Elise LeGrow

Possessing a richly textured voice that draws from both R&B and jazz in the manner of Amy Winehouse, Canadian singer-songwriter Elise LeGrow makes her home in Toronto. Over several years she built an audience through club and festival shows while shifting her focus from pop toward retro-soul, and her first single, “No Good Woman,” emerged as a listener favorite on CBC Radio 2 in 2012. That track later surfaced on her self-titled debut EP, issued the same year. S-Curve Records soon took notice, prompting label founder Steve Greenberg to co-produce her debut full-length with Betty Wright and Michael Mangini—the same trio that had earlier worked together on Joss Stone’s The Soul Sessions. Fronted by her rendition of Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” the album comprised Chess Records covers and carried the title Playing Chess. Questlove and the Dap-Kings were among the musicians who contributed, and the project appeared on S-Curve and Savoy Jazz in 2018.