For those not familiar with Jazz, here are descriptions of a few singers. There are many more great and accomplished singers than have been mentioned in this list; perhaps at some later date I will do something about my these jazz singers whom I like equally - Frank Sinatra, and Bobby McFerrin and Mark Murphy and Kevin Mahogany and Chet Baker and Etta James and Kurt Elling and Lena Horne and Flora Purim and Shirley Horn and Betty Carter and Johnny Hartman and Billy Eckstine and Aziza Mustafa Zadeh and Esperanza Spalding and Dinah Washington and so on and so forth…
Louis Armstrong - 1901 – 1971. Louis Armstrong was considered the father of modern jazz. His warm, raspy voice was a joyous instrument for improvising and for his often-humorous scat singing. “Louis Armstrong turned the human voice into not only an instrument but an instrument that was as legitimate for improvising as any other instrument of the orchestra”.
Ella Fitzgerald's - 1917 -1996. ‘The First Lady of Song’, Ella was the most important, and the most renowned singer of Jazz. Ella’s voice was sweet and melodious and her technique and her ability to swing made her songs dazzling experiences to the listener. Though not considered the foremost interpreter of songs, she brought to Jazz a beautiful voice and very good technique and a love of improvisation, even when she sang a song straight, or changed the phrasing just a wee bit, she made the song her own. And then she could scat and improvise to reproduce any instrumental riff.
Nat ‘King’Cole 1919 1965. Nat Cole was first and foremost a musician and a jazz pianist of the highest calibre. He gave up the piano, because he became popular as a singer for his renditions of popular songs with his soft and alluring baritone voice and relaxed singing style, but true to his jazz roots, he did give these songs a hint of swing.
‘Lady Day,’ Billie Holiday - 1915 -1959. There is no polite way one can describe the voice of ‘Lady Day’. She probably didn’t have a range of more than an octave. She had suffered so much, endured so much distress and humiliation, and had so few pleasant memories, yet through all the pathos and pain, she was strong, independent and a force, and one of the most influential singers in Jazz. And whatever her vocal limitations, to me, she was the greatest jazz singer ever. Her timing was impeccable, her phrasing nuanced, and her singing actually dripped with touching emotion. No one could sing a song like Billie. Her genius lay in her interpretation. Billie Holiday always interpreted songs by empathising with the words; she interpreted with great musicality and honesty of expression.
Sarah Vaughan - 1924 – 1990. The third of the great triumvirate of female Jazz singers.
Sarah, quite unlike Billie Holiday, had a voice that could only be called divine and ‘The Divine One’ was one of her nick names, of course, the name that stuck was ‘Sassy’. Sarah Vaughan had a vast range, a pleasantly resonant vibrato, a marvellously rounded tone, and she used her voice with an instrumental approach, often improvising as a jazz soloist. She brought an incredible variety to her singing and she interpreted songs with heartfelt passion.
Mel Torme – 1925 – 1999. Mel Torme's smooth, romantic singing style and gorgeous vocal timbre earned him the nickname the ‘Velvet Fog’. Torme's agile phrasing and unfailingly rhythmic sense of swing proved that he was steeped to the hilt in jazz. And though he scatted and interpreted songs in a style and delivery that was uniquely his own, he counted Ella Fitzgerald as his biggest inspiration.
Abbey Lincoln
Tony Bennett -1926. Among the great male Jazz singers whom I have admired for long, Tony Bennett has one of the all-time great voices in music. He is one of the few singers, who, even if he is not singing a Jazz standard (and he has forayed into pop on many occasions), he still swings! A painter, and a man of good taste, Tony Bennett revived his career as a singer with the famous performance on MTV unplugged in 1994 after he had retired from music in the 1970’s conceding to the popularity of the Beatles and Rock music. A quote. “Tony Bennett interprets a song with ‘unexpected phrases’ which allow him to improvise, in almost conversational tones". Fly Me to the Moon is a song he sings with the sound system turned off, to demonstrate voice projection, even in large auditoriums.
Nina Simone - 1933 - 2003. Nina Simone is generally classified as a jazz musician. Her vocals are passionate, and her voice has a loose vibrato with a vocal range somewhere between alto and tenor and sometimes as low as a baritone. Originally a classical pianist, Simone sings and accompanies herself on piano, her forthright musical style has influences from jazz, classical, soul, folk R&B, gospel, world music and pop music. But whatever the genre of music she plays, her interpretations swing, that’s why she’s classified as a Jazz singer.
