Our Day by John Dokes

The final track of John Dokes’ marvelous new album is his impassioned rendition of Bernard Ighner’s ballad, “Everything Must Change.” Proceeding at a brighter tempo than Quincy Jones framed the composer’s own vocal with on the song’s 1974 premiere, Dokes deploys his rich, mellow toned baritone to convey the poignant message of bittersweet acceptance that change is inevitable (“Nothing stays the same... Winter turns to spring, Broken hearts will heal. But never much too soon, They all must change”) with the elegant gravitas and inexorable will to swing that earned him an enthusiastic fan base during the 2010s, when he fronted George Gee’s Swing Orchestra every week before an audience comprised of New York’s most hardcore swing dancers and jazz fans from around the world.

Those characteristics also permeated Dokes’ excellent quintet albums Forever Reasons (2017) and True Love (2019), which featured trombonist David Gibson and alto saxophonist Mark Gross, respectively, as soloists, with an A-list rhythm section of pianist Steve Einerson, bassist Alex Claffy, and drummer Lawrence Leathers. At the end of my booklet notes for True Love, I commented that Dokes intended to follow up with yet another small group recital.

Then everything changed. In June 2019, Leathers died. In March 2020, Covid-19 put public performance on indefinite hiatus. In March 2021, Dokes, who’d spent most of his adult life in New York, moved to Chicago with his wife and two daughters. “On my periodic trips to New York since the move, I’ve sung with George’s band and done small group dates,” he says. . “My first album was a big band album with George (John Dokes Sings, George Gee Swings); I always knew I’d make another. So when I knew I’d be in New York last May, I worked with George and David to bring together guys from the band to record songs we’ve been doing – and doing well – for years, but hadn’t documented.”

With inspiration from his stylistic ancestors Nat King Cole and Joe Williams, John Dokes brings new life to the deep-souled world of baritone jazz vocals on his elegant new album, Our Day on his Swing Theory Entertainment imprint.

In delivering a distinctive post-pandemic outing of classic songs embodied with hopeful passion, Dokes promises an album that will make you move.”

johndokes.com