If you're into cover art, check out this book here: VERY cool. (Sorry for the small size, but that's the only image I could pull off of Amazon.)
These Are Soulful Days from Leeway is one of my favorite tracks. My top four: Morgan/Blakey/Messengers ( I like the other incarnations of the Messengers but not so much ) Miles/Coltrane ( The Quintets - Steamin', Cookin', Workin' ) Booker Little/Eric Dolphy Mulligan/Baker
The only thing I have with Clifford Brown is Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown. I love Vaughan and that's one of my favorites of hers. I don't know any of his stuff as a leader, but he died pretty young so I guess he doesn't have much of a discography. I've been meaning to get some of the stuff he did with Max Roach. Any recommendations?
http://www.jazzreview.com/cdreview.cfm?ID=3885 I have this cd, which is a compliation from Verve. The review sums it up well. I think it's a good disc to dip into Brown's stuff if you haven't really checked him out before.
--- Oh, man! She's definitely my favorite female vocalist of all time. Jazz, I mean. Ronnie Spector is my favorite before 1970 and Bonnie Raitt after 1970. I have the Sarah Vaughan Columbia double CD compilation.
One of my all time favorite singers! I have a few of her cd's... I was looking for the way she sang "Wave", so I picked that one up. "So Close your eyes..." great, soulful, strong voice!
Holy synchronicity Batman! I haven't listened to the Ronettes in ages and almost by random I grabbed their CD on my way out the door this morning. And then I come across your post. Freaky. Favorite jazz vocalist? That's a tough one. Ella's got the scat and she swings like mad. Sarah Vaughan has that awesome technique, a huge range (pitch and timbre) and loads of soul. On paper at least, those two should be able to beat Billie Holiday any day of the week so why is it Billie always wins?
--- the fact that she sounds like she wants you reeeeeal bad have anything to do with it? just a guess PS: the Police were right. ( synchronicity )
Billie is like the Maria Callas of jazz-you look past the imperfections. She had a way of getting straight to the bone. You can't really see Ella or Sarah pulling off "Strange Fruit" or "Good Morning Heartache," quite the same way, can you?
Since we're talking vocalists, let me come right out and say "I don't particularly like them". I don't know, something about vocals gets in the way of the music, for me. That being said, one vocalist I do like is Rachelle Farrell.
--- the voice is an instrument, in the right hands ( mixed metaphor, i know ). if you want to split jazz up into instrumental vs vocal, fine. and i don't want to argue the relative merits of an aesthetic that eschews vocals. chacun a son gout. but it's very difficult for me, as a music buff, to think in terms of restricting my intake based on whether there are vocals involved. having said that, i am not real familiar with Rachelle Ferrell ( note spelling )
I've been listening to "Walking in the Rain" for about a month straight. Just huge. Now, for some post closure, back to jazz and vocalists and a little theory I just made up right now and will put forth as irrefutable truth: There are Pop vocalists, e.g. Sinatra, Julie London, Bobby Darin, Blossom Dearie; and Jazz vocalists, e.g. Billie Holiday, Johnny Hartman, King Pleasure, Nina Simone; And there are those who straddle the two: Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Louie Armstrong. Discuss.
--- major props! i think that some of the straddlers would be much closer to the Pop side of the fence: Diana Krall ( albeit she plays piano ), Rosemary Clooney, Diane Schuur, Peggy Lee for ex; and some: Carmen McCrae, Etta Jones, Annie Ross, Anita O'Day closer to the Jazz side. I'm not sure where to put Lena Horne or Nancy Wilson, let alone Betty Carter.
Had I been around, back in the day, I know where I would have liked to put Lena . . . g r r r r o o o w w w l ....
As mentioned before, the Bill Evans/Tony Bennett album is a big favorite of mine. Bennett also did an Ellington album a few years ago that I like too. Cassandra Wilson is a singer I like-willing to stretch too, when it comes to genre/material. An interesting version of "My Man's Gone," was done by Sinead O'Conner on a Gershwin tribute album-George Martin really pushed her and she gives a good performance IMO. There was a film made of the session that was interesting. Although I have never really liked his arrangements, Nate King Cole voice...there's a reason why so many people tried to imitate him. If I had to pick a favorite Sinatra performance I'd pick, "One For My Baby. (And One More For The Road) ."
