New World Records

New World Records NEW WORLD RECORDS 701 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10036; (212) 302-0460; (212) 944-1922 fax email: [email protected] www.newworldrecords.org When Malindy Sings Jazz Vocalists: 1938 -1961 New World NW 295 he question of who is and who isn't a jazz Some would just as soon do away with the T singer is perplexing. It's easy enough to note term “jazz singer” completely, claiming that it is those characteristics that separate the jazz singer misleading and confusing. And there are singers from, say, the singer of lieder—the subtler who, although they at least partly follow a jazz changes in inflection, the greater rhythmic loose- approach in tone quality, phrasing, and rhythm, ness, the more flexible tonal quality—but making shun the use of the word to describe themselves the distinction between “jazz” and “popular” out of fear it will limit their audiences. singing is trickier. The easiest way to make the distinction The problem is part of the identity crisis that between popular and jazz singers is to note that jazz has been having for years. On the one hand, although virtually all American popular singers jazz is a “popular” music—it was nurtured in from Crosby (1904-1977) on have been in- dance halls, it is performed in nightclubs, its fluenced by jazz, some (Crosby, Frank Sinatra, repertoire has always been heavily stocked with Peggy Lee) have used jazz elements in creating the popular songs of the past and the present. what is essentially a less inventive, more accessi- On the other hand, it is a “serious” music, far ble style, while others (like the artists in this col- more so than most popular music, much of lection) are more adventurous, their style closer which is ephemeral by nature.The jazz musician to the improvisational approach of a jazz instru- is committed to improvisation as a means of mentalist. Some of the jazz-oriented singers have expression, and the musical context of that achieved popular success—often at the expense improvisation tends to be harmonically sophisti- of the more creative elements of their music— cated and often extremely complex—which has but at heart they remain more interested in mak- nothing at all to do with the concept of the care- ing compelling and lasting music than in strain- fully crafted, mass-appeal-oriented popular song. ing to capture the public's fancy. Nowhere is jazz's identity crisis more apparent This collection does not profess to offer the than among vocalists, where the distinction definitive history of jazz singing. For a variety of between the music’s serious and popular sides reasons, including the unavailability of certain often blurs completely. Louis Armstrong was a important material, it can't. It does offer an jazz singer, but is his recording of “Hello, Dolly” overview, from the late thirties to the early six- jazz? Young Armstrong's vocal technique had a ties, of some of the outstanding recorded jazz profound influence on the style of young Bing vocalists, some universally known, some unde- Crosby; did this make Crosby a jazz singer? Sarah servedly obscure. Vaughan's approach is exploratory, daring, and * * * complex—she rarely sings a melody straight— The voice was, of course, the first musical and so is Betty Carter's. But Carter has practiced instrument. Vocal music is a significant compo- her art in relative obscurity, like many jazz musi- nent of virtually all cultures, and in Africa, where cians, while Vaughan has enjoyed enormous pop- jazz had its genesis, vocal inflection is a key ele- ular success. Does this make Sarah Vaughan less a ment of many languages.The peoples brought as jazz singer than Betty Carter? slaves to America from Africa did not bring musi- 1 cal instruments; the music they made for them- unpleasant or difficult—gradually grew in populari- selves was at first entirely vocal (although highly ty, he was called on more and more to record the rhythmic). African vocal styles sifted through popular songs of his day, many of which were American culture, and the agonies of the slave banal.The approach he developed to such material experience gradually took stark, compelling shape is captured by Marshall Stearns in The Story of as field hollers, work songs, and spirituals. It was Jazz in this description of the 1931 Armstrong from these forms that the blues evolved, and it was record of “All of Me”: from the blues that jazz emerged. In jazz's formative period, when it was focused in In the middle of his vocal, his accent goes insanely (although not limited to) the culturally diverse British....On the surface, Louis is saying:“This is as far milieu of early-twentieth-century New Orleans, as I can get with these corny lyrics without clown- instruments, specifically those of the marching ing, out of sheer embarrassment.” At