Benita Hill

Benita Hill - I'll See You In My Song

This one came sailing into the mailbox from Nashville, where Benita Hill has been working for a while. She's got the right genes - her mother was the girl singer for the house band at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago around 1950 or so. She's a writer, too - Garth Brooks, Isaac Hayes and sax guy Kirk Whalum have all performed Ms. Hill's work.

Throw in some commercial work (notably "Santa Baby" for Jaguar ads), television development projects, and Music City cabaret work - and well, it looks like Ms. Hill stays pretty busy.

And oh, my. She's very good. I'll admit - I'm partial to the standards. Ms. Hill's turn on "Besame Mucho" - slower than most - is hauntingly beautiful. For me, it was the highlight of the disc. That said, though - "Sausalito In The Summertime," from Nashville songwriter Steve Dan Mills, is a real treat.

"I'll See You In My Song" is a good mix of standards and new material - five of the tracks were co-written by Ms. Hill - along with people like Phil Springer (Who wrote "Santa Baby"), and Julia Rich, who fronts the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

My other favorites on this disc include Mel Tormé's "Born To Be Blue," and "Go Slow."

Ms. Hill's backing band - Kevin Madill on piano, Jim Ferguson on Bass, Mr. Whalum on Sax, Michael Ripoli on Guitar, and Bob Mater on Drums - are solid, but pretty much stay out of the way, and frame Ms. Hill's fine voice nicely.

The quality of the recording - many of the tracks from Ms. Hill's home studio - is outstanding.

Ms. Hill's voice deserves to be showcased by major label. This is top-notch stuff. This disc belongs in your collection.
Doug Boynton
- GirlSingers.org

Nashville jazz singer Benita Hill has made a perfectly lovely Christmas record that we’ll be loving for many years to come.

Sexy and swinging takes on I’ll Be Home for Christmas and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas are backed with a subtle trio and enlivened with unerring phrasing from Hill. A few modern tunes are included, like the classy title cut. In a season where albums tend to be overbearing or sticky-sweet, this sets an atmosphere for relaxing and giving. It goes down like hot cider and bourbon on a cold winter’s night.-Craig Havighurst - Nashville Tennessean

The Nashville cabaret singer gains a richer tone and more sensitive control of her burnished voice with each outing. Hill’s new I’ll See You in My Song takes a romantically sultry turn through well-chosen jazz tunes without drawing on the same old warhorses. She mixes material by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mel Torme, Sammy Fain and Bob Dorough with six co-written originals, all of them timeless enough for Peggy Lee yet as fresh as a just-poured cosmopolitan. - Nashville Scene

“Benita Hill has always loved performing torch songs, jazzy pieces and blues-favored numbers; but she’s enjoyed such success doing many other things that until recently she had never gotten around to recording a disc of standards. But her latest release, I’ll See You In My Song, is not only her foray into that territory, but like all Hill’s projects, it is quite distinctive and stands apart from the array of similarly-themed works from rockers that lack her interpretative flair and jazz sensibility.”
--Ron Wynn, Nashville City Paper
- Nashville City Paper