From her first recordings in the mid-’40s, jazz singer Etta Jones displayed an entrancing slowness that would define her work over the next half-century. The South Carolina native channelled the soulful quiver of Billie Holiday, whom she later honoured with a loving tribute album, and scored a deserved hit with 1960’s come-hither slinker “Don’t Go To Strangers”. She amplified the emotional gravity of her favoured ballads by savouring every single syllable. Even her prolific output in the ’80s and ‘90s sounds positively evergreen, as if she stood outside of time whenever she sang.