Posted by jeff on Jun 10, 2011 in
Jazz,
Song Of the week,
Vocalists
Kurt Elling -- the best male jazz vocalist ever
Last week I had the distinct pleasure of taking my favorite singer in the world, Kurt Elling, to my favorite spot in the world, the underground tunnel that runs along the western wall of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, and talking music with him all along the way. The day is described in exhaustive detail in the article “Going Up to Jerusalem with Kurt Elling“. For our SoTW, I’d like to try to pin down just why I think Kurt is the finest male jazz singer ever. Well, who’s competing for the title? Kurt (b. 1967) and I discussed the leading lights in the field, and by general consensus the outstanding male jazz vocalist, at least since Louis Armstrong, is Mark Murphy (b. 1932). Here’s how Kurt describes Mark: Mark recreated songbook classics and hipped up bop through his phrasing, arranging and unique vocal ingenuity. Mark shows us all that the singers’ art is never done evolving. He showed how moving and dramatic an evening of Jazz singing could be. I also became aware of Kerouac and the whole Beat/Jazz connection through Mark. He has made a lifetime of innovative, truly great vocal Jazz records.
Mark Murphy
Read more…
Tags: Count Basie, Joe Williams, Jon Hendricks, Kurt Elling, Lambert Hendricks & Ross, Mark Murphy, Neil Hefti, The Real Group
Posted by jeff on Jun 7, 2011 in
Writings June 5, 2011
The Fantasy
Perhaps a person can be defined by his fantasies. There was a time when my wildest dream would have been Petula Clark asking me to come up to see her etchings. And there was a time when it was Phil Jackson asking me for advice on defensive strategy. And for quite a while (at an age I’ll refrain from admitting) I was seriously hoping to be reincarnated as Buddy Holly.
In recent years, my greatest fantasy would have been to spend the day talking music with my favorite singer in the world, Kurt Elling, while taking him to my favorite spot in the world, the underground tunnel that runs along the western wall of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Hey, guess what I did this week? Read more…
Tags: beatnik, Bobby McFerrin, Esperanza Spalding, jazz singers, Jerusalem, Kurt Elling, Laurence Hobgood, Luciana Souza, Maria Schneider, Mark Murphy, Omri Mor, Project RnL, singing jazz, Western Wall tunnel, Zappa Tel Aviv
Posted by jeff on Dec 24, 2009 in
Jazz,
Song Of the week,
Vocalists Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman
Oh, am I excited!
A new CD was released last week by my favoritest ‘singer’ – “Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman“. So I’m just popping with anticipation.
Kurt Elling is 42, from Chicago, and this is his 8th CD in 14 years. It’s a re-recording (with a few tasteful additions) of the 1963 classic “John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman”. Mr. Elling is an artist of amazing versatility, not just a singer. But he’s also a great crooner, as this CD will undoubtedly prove–when I manage to get my hands on it, here in the wholly holey Holy Land. But in the meantime, let’s revisit the source.
John Coltrane is a monumental figure in modern jazz. He started out as an untried, technically limited tenor saxophonist in Miles Davis’ first quintet in the mid-50s. Eventually Miles had to throw him out of the band for drug abuse. Then he cut his chops for a while with Thelonious Monk and got himself off drugs. Then he rejoined Miles in the late 50s for the “Kind of Blue” period, then went solo. In 1961 he started moving towards spiritual, ‘free’ jazz, developing a commercially disastrous technique of “sheets of sound” and a lot of the most astounding music in jazz ever. To appease the record company, he recorded a couple of more palatable LPs, including an eponymous 1963 collaboration with balladeer Johnny Hartman.
Ballads are to Coltrane as political protest songs are to Dylan–they constitute the backbone of his popular reputation, while actually constituting a rather insignificant place in his corpus. In subsequent years, Trane’s playing became so intense and his development as an artist so rapid that enthusiasts track his growth by the month, even by the week. He died in 1967 at the age of 40.
Johnny Hartman had a respectable though not brilliant career as a crooner contemporaneously with and then beyond Coltrane. His voice is so smooth it makes Billy Eckstine sound like Mick Jagger, Nat Cole like Joe Cocker. He recorded sporadically, and his acknowledged masterpiece is their joint venture, “John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman”. Only 30 minutes long, it’s enough of a classic to warrant an homage by as fine an artist as Kurt Elling.
Of the six songs on the LP, each one a gem, I’ve chosen the lovely standard ‘My One and Only Love’. The performance here is the epitome of elegance and warmth, yet intelligent and musically substantial. So lower the lights, put on your smoking jacket, take a brandy glass in your hand, and enjoy.
Tags: Devoted to You, John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman, Kurt Elling
