Hannah Gill
‘Spooky Jazz,’ Volumes 1-3
Turtle Bay Records

The new album by a most excellent young jazz singer, Hannah Gill, begins: “How do you do, ghosts and ghouls? My name is Hannah Gill, and this is ‘Spooky Jazz,’ volume three. It’s mood music in a jugular vein, and I hope you like it. Our record requires only the simplest of equipment, an ordinary phonograph needle, a four-inch speaker, and a .380caliber revolver. Naturally, the record is long playing, even though you may not be. So why don’t you relax, lean back, and enjoy yourself until the coroner comes?”

“Spooky Jazz” puts me in mind of a recent episode of the essential podcast “A HIstory of Rock Music in 500 Songs,” in which scholar Andrew Hickey gives us the story of the singer-songwriter Larry Norman, a pioneer of the new genre that would be called “Christian Rock.”  

Norman’s mantra was, “Why should the devil have all the good songs?” Hannah Gill’s album makes me paraphrase that question as, “Why should Christmas get all the good songs?” 

Ms. Gill, who is 28, told me in a recent interview that the idea for the project came when she was trying to assemble a playlist of songs that might work as background for a Halloween party. When she began to listen to the vintage and historical recordings in sequence — songs like Kay Starr’s “The House is Haunted” and Eartha Kitt’s “I Wanna Be Evil” — it became clearer that she had the template for a new album. 

Ms. Gill, who was already singing with nouveau swing and swing-dance-oriented bands all over New York, produced the project herself in the early part of the lockdown. It was called “Spooky Jazz.”  She describes it as an EP, consisting of eight songs that play for a total of less than 24 minutes; she came up with the idea around October 1, 2020, and had finished recording and mixing it by Halloween.

After the pandemic, Ms. Gill’s star had risen to the point where she was signed to producer-entrepreneur Scott Asen’s label, Turtle Bay Records, and in 2023 she released her official debut, “Everybody Loves a Lover,” reviewed in these pages.

Yet the Halloween music idea was hardly on the back burner; in 2024, she released a second set, “Spooky Jazz, Vol. Two.” Now, there’s not only a third volume, but the original EP has been made available on CD and LP under the Turtle Bay imprint and has been retrofitted as “Volume One.”

Perhaps the main difference between Christmas music and Halloween music is that the former is almost entirely songs originally written for that specific purpose, whereas most of the latter is songs that just happen to fit the profile and have been repurposed. When Dinah Washington first sang “My Man’s an Undertaker” in 1953 and “The Richest Guy in the Graveyard” in 1947, she wasn’t thinking about Halloween. 

Ms. Gill is uniquely suited to this role, not only because she has an appropriately impish — not to mention ghoulish — sense of humor, but because she’s such an exceptional jazz vocalist. She also has a gift for finding her tribe and working with the best younger swing and hot jazz players: Clarinetist and saxophonist Ricky Alexander and violinist Gabe Terracciano are on all three volumes. Volumes two and three also feature a hard-swinging rhythm section with pianist 

Gordon Webster, guitarist Justin Poindexter, bassist Philip Ambuel, and drummer Ben Zweig.

It’s tempting to say with players like these that she can’t help but swing, but Ms. Gill sings with a finely tuned rhythmic propulsion that few singers manage in studio settings; when she sings, you always get the feeling that there’s a live, dancing audience in front of her. 

Having essentially created this subgenre, Ms. Gill assembles her tune stack from a dazzlingly wide range of sources. “The Hangman,” which she performs a capella, is traditional Americana as collected by the singer and folklorist Jean Ritichie; “You Hurt Me” comes from the darker side of R&B via Little Willie John and with a growling tenor solo by Mr. Alexander, and “Oogie Boogie Song” is Danny Elfman’s homage to Cab Calloway — and a tribute to the late Ken Page — from “Nightmare Before Christmas.”

The latest volume is the most ambitious, with more formal but still swinging arrangements by Danny Jonokuchi, who also plays trumpet and, on some tracks, theremin. Mr. Poindexter opens Artie Shaw’s “Moon Ray” with reverberating strings and single notes that give it a sufficiently spooky sound, and there’s also a haunting fiddle solo from Mr. Terracciano.  

“My Friend the Ghost” is a goofy novelty from the later career of Tommy Dorsey. “Spider in the Web” is a completely overhauled, spooky jazz treatment of an obscure 1955 single by the Dooley Sisters. There’s also a powerful, romping reading of “As Long as You Live (You’ll Be Dead If You Die),” a 1938 tune by Johnny Mercer immortalized by Louis Armstrong.

Clearly, Ms. Gill and the Spooky Jazz collective ensemble refuse to take the concept — or themselves — too seriously. At the same time, there’s little of what could be called “camp.” She doesn’t do any of the usual howlingly awful Halloween puns (“boys and ghouls,” like that), and no one engages in mediocre impressions of Bela Lugosi.

Ms. Gill tells me that volume three will probably be the last in the series, but I keep hoping there’s more in the pipeline. She adds, “Friends are always telling me that I should make a holiday album.  I tell them, ‘I already have, but it might not be the same holiday that you have in mind.”

The latest episode of “Sing! Sing! Sing!” on KSDS Jazz Radio San Diego is devoted to Halloween jazz and features an interview with Ms. Gill.