A celebration of a lifetime in jazz (including stints with Cal Tjader, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie and the Count Basie Orchestra), a landmark 80th birthday which she celebrated in August, and a rekindling of a long-standing musical friendship. Songs Were Made to Sing is all of these things and more. As heard in the perfectly paced album opener, ‘Stolen Moments’, Stallings possesses one of the most alluring, inviting voices in jazz, and listening to this collection of 13 classics in one sitting serves to highlight the almost balsamaceous qualities of her music-making. Whether it's the latin re-imaginings of ‘Lover Man’ and ‘Lady Bird’, the pleasingly glacial tempo of ‘Blue Monk’, or the flawless pocket of ‘Sugar’, Stallings is in impeccable form throughout, lovingly framed by pianist David Hazeltine's persuasive arrangements. In addition to Hazeltine, the first-rate line-up includes trumpeter Eddie Henderson, who first played gigs with Stallings back in the late 1960s but whose friendship stretches even further back to their days as students at San Francisco's Lowell High School, when the singer was already something of a fixture on the city's jazz scene. As Henderson notes in the CD booklet, Stallings is an icon in the Bay Area. One play through this album and you'll understand why.