Just heard it...not impressed.
I don't object to the jazz arrangement, or Brian's solo (which nicely tails off into a quote from the original), but the two don't go together at all...
I confess to being a casual fan of Diana, so with the involvement of Brian I was looking forward to this.. I'm sorry to hear a negative opinion, but I'll probably buy it anyway :)
Brian did contribute bass to it as well:
"And the clanky bass riff is ME !!! Had to do it !!"
PS: Does answering myself means I'm missing that one final screw?
Just heard this myself and I have to say that it is nowhere near as bad as I had imagined it to be (I cant stand Diana Ross' singing). That said it is nowhere near as good as the Dwight Yoakim version :P
The only good thing I can say about it is that Brian's solo on this version is pretty cool!!
I've just downloaded the album track from I-tunes and have put an mp3-teaser of this song on my site. So you can hear some of it to get an idea.(It's refreshing but I think I prefer the original myself...) link