Nat Cole was a freaking genius. By many accounts, he was **the** best jazz pianist of his day. Everybody was copping his style. He started singing as a second, third or fourth thought. Find and buy as many Capitol Nat Cole Trio albums as you can. Especially his "After Midnight" sessions, which features some great guest musicians, but still retains the trio feel. They are just great, great, great. Then somebody at Capitol decided to put him in front of an orchestra, and the rest is history. He also broke lots of racial barriers, being on TV, singing with white women (He had crosses burnt on his lawn) etc. I love Nat Cole. Fun fact: The guitarist in the Nat Cole Trio was Oscar Moore. His brother Johnny Moore was a great guitarist in his own right. While he sounded generally like his brother, he took his playing in a much more cool blues direction. His group, Johnny Moore and The Three Blazers is great, if you can find any records. Oscar eventually hooked up with him once Nat split.
I always get confused by the term "pop". Is Britney Spears pop? Some of Julie London's songs sound like jazz but then again when I'm listening to her sultry singing the whole jazz/pop distinction is the last thing on my mind. If "pop" means what I think it means then I'd say your categories fit, except maybe I'd put Nina Simone in with the straddlers. Those Dylans covers and the way she sings "The Pusher Man" and what not...Sometimes she even sounds a little gospel.
Yeah, I butchered the spelling there, didn't I? *L* As far as the vocals go, it's really to each his own. I know there are some fantastic vocalists out there, not just in jazz but in many other musical fields as well. For me, with jazz, I just prefer my music sans vocals. No biggie.
--- the percentage of black women who sang in church choirs is probably in excess of 75% if we're talking about women who were born in the South, rural or urban. music=gospel=music. if you listen to "Little Girl Blue" or "Don't Smoke in Bed" or "I Loves You, Porgy", there is no doubt she's a jazz singer. also, she is a pianist, not just a pianist, but a stylist whose singing is complementary to her piano playing and vice versa, IMO. i don't know what to do with the Dylan covers, except that Dylan is a very hip guy and it's de rigueur to play his stuff, if you are also very hip, without being self-consciously hip.
In my opinion, vocal music done well is the ultimate music has to offer. Unfortunately, a lot of people who think they can sing, can't. Other times, I know it's just a matter of personal taste in that a person has a quality voice, but I just don't care for it. I tend to stray away from jazz vocalists and I prefer the instrumental music, but in other genres, I can't imagine listening to just instrumental stuff. I do have some jazz vocal stuff, just not much. Same with Indian classical music. Don't care for the singing too much.
Nina Simone was an ass-kicker. She would threaten audiences with an hour of classical music if they didn't shut up and be quiet for her performance. Here's some other nuggets: In the 1960s, Nina Simone was part of the civil rights movement and later the black power movement. Her songs are considered by some as anthems of those movements, and their evolution shows the growing hopelessness that American racial problems would be solved. Nina Simone wrote "Mississippi Goddam" after the bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama killed four children and after Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississipppi. ... Other Nina Simone songs adopted by the civil rights movement as anthems included "Backlash Blues," "Old Jim Crow," "Four Women" and "To Be Young, Gifted and Black." The latter was composed in honor of her friend Lorraine Hansberry and became an anthem for the growing black power movement with its line, "Say it clear, say it loud, I am black and I am proud!" ... Nina Simone's growing bitterness over America's racism, her disputes with the record companies she called "pirates," her troubles with the IRS all led to her decision to leave the United States. .... There were several run-ins with the law in the 90s in France, as Nina Simone shot a rifle at rowdy neighbors ... (CyC: I remember when that happened .....) In a 1969 interview with Phyl Garland, Nina Simone said: There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be. Nina Simone is often classified as a jazz singer, but this is what she had to say in 1997 (in an interview with Brantley Bardin): To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. That's why I don't like the term "jazz," and Duke Ellington didn't like it either -- it's a term that's simply used to identify black people." http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_nina_simone.htm
--- in the office where i work, about half the staff are black. professional, college educated, black. lots of angry folk. i neither begrudge nor blame, trivialize nor acquiesce. having said that, i get it that Nina Simone is angry, and with ample cause, but she's bucking 80 years of music history that calls a particular music genre "jazz". i frankly don't care whether she likes the term or not, as far as identifying whether she is a "jazz" singer. that's her issue, and she can debate it with anyone she can get to sit still for that. what do you call june christy? a black classical music singer? Stan Kenton, who i think was the first to hire Miss Christy, comes out of a classical European harmonic mold, and if we are to dichotomize between black classical music and jazz, then what do you do with Gerald Wilson or Ornette Coleman or Roland Kirk???
I do love jazz. a bit boring with my tastes so far though. favorite 2 cd's, kind of blue and ole by coltrane.
You know, it's not like she made it her life's work to stop people from using the term "Jazz" or was proposing a new musical lexicon for everyone to adopt. She was a highly political person, she had political issues with the term and didn't like using it. Full stop. I included that snippet because I thought it was a nice bit of insight into how she viewed her artistic expression. I doubt she gave much thought to June Christy (who I dig immensely).