Duke Pearson — How Insensitive (1969)
A ten-track journey through Duke Pearson’s How Insensitive (1969): choir-washed standards, Brazilian grooves with Airto and Flora Purim, and quietly off-centre arrangements that turn easy listening into something deeper and stranger.
By Rafi Mercer
Some records feel like a single room. How Insensitive feels like a small house you wander through at night, each door opening onto a slightly different atmosphere — one moment hushed choir jazz, the next a Brazilian-tilted groove, the next a standard bathed in soft blue light.
Duke Pearson’s 1969 Blue Note album sits right in the label’s late-60s turning point, when hard bop edges were being smoothed into something more cinematic and, at times, more commercial. On paper, this could have been pure easy listening: strings of standards, a big vocal group, Brazilian touches, familiar melodies. In reality, it’s stranger and more interesting than that. The arrangements are just off-centre enough to make you tilt your head while you relax.
It opens with “Stella By Starlight,” and you can hear the project’s intent straight away. Pearson doesn’t treat it as a blowing vehicle; he treats it like mood design. Choir, rhythm section and piano are stacked in layers, almost like faders on a console. “Stella” here isn’t a late-night club tune; it’s a kind of soft-focus overture, all glow and no glare.
“Clara” follows with Andy Bey stepping forward. His voice floats over Pearson’s electric piano and the choir in a way that feels almost liturgical. There’s a hint of church, a hint of TV soundtrack, and underneath it all that jazz harmony quietly doing its work. It shouldn’t hang together, but it does, largely because Pearson keeps the harmonic movement graceful and uncluttered.
“Give Me Your Love” and “Cristo Redentor” are where the record’s emotional temperature really shows. “Cristo Redentor,” a Pearson classic, gains a sort of devotional sheen here — the choir leaning into long, sustained lines while the rhythm section walks gently beneath. It’s easy to see why this tune became a signature; the melody feels inevitable, the kind that gets under the skin after a few listens.
By the time you reach “Little Song” and the title track “How Insensitive,” the Brazilian influence is more than just flavour. The grooves are soft but insistent, riding that bossa pulse without ever turning into pastiche. Pearson’s touch on the keys is light and exact, letting the melody sit proud while percussion and bass do the quiet lifting.
Side B is where the album opens its more obviously Brazilian door. “Sandalia Dela” is the moment that tends to grab DJs and dancers — a proper bossa-jazz mover, built around Airto’s feel and Flora Purim’s presence. It’s still wrapped in that slightly odd Pearson production world, but the rhythm has more forward lean, more hips.
“My Love Waits (O Meu Amor Espera)” feels like a companion piece — romantic, slow, hovering between jazz ballad and soundtrack theme. “Tears” and “Lamento” close the set in a more reflective register, with Flora and the Brazilian rhythm team giving the record a last wash of saudade. You’re left with that familiar Blue Note sensation of having travelled further than the running time would suggest.
This is not a straight piano-trio jazz record, and it’s not trying to be. The critics at the time were divided — some hearing it as a misstep toward schmaltz, others noting how the voicings and textures keep pulling it away from background-music territory. From a slow-listening perspective today, it feels more like an interesting, slightly off-kilter bridge: jazz language filtered through Pearson’s arranger brain, coloured by choir and Brazilian players who stop it from ever going completely bland.
Play How Insensitive as you are now — in full, without skipping — and what emerges is a strangely cohesive mood piece. Ten tracks, one soft continuum: standards reimagined, originals re-voiced, bossa leaning into choir jazz. It’s music for late evenings when you want the room to feel held, but you still want a little strangeness at the edges.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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