Sloane Sophisticated Lady

MARCH 2020—iSSue 215 YOUR Free guide To THe NYC JaZZ Scene nycJaZZrecord.COM CAROL SLOANE SOPHISTICATED LADY women in JaZZ Sue iS in memoriam Jimmy Heath kim brandee diedre JUNE clarke younger murray TySon on THe cover ERIC STEPHEN JACOBS / CAROL SLOANE E SOPHISTICATED LADY S J S T U D I by george kanzler O . C O M The mid 20th Century was a golden age for jazz singers, the lyric, because that’s what Carmen taught me. She propensities, was that he knew songs inside-out, chords especially women. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, said tell the story, feel the tug in the heart.” and lyrics. She remembers when a young saxophonist Carmen McRae, Dinah Washington and a host of others A song she’s sung and recorded multiple times is came to their apartment and asked Rowles to write out were at or close to the zenith of their careers. It must cited as an example. “I’m nuts about ‘Prelude to A the changes to an Ellington ballad for him. “So Jimmy have been an especially daunting time for a young Kiss’,” she says of a song she’s loved since her teen did and then said he was also going to write out the singer to emerge on the scene. That’s just what Carol years. “Duke’s songs challenge you from the get-go, lyrics. And the kid said he didn’t need the lyrics, he Sloane did in her mid 20s, making a splash at the 1961 right there, etched in stone. You don’t have to change wasn’t going to be singing it. ‘Oh yes, you do,’ said Newport Jazz Festival. At the time, Sloane was already a note thinking you know better than Ellington. Don’t Jimmy, ‘because you are singing it if you’re doing it a veteran jazz singer, having begun her career at 14 in give me that; sing it the way the composer wrote it. And right.” Rowles (1918-96) also sang and left some Rhode Island, singing with the Larry Elgart Orchestra then add your own—shorten this phrase or extend that beguiling examples on his albums. “His ‘I’ll Never Be (it was Elgart who changed her name from Morvan to one—but do it after a lot of time playing with it, seeing the Same’ breaks my heart,” says Sloane, who cites Sloane) and subbing for Annie Ross in Lambert, how the reaction from the audience is and how you feel. Rowles as an example of someone without a conventional Hendricks & Ross. Get yourself into that new shoe, that shoe is a classic singer’s voice who “conveyed the words and emotions Sloane was very aware of those vocal luminaries of and when you put your foot in there for the first time of the songs.” When Rowles moved back home to the era, both as an admirer and an inveterate jazz fan. you should feel very comfortable, but not so comfortable California in 1980, Sloane briefly took a job at a Boston “Ella was top of the tree,” said Sloane from her that you can take it out and walk in the snow. Be very law firm, but was soon enticed back to Raleigh to appear Massachusetts home, “and she still is, but there is no fragile with it because it has stood the test of time and at and help manage a jazz club that lasted for two years. way anybody could sing like her, she had a perfect you’re just beginning with it as a singer. Get yourself In 1984 she moved back to the Boston area, married and voice. Sarah was singing in an operatic stratosphere we some basics, recognize how truly remarkable these resumed her recording and touring career. couldn’t attain. And she could improvise like a horn; songs are and honor them by adhering to what the She has made some remarkable recordings in the for a jazz singer she had it all. But when I heard Carmen composer wrote. Ella’s a perfect example of that, she last three decades, many with minimal accompaniment, I was sure she was it. I heard the salt, the edge in her never messed around, always sang a composer’s work like just guitar and piano or, on Dearest Duke, just Ken voice; Ella didn’t have it. I heard some sand, some grit, as written and still with great heart and feeling.” (For Peplowski, tenor saxophone and clarinet, and pianist some texture. She conveyed lyrics so effectively, which a sample of how Sloane personalizes a song while Brad Hatfield. “I’m not so fond of drummers,” Sloane really appealed to me.” honoring the composer’s intentions, you need only admits. “And when I do use them, never on ballads. Like McRae, Sloane is a jazz singer who concentrates listen to “Sophisticated Lady” on her 2007 Arbors CD, And I’ve even dispensed with having a monitor out in on the words, intent on conveying emotional meaning Dearest Duke, specifically her suggestively