Abbey is blue

"Unlike many other reissues from Craft, Abbey Is Blue contains no additional tracks, lavish booklets, or outtakes. You get the ten tracks originally released in 1959, with the artwork virtually unchanged. But as they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. As the album's co-producer, Orrin Keepnews, noted in the liner notes: "It is certainly the best singing by far that Abbey has done on record, and I think now - as I did much of the time while it was being recorded - that it stands up as among the most effective and moving albums that any singer has created in a long time." More than 60 years later, these words still ring true".

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"On this revolutionary album, [Lincoln] took a left turn and uncovered songs by jazzers Duke Ellington, Mongo Santamaria and Oscar Brown, as well as Kurt Weill and poet Langston Hughes's "Lonely House". And in her own "Let Up", she expressed her artistic and political frustrations. The music ranges from moody to comforting, aided by the stark, nocturnal production that provided neat tricks like recording the trumpet away from the mike, creating a 3am ambience. Top-drawer musicians include drummer/future husband Max Roach and pianist Wynton Kelly. Throughout is that voice, bending blue notes and elongating phrases like no one else".