the same time, band, assumed primary importance. But the vocal by changes in the melody and by unusual accents in the rhythm, he makes the listener suddenly realize aspect of Afro-American music was never absent; in that he,Armstrong, is in full, double-edged control of fact, it made itself known in the musicians' the musical situation, embroidering beautifully on approach to their instruments.As jazz historian Dan the stereotyped mask, and enjoying the whole affair Morgenstern has noted in his book Jazz People, hugely. In a word: he is the master—not just of the “one of the key characteristics of early instrumental music but also of a complex and ironic attitude, a jazz was the players' attempts to vocalize their rare, honest way of looking at life. sounds” —to imitate the sound of the human voice, to duplicate the plaintive cry that is unique to the This approach had its disciples, of whom the African and Afro-American vocal tradition. most outstanding was the pianist, singer, and song- This vocal approach to instrumental improvisa- writer Thomas “Fats” Waller (1904-1943). Though tion was matched from the start by an instrumental no great vocal stylist,Waller achieved considerable approach to singing.Voices and instruments in jazz fame through his interpretations of pop songs, have long had a symbiotic relationship, and it is no which he treated with outrageous humor and coincidence that Louis Armstrong (1900-1971), the sometimes outright condescension. But for the first truly inventive and influential jazz in- most part, Armstrong's “complex and ironic atti- strumentalist, was also the first truly inventive and tude” had a more subtle effect on the course of influential jazz vocalist. American popular singing. It led to a more relaxed, Armstrong revolutionized jazz instrumental casual concept, a way of phrasing that marked a technique by expanding the range of the trumpet radical departure from the stiff, often melodramatic and imbuing his playing with a loose, spirited style that had been the norm in white popular rhythmic sense that came to be known as swing. music. While Bing Crosby was the first important And he revolutionized jazz vocal technique by popular singer to adopt an Armstrong-derived style, perfecting a style of wordless vocalizing known as the approach soon became widespread.Armstrong scat, in which the voice functions as an improvis- can truly be said not just to have defined jazz ing instrument, and by treating popular songs singing but to have permanently altered the course with a casual irreverence that gave them new of all American popular singing. meaning as music. At the same time Armstrong's style was taking It has been said that Armstrong invented scat hold, another type of singing was in full bloom out singing when, while recording the song “Heebie of earshot of white America. The rudimentary Jeebies,” he dropped his sheet music and, not blues music—usually performed by singers accom- knowing the words, started singing nonsense syl- panying themselves on guitar—that took root in lables. This story is almost certainly apocryphal, rural black America in the wake of emancipation but whether or not Armstrong invented scat, he had begun, around the turn of the century, the was the singer most responsible for showing that transition into the more refined “classic” blues it could be more than just a gimmick. Although style first popularized by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey there have been singers who have exploited scat (1886-1939) and developed to its peak by Bessie for its novelty value alone, with a master like Smith (1894?-1937). Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald it is the purest form Bessie Smith did not exist separately from of jazz singing. Armstrong—in fact, he played on a number of her As Armstrong—whose gruff voice and unortho- recordings—but her style evolved along different dox phrasing at first struck many listeners as lines. The blues was a crucial element of 2 Armstrong's music, but it was the essence of band when she joined Artie Shaw in 1938. The Smith's. The power and directness of her vocal other great jazz singer to establish herself during style were communicated even in the nonblues this period was Ella Fitzgerald (born 1918), who numbers she recorded, especially toward the end got her professional start with Chick Webb's band. of her career. (Like Armstrong and Waller, she had Her approach was radically different from Billie's. to deal with trite material, but unlike them, she Ella, too, was concerned with phrasing like a horn, transcended the material by treating it with total, but in her case the instrumental approach became searing earnestness.) And her style had an effect on considerably more important than the lyrics.

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