onomatopoeic front of me. I depend on my ear, don’t like this [monitor] and nuance rather than musical dexterity. As Stephen rendering of the word “nonchalant.”) artificial sound. I discovered this working with [pianist] Holden noted in a 2001 New York Times review: “Instead Sloane’s career took off in the ‘60s, when she Bill Charlap at the Jazz Standard. We did the gig without of pyrotechnics she strives for an ideal mixture of clarity, recorded two albums for Columbia, regularly opened a monitor and I could hear myself perfectly well. I’ve emotional balance and buoyancy…As much as any on the nightclub circuit for top comedians of the time always relied on my ear to get me where I’m supposed singer of her generation, Ms. Sloane understands the and appeared as a frequent guest on TV (Johnny Carson) to be and, of course, on pianists like Bill, Jimmy, Tommy, value of restraint.” and radio (Arthur Godfrey). But her recordings ended Roland and certainly Mike Renzi, who is now with me While McRae initially dismissed the admiring in 1965 as rock’n’roll began to dominate the industry. In and everybody else.” young Sloane, eventually the two became friends, to the 1970 Sloane moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where Sloane has not only worked recently with Charlap, extent that McRae called Sloane up on stage at the Blue she worked as a legal secretary and sang in a jazz club. he also assembled and led the little big band on her 1996 Note in May 1991 to sing. “It dawned on me,” remembers Luckily, jazz musicians from The Big Apple had not Concord album The Songs Sinatra Sang. And she wrote Sloane, “that she called me up because she needed to forgotten the singer and in 1977 she got a call from the liner notes for one of his albums. In fact, writing is have a break, she was having trouble breathing.” The pianist Sir Roland Hanna asking her to come to New something she is pursuing. “I just wrote the foreword next day Sloane was off on a tour in Japan and it was York to sub for Dee Dee Bridgewater on a gig with the for Dorothy Dodgion’s autobiography and am trying to there she heard McRae had collapsed and was in the New York Jazz Quartet (Hanna, saxophonist Frank write my own book, but I’m completely stymied at the hospital. McRae never sang in public again and died in Wess, bassist George Mraz and drummer Joe LaBarbera). moment.” For a sample you can check out her blog, 1994. “Thank God she left us a lot of stuff to examine “Here’s the kicker,” Sloane reveals, “Roland said he and Sloane On Sloane, at her website. and explore,” says Sloane. “She’s one of the ones Mraz wouldn’t be there on opening night, but I shouldn’t Meanwhile, despite her reservations, she will have I always tell young singers to not avoid, that these worry, they were sending subs.” Those subs turned out a drummer, Ron Vincent, joining her—“We can do some women [today’s young jazz singers] you are admiring to be Tommy Flanagan and Percy Heath. Sloane went on bossas”—with Renzi and bassist Jay Leonhart on stage right now couldn’t have done this if [Carmen, Ella and to record with Hanna and tour Japan with the quartet, at the Birdland Theater this month, in a program Sarah] hadn’t paved the way.” as well as appear regularly with them in the U.S. It was celebrating the spring season. v Sloane is concerned with the direction and priorities during that time that she met Jimmy Rowles when he of aspiring jazz singers today and attempts to address was playing piano at the legendary late-night Greenwich For more information, visit carolsloane. Sloane is at them when she teaches or conducts workshops. “At the Village club Bradley’s. The two ended up living together Birdland Theater Mar. 27th-28th. See Calendar. New England Conservatory,” she recalls, “the young in the Village for a couple of years. women hated me because I wouldn’t let them scat-sing. “All the singers came to hear Jimmy at Bradley’s,” Recommended Listening: You have to pick one of these Duke Ellington ballads, remembers Sloane, “and they all wanted him to play for • Carol Sloane—Out of the Blue (Columbia, 1961) I told them, and sing it for me as I wish it to be sung. them.” Rowles was the gold standard as an accompanist • Carol Sloane—Sophisticated Lady You have to hit every interval, you have to be in tune, so for singers, having not only worked with Ella, Sarah (Trio-Audiophile, 1977) that I understand you have your basis, foot on terra and Carmen, but also with their forebear Billie Holiday.

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