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Sarah Vaughan. How Long Has This Been Going On?

Sarah with Joe Pass, Ray Brown, Oscar Peterson, Louie Bellson--one of those Pablo releases arranged by Norman Granz. Cuts include I've Got the World on a String, Easy Living, Body and Soul... In short, a predictable set of standards.

With Sarah Vaughan, the voice is the first thing. It's not just a great voice, but several different voices, different registers, and several different uses of the voice. Listen to the long notes, how the note has a beginning, an extension during which vibrato might become broader, and an end point where something else might happen.

Then there's the diction--the way a certain vowel or consonant receives a particular inflection, what Barthes called the grain of the voice.

Sometimes the voice overwhelms a trivial lyric. I feel that the raw material could have been better chosen (not on this album though.)

Another aspect is "story telling." In this she is often as good as Sinatra. The voice can get in the way of this, but surprisingly doesn't most of the time.

Probably one of the best educations in jazz could be had by beginning with the Ella Fitzgerald songbooks. The ones I know the most intimately are the Cole Porter and the Rodgers and Hart, but there are also the Gershwin, the Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen, and Ellington collections. And one I'm forgetting; i think there were seven?

Anyway, the idea would be to get a grounding in the classic songs, sung in a calmly swinging but still fairly *straight* way. (After that I would move on to the high modernist canon of Mingus, Monk, and Miles.) She doesn't alter the melodies too much or get too cute or mannered. Ella, like Sinatra, is a great jazz musician, and Nelson Riddle's arrangements serve them both well. The idea of doing songbooks itself is a stroke of genius, because it gives the singer like Ella a repertoire that is at her musical level, rather than making her depend on whatever songs some record producer happens to think will be hits. Imagine if Billie Holiday could have made a Gershwin songbook.

Vocal jazz of a certain always intersects with plain old "pop" music. Bing Crosby, Nat Cole, Sinatra, Ella, Dinah Washington, etc... There were the commercial pressures, and also the fact that jazz simply *was* the pop music of a certain period. Not all pop was jazz per se, and not all jazz was pop, but the dominant idiom was swing-based jazz.

The rejazzification of certain figures, at a somewhat later date, is interesting to consider in this context. Take Tony Bennett, for example. Once pop music was not as jazz based, Bennett could do more pure jazz work than before. Norman Granz recorded Ella and Sarah in a later period in contexts that highlighted their jazz roots. Ella with Joe Pass, for example.

Rather than seeing this pop elements as an impurity in jazz, I see it as a healthy complement. Vocals will always be more popular than purely instrumental music, so the most popular jazz musician today is probably Diana Krall. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I prefer to go back to Ella.

Today is Abbey Lincoln's birthday. An acquired taste, and one I have never acquired. She sings what sound to me like arbitrary sequences of notes, with little relation to the original melody of the song, and consistently on the flat side. It sounds to me like a tone deaf-person singing. What she does with melody she also does with time, singing so far behind the beat as to make the beat irrelevant. She exemplifies annoying, self-indulgent mannerisms, the bane of jazz singing (unless you happen to like those particular mannerisms, I guess, which would make her a great singer for you!) Her voice does have a rich timbre, one that could be put to excellent use if she sang on time and in tune. She seems confident of her approach, diva-like in her delivery, which makes her badness all the more unbearable. It's an arrogant badness, not a self-effacing one. Am I the only one who thinks this? Evidently not, because my wife and daughter can't stand her either.

--How many jazz vocalists does it take to sing "My Funny Valentine"?

--All of them.

[Ann Hampton Calloway, as told to Marianne McPartland]

I'm sure it's an old joke but it was the first time I had heard it. Then she sang "My Funny Valentine," of course. Not my favorite singer. A marvelous voice but I just don't think she is very tasteful. Every effect is magnified.

Here are my favorite singers of jazz, in no particular order of preference. I can't rank them really. Did I do this before? If I did I apologize:

Dinah Washington. She's like Billie Holiday but with a stronger voice. Very bluesy even in her more popular facets. Check out "Dinah Jams."

Ray Charles. I know he isn't a "jazz singer" per se. It doesn't really matter to me. Make your own list if you don't like it,

Billie Holiday. That's pretty obvious. She is simply one of the great jazz musicians period.

Armstrong. Yes, I know he can be quite awful. I can't stand to hear "Hello Dolly" or "Mack the Knife." You have to go back to the early days to find better stuff by him. How about the duets with Ella? You can't beat those.

Nat King Cole. Ok. That's an interesting one. He is obviously a jazz musician, but is he a jazz singer? Or does his singing represent a turn away from jazz? I love his voice and his phrasing. He inspired the early Ray Charles, even. He is "jazz" even when he is not "jazz."

Ella Fitzgerald. Another obvious one. Get away from the novelty numbers and into the song books.

Billy Eckstine. The male Sarah Vaughn? You got to give him his due.

Sarah Vaughn. I love that over-the-top quality to her performances. There is the sheer power and range of her voice, but I prefer her when she is the most "swinging." I hated her "Send in the Clowns," maybe because I hate all of Sondheim's music.

Sinatra. Ok. Sinatra could be awful too, when he became his mannerisms. A lot of singers do that. I like him best with those Nelson Riddle string arrangements. Sweet.

Antonio Benedetti. Tony Bennett is the purest jazz singer among the Italian crooners. He has his mannerisms too. If you like those mannerisms you will like him.

Shirley Horn. Not for nothing was she Miles Davis' favorite singer.

Bessie Smith. This was jazz singing before there was jazz. It's the original source--or one of them at least.

This is a tricky category because it merges into plain old "pop" singing at a certain point--at one end--and into rhythm and blues at the other end. It's interesting that there are more pure jazz singers among the women, and more cross-overs among the men. Ella, Sarah, and Dinah are "jazzier" in the generic sense than Frank, Ray Chas., the later Armstrong, or Nat Cole--or even Mel Tormé, who doesn't make my list.