[Dixielandjazz] The Trend to Vocalists in Jazz

[Steve barbone]

>From the NY Times, this article might be of interest to band leaders and
jazz festival producers. Note the take on "singers" and "audience appeal".
Hmmm, the hot market right now in the USA is JAZZ SINGERS. Note also
paragraph two below for some thoughts about developing an audience.

Want an easy 3 step way to make the "jazz-oblivious" your audience?

1) Get a chick singer.
2) You Sing fun songs like Frim Fram Sauce & Million Dollar Secret.
3) She sings sexy love songs.

Any chick singers out there at liberty?

What the heck, if Norah Jones can sell 12 million copies of two albums in
less than 2 years, why not Brady McKay, or Rebecca Kilgore? Bet they'd even
settle for a million.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

September 15, 2004 - NY Times
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK - By BEN RATLIFF

Jazz Hopefuls, Trying for the Sound of Success

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - The voice was the chosen instrument for this year's
Thelonious Monk International Jazz competition. And the big preliminary
question was whether the contest might reflect what's happening to jazz
singing outside of the gently pedantic atmosphere of a jazz education
organization like the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.

Even the most ambitious jazz instrumentalists seem to find limits for their
audience. Singers can have a much broader appeal. Norah Jones, whose two
albums have sold more than 12 million copies combined since 2002, proved
that a singer with at least a basis in jazz can give audiences something
they didn't necessarily know they wanted. And since the last time vocalists
were heard in this competition, six years ago (the instrument changes each
year), many other singers have proved that divergent approaches to
repertory, instrumentation and rhythm, moving away from canonical notions of
the jazz singer, can be extremely persuasive to the jazz-oblivious, without
blaspheming the tradition.

But the Monk Institute is a nonprofit enterprise, and this competition, in
its 17th year and won in the past by musicians including Joshua Redman,
Jacky Terrasson and Teri Thornton, isn't about crossing genres; it sets down
aesthetic certainties about jazz, asking that they be upheld. This happens
through the initial tape-screening process, through the judges' uniform list
of criteria and through the high standards of the jazz-singer judges
themselves. It's by now an old joke that Monk himself might not have won the
competition named after him, but you wonder if Ms. Jones would have gotten
beyond submitting a tape.

In the semifinals on Sunday at the Smithsonian Institution's Baird Theater,
singers had 15 minutes to do what they wanted. According to the rules of the
contest, they all had to be under 30 and without contracts from major record
labels, and they all had to perform with the same house rhythm section.

As always, the judges - Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, Flora Purim and
Jimmy Scott-had before them sheets to rate the singers according to
suggested criteria, including control, dynamics, time, swing feel, taste,
concept, originality, interaction with the rhythm section, leadership and
stage presence. 

These pressurized performances were, in effect, miniature nightclub sets,
and the singers had to pace themselves. Kellylee Evans, from Toronto, worked
hard for the audience's attention, opening with a smart, slow ballad version
of "Love for Sale" and generally acting as if she owned the place.

José James, from Milwaukee, skinny and magnetic, started with a version of
"Every Day I Have the Blues" so powerfully suggestive of Joe Williams that
the judges reacted physically. Mr. Scott, 79, waved his hands in the air.
Ms. Bridgewater, beaming, cooled herself vigorously with a fan. But then the
spell broke: Mr. James ended with an unfocused scat solo and dropped out of
the running.

You want these competitions to yield thunderous signals of arrival, but that
seldom happens: often the musicians have already been on the scene for some
years, or the high-stakes artificiality of the event flusters them. But
Gretchen Parlato, a little-known Los Angeles singer who recently moved to
New York, created a surprise attack. (She has a connection with the Monk
Institute, having been chosen as the first singer in its two-year program,
from which she graduated in 2001.)

Ms. Parlato, small and serious, said almost nothing onstage, but her talent
was so deeply centered and concentrated that the effect might have been the
same had she stood behind a curtain. The set included a scat version of
Charlie Parker's "Embraceable You" improvisations; an "I Fall in Love Too
Easily" that suggested Chet Baker's dry-toned version but superimposed hints
of a lavish, Donny Hathaway melisma; and a hard-swinging version of "Chega
de Saudade," sung in excellent Portuguese. (Anyone curious can see her
perform tomorrow night at the Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, in the South
Village.) 

On Monday, in the finals, a concert held at the Kennedy Center and filmed by
BET, Ms. Parlato did it again. (Al Jarreau and Quincy Jones were on hand as
more judges.) Relatively unmannered, with accurate pitch, she didn't copy
older singers or overemote; she just calmly nailed a ballad and a
medium-tempo piece with improvisations, interacting with the rhythm section
at its own level.

Ms. Parlato won first prize, a $20,000 check. Ms. Evans came in second,
impressing the judges with an original song. Robin McKelle, who teaches at
Berklee College of Music, came in third, punching out "Angel Eyes" like a
hardened professional, and Charenee Wade, an impressive Betty
Carter-influenced singer from New York, came in fourth.

Because the Monk Institute, based in Washington, cultivates ties to the
government, and because various agencies give it support, a disjunctive
strangeness arises during these events, as the jazz world meets barricades
and metal detectors. There was a State Department reception for the
contestants, held by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, at which Herbie
Hancock and Ms. Bridgewater sang "Caravan."

At Monday night's concert, Senator Orrin G. Hatch was given the institute's
founder's award. And toward the end of the concert's second half - an
impressive all-star sequence involving the judges and a few other big names,
including Wayne Shorter and Jon Faddis - Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked to present the first prize. He did so
gracefully, but not before first quoting a passage from the writings of a
British Royal Air Force pilot in World War II to the effect that we must win
the war against fear.

He was making the point, in a roundabout way, that less fear equals more
jazz. The audience began hissing and heckling, and he quickly finished.

At that point the winner and runners-up, after going through this emotional
pasta machine in front of television cameras with unfamiliar colleagues and
high-ranking generals, were importuned to sing a song together. Competition
is good for jazz, but the evening ended on an awkward note.