Lou Rawls 1933 – 2006. My friends from college, always ask me when we meet, if I still listen to Lou Rawls. Yes I do. Lou Rawls could be called a singer who sings the blues, jazz and soul, with soul. He is blessed with a four-octave vocal range and he belts out a boisterous and loud rhythm and blues and the most sensitive jazz standard with the same infectiously sensitive delivery. Rawls' vocal style is smooth, classy and elegant; he uses his rich bass-baritone voice like an instrument and is in complete control of his interpretation. Frank Sinatra once said that Rawls had "the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game"
Cassandra Wilson 1955. Her voice is a deep and throaty contralto which expands to almost baritone, a witches brew of a voice, redolent of perfumed wood smoke; a powerful instrument of communication in which she incorporates folk, country and blues, but her first music is Jazz, so whatever music she sings, she swings. Probably influenced by Abbey Lincoln, she too slips and slides around notes while stretching, bending and manipulating timing and rhythms. A blessed musician, her interpretations are holistic and intellectual, interpreting the whole song for what it is, and not just the words.
Joe Williams 1918 – 1999. I won’t describe Joe Williams, I will let the masters speak, and they speak so beautifully. ''He sang real soul blues on which his perfect enunciation of the words gave the blues a new dimension,'' Duke Ellington wrote in his autobiography, ''Music Is My Mistress.'' ''All the accents were in the right places and on the right words.'' And this is what the jazz singer Cassandra Wilson said (I wish I could say things as well as she does), ''His voice is rich and it's bittersweet, but it's a very composed sound. Everything is well-formed in his mind before he opens his mouth, and it's flawlessly executed. He reminds me of autumn. His voice is bronze and burnt sienna and golden, warm and enveloping, just an incredible instrument. It's a life's work to create that kind of a sound.''
Natalie Cole – 1950. Natalie Cole has a thin voice; it should not be confused for a weak or small voice, it is deceptively powerful. Her singing is seemingly effortless, sensitive and soaring; it has attitude, it has swing and it has soul. And Natalie Cole, like her father Nat ‘King’ Cole, has a natural gift for interpreting lyrics and keeping it simple, but her interpretations in my opinion, arguably, are more nuanced than her fathers’ were, she truly captures the essence of a song and makes it sound very special.
Carmen McCrae – 1920 - 1994. Carmen McCrae was another Jazz artist whom I admire deeply. She was a classical pianist, and a school teacher, teaching English and Math to high school students before getting into singing full time. She belonged on the same high platform with Ella, Billie and Sarah. She was their artistic equal though she herself was a great admirer and friend of Billie Holiday. Here’s something I came across that says it all. The great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis saw poster of an Ella performance, and it called her ‘The Queen of Jazz’, Miles grunted and then growled, "If Ella Fitzgerald is the Queen of jazz, what the fuck is Carmen?" And here’s Carmen on how she interprets songs. "Every word is very important to me," she said. "Lyrics come first, then the melody. The lyric of a song I might decide to sing, must have something that I can convince you with. It's like an actress who selects a role that contains something she wants to portray."
Al Jarreau – 1940. Al Jarreau has a masters’ in psychology and worked for several years as youth Counsellor for the US State Education Department, before taking the plunge into singing full time. A late starter in music! But ever since he began to be known, he changed the way people sang and related to Jazz music. He has a voice that sweeps across many octaves and he brings together several genres of music jumping from soul to jazz to swing to funk to musicals in a natural way as if they belong together, at the same time playing with rhythms, tricky syncopation's, tricky intervals and changing rhythms; his scatting and improvising incorporate all sorts of sounds that suit the song and his style of improvisation.
Dianne Reeves – 1956. Dianne Reeves is a highly melodic vocalist with a remarkably beautiful clear, light-yet-robust contralto voice. She sings with confidence, her voice flexible, in turn bending, soaring and growling. She sings Jazz-fusion, pop-soul and African- and West Indian-flavoured material and yet makes connections between these far-flung styles. She swings in the tradition of Ella and Sarah, yet with a distinctive personal stamp that is all her own, by paying close attention to the lyrics. A superb artist and jazz singer.
Michael Buble – 1975. Michael Buble is young, charismatic, talented and charming singer who wears suits. He has a natural flair and a style that appeals equally to grandmothers and teenagers, he sings in the lounge style of Sinatra and Nat Cole, in a strong, tangily-sweet voice without the rounded lower tones of Sinatra or Nat Cole, but yet, he is not imitative. His style, sound, confident phrasing and perfect timing give a new modern feel to old standards. A wonderful ambassador of Jazz.
July 2011
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