Andrea Claburn

The following notes were originally created to accompany a "listening CD" I compiled for a jazz program at Rooftop Alternative School in San Francisco. The program will run through the 2007-8 school year and will culminate in a performance at Rooftop by the Marcus Shelby Orchestra of his "Harriet Tubman: Bound for the Promised Land" oratorio. Marcus will also be working with the children in small groups throughout the year, and the kids will be studying all subjects (history, visual art, math, language arts, and of course, music) through the prism of America's greatest indigenous art form. When the director of the program asked me to contribute to the curriculum from the perspective of a jazz vocalist, I was more than happy to oblige with a CD and detailed notes. I will also be working with the children this year and hopefully inspiring a few future scat cats!

(Legal caveat: I would post every one of these songs in mp3 form for you to listen to right here and now were it not for the fact that doing so could result in jack-booted thugs from the RIAA bursting through my front door and hauling me off to Gitmo for even suggesting such a thing. I will instead encourage you to spend the 99 cents - or splurge on the whole source CD if you love the single - at one of several reputable online purveyors. There. Not an actionable word in this paragraph.)

The Singers and the Songs

The following songs contain not only great vocal performances by superb singers, they also demonstrate the voice as instrument and integral part of the band. The vocalists use improvisation, scat solos, phrasing and interactions with the instrumentalists to create an exciting, unpredictable vibe. They embody the heart and soul of jazz vocal performance.

1. Dee Dee Bridgewater, "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" (Live at Yoshi's)
This song opens with a lightning fast bass/piano line leading seamlessly into a vocal scat solo, then finally lyric choruses. A great example of vocalist as instrumentalist interacting with her bandmates.

2. Kurt Elling and Jon Hendricks, "Goin' to Chicago" (Live in Chicago)
3. Kurt Elling "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (same)
The first song, a duet recorded live at Elling's home base The Green Mill, shows how powerfully a groove can be established with a single instrument (bass). The vocal blends seamlessly into the blues groove and expands on the established themes. The vocal duo then play off one another's melodic ideas with wit and precision. A key to this song's success is the audience's enthusiastic participation - a critical element in an exciting jazz performance.

"Smoke," a classic Jerome Kern ballad, shows how inventive arrangement makes a song fresh. Opening with improvised a capella rubato, Elling slides into the chorus alongside the bass and makes the song his own with extensive back-phrasing and melodic improvisation. The song ends with an extended original coda, an elegant take on the ballad's established themes.

4. & 5. Sarah Vaughan, "Great Day" (The Roulette Years) "Autumn Leaves" (Crazy & Mixed Up)
Sarah Vaughan takes a traditional African-American spiritual and uses melodic improvisation, modulation, tempo and phrasing to make it her own. Jazz has its roots in gospel music, and this heritage is evident here; a perfect blend of spiritual and swing.

Vaughan's version of "Autumn Leaves" hasn't a single word in it - she scats an improvised melody over the changes for the entire length of the song. Recorded late in her career for the only album she alone produced and exercised complete creative control over, this song shows a brilliant musician with a lifetime's experience using her voice as an instrument to create a song on the spot. A paramount vocal achievement.

6. Carmen McCrae, "It's Over Now/Well You Needn't" (Carmen Sings Monk)
Making an incredibly difficult melody line sound easy and off-handed, McRae is a master of vocal understatement, placing notes with precision to devastating effect. After the first chorus and solos, she trades fours with the drummer (an improvised call/response in which vocalist and drummer take turns taking four bar solos) and closes out with a lyric chorus. McRae's improvisations are a lesson in the power of simplicity.

7. Ella Fitzgerald, "If You Can't Sing It, You'll Have To Swing It" (Ella Returns to Berlin)
Recorded live in Berlin, this song's varied and unpredictable arrangement demonstrates the best of Ella's vocal range, scat mastery, and interaction with band and audience. Her improvised scat transitions are rhythmically and melodically playful and inventive.

8. Annie Ross, "Twisted" (King Pleasure Sings)
A prime example of a vocal style called Vocalese wherein an original lyric is set to an already recorded instrumental (usually improvised) solo. In this case, vocalist Annie Ross wrote (and sang) the words to tenor sax player Wardell Gray's solo. Ross's witty lyric suits the style of the bebop solo to perfection.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these songs, or other vocal performances that you find inspiring. Drop me a line at andrea at this domain.
Cheers-
Andrea

Fall in love with jazz and you'd better believe those words down to your soul. To be a jazz artist is to commit to work, work and more really hard work with little remuneration, a constant struggle for gigs, a pitched battle for an audience in a nation obsessed with mediocrity. A serious jazz vocalist will spend a lifetime learning an art form which she or he will never fully perfect, and there are no shortcuts. Every other day I think I must be out of my mind. At least once a week a career in architecture starts to look really good.

Then I stumble into an adventure like my current Monk obsession and I know that I could no more give up jazz singing than I could abstain from oxygen. The challenges Thelonious Monk's music poses to a vocalist are manifold: Monk did not write a vocal melody line; the words were added later by a variety of lyricists with varying degrees of success in blending musical and lyrical themes; the music is angular, full of minor thirds and chromatic scales; the melodies have enormous range (having been written for piano, not voice) and rhythmic variety. And it has been the most inspiring, exciting, moving material to sink my teeth into.

The first four bars of I Mean You are pretty straightforward if you are playing them on a piano; singing them is a whole different ball game. The line arpeggiates quickly down the tonic chord plus a fourth, up a fourth, down a fourth, and up in thirds chromatically, all in the span of a few of seconds (if you count it off at a good clip). The lyric (by godfather of vocalese Jon Hendricks) flies alongside the melody with a perfectly clipped consonant syllable to match each note. It is an exhilarating song to sing, as are most Monk tunes.

The overall vocal control - dynamics, pitch, tone, color - required to pull Monk off has taken my singing to another level. It may be a little challenging to audience members accustomed to hearing standards from vocalists, but I am confident in the power of the music to create more true believers. And remember: the journey is the destination.

Thanks for checking in. I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send email to andrea at this domain.