'Something To Hold': Why This Self-Produced Jazz Singer Made A Physical CD In 2019

Los Angeles jazz singer Judy Wexler has no record label. She is like many musicians in that way. But unlike many others, every few years, Wexler puts together and circulates a CD herself. That's right — not a streamed album, but a physical CD.
Wexler is a friend of NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg, who'd been hearing Wexler talk about making the album for more than a year. Stamberg began wondering: Why, in the age of streaming, would an independent artist go to all the trouble and expense of putting out a CD? And what would that process involve?
For Crowded Heart, Wexler envisioned a collection of songs she thinks could become what she calls "jazz standards for the 21st century": Timeless-sounding tracks that could join tunes from the 1930s and '40s and become part of the Great American Songbook. "While they're brilliant and wonderful, there's only so many versions of them that one can do," Wexler says of those jazz classics.
Wexler needed crowdfunding to make an album, and put up her own money to get started. "I decided that I would just finance half of the CD and just do it," she says.