Danny Sinoff’s Make Someone Happy is the jazz vocalist‑pianist’s debut album, released in April 2026 on Cory Weeds’ Cellar Music Group, and it presents him firmly in the tradition of the singing jazz pianist in the Nat King Cole/Bobby Troup mold. Recorded over two sessions in New Jersey with producer‑drummer Ulysses Owens Jr., the album runs about 43 minutes and features a first‑call band including trumpeter Joe Magnarelli (and, on some pressings, guest Benny Benack III), tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon, guitarist Dan Wilson, bassist Ben Wolfe, and pianist Tyler Henderson on select tracks. The sound is classic small‑group swing—acoustic piano, warm horns, a walking bass that never lets the time sag—captured with a present, club‑like intimacy.The repertoire is a mix of Great American Songbook standards, mid‑century ballads, and one pop outlier, chosen to showcase both Sinoff’s relaxed baritone and his sense of swing. Up‑tempo numbers like “Taking a Chance on Love,” “Three Little Words,” and “I Won’t Dance” find him trading phrases with the horns and letting the rhythm section stretch, while “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and the title track “Make Someone Happy” lean into crooner territory without becoming syrupy. A duet on “All I Need Is the Girl” highlights his ease in conversational, quasi‑theatrical material, and a surprisingly tender cover of Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” shows his interest in treating more modern pop songs as standards. The album closes on “Black Coffee,” a blues‑tinged burner that nods directly to the Bobby Darin records Sinoff’s father played for him as a teenager, tying his personal history to the record’s broader homage to classic vocal jazz.
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