Just Doing What I Do

Just Doing What I Do

So what is smooth jazz keyboardist & local label honcho Marcus Johnson doing on "Just Doing What I Do"? Turns out he fields that very question on his new CD. "What I try to do is take the piano & make it my voice," he explains. The best tracks invariably find him reaching beyond lite-jazz atmospherics into R&B & elsewhere, whether cleverly re-arranging the Alicia Keys hit "If I Ain't Got You," smoothly reworking Beyonce's "Me, Myself & I," or teaming up with vocalist Scooby on the funk lament "Same Thang." What's more, the album's bonus track is truly that: a sultry version of Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years," drawn from singer Alyson Williams's new CD, "It's About Time."