, but if you look at Christmas Fantasy as a follow-up to the 2004 comeback My Everything, it continues that album's looser feel, less concerned with the charts and all the better because of it. There are only nine tracks on Anita Baker's Christmas Fantasy, but the album still clocks in at 45 minutes, with most tracks letting things comfortably develop past the five-minute mark. Part of the reason for this is the band. With George Duke, Larry Carlton, Joe Sample, the underrated Ricky Lawson, and other top-notch folk involved, it would be a shame not to let these boys play, but as much as they get to vamp, it's still Baker's album, 100 percent. Her increasing love of scat singing finds her interacting with the musicians in cool urbanite fashion, free but neither languid nor shamelessly bold. The exciting Crescent City take on "Frosty the Snowman," "Frosty's Rag," may be the standout track at first glance, but it's the cool interaction between singer and band on more subdued numbers like "O Come, All Ye Faithful" with the Yellowjackets and "Moonlight Sleighride" that makes the album worth returning to each holiday season.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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