A mainstay in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last decade, on Dancing With The Widow St. James trumpeter, cornetist and singer-songwriter Chris Saunders serves up a judicious mix of covers and originals, the latter co-written with his pianist sidekick and band co-founder, Ken Cook.

Saunders opens proceedings with Percy Mayfield's blues ballad ‘River's Invitation’, whose protagonist confides his plans when he eventually finds his baby (“And we'll spend our days forever/In our home beneath the tide”).

Saunders presents a further paean to another great blues vocalist with the stunning ballad ‘I Wonder’, the biggest hit for the short-lived vocalist, songwriter and pianist, Cecil Gant. There's a complete reinvention of the classic ‘Am I Blue’, underpinned by Cook's catchy Latinesque vamp, a radically slowed down version of ‘I Don't Need No Doctor’, the Ashford and Simpson song made famous by Ray Charles in the mid-1960s, plus an especially striking take on the Bernice Petkere/Joe Young standard, ‘Lullaby of the Leaves’.

Of the originals, ‘Big Man’, a message to the previous resident of the White House, is a clear-cut standout (“Big man there's a great divide from here to over there/With your weighted dice we paid a heavy price for a path to nowhere”), with Saunders' affecting vocal and fine horn playing combining to make a seasoned, soulful whole.