[Dixielandjazz] American Idol - Redux

Steve barbone barbonestreet at earthlink.net
Thu Apr 20 07:07:39 PDT 2006


I hear you Pat:-) VBG. We let young chick singers sit in from time to time
and instead of adapting to the rhythmic pulse of the band, they expect us to
adapt our rhythmic pulse to their rubato on the spur of the moment. Trouble
is who the hell knows what their rubato is going to be? Often they say I'm
going to sing "At Last" like -----some current singer who we've never heard
--- and they expect us to be able to figure out what that is and where the
time will vary.
Too much copying of junk, not enough pure song.

But then I remember record labels going back to Bessie Smith with here name
prominently featured. Same with Mildred Bailey, Billie Holiday and Bing
Crosby, et al.

I guess it depended upon who the singer was, or how effective the state of
the art recording processes were in reproducing the singer's voice (e.g.
Crosby whose vocal range could not have been recorded effectively during
most of the 1920s ).

Cheers,
Steve

Pat Cooke77 at yahoo.com at patcooke77 at yahoo.com wrote:

I've never watched "idol".   I have no plans to watch it.  Nowadays, it's
the singers who are the "idols', and what they're doing is not what I would
call singing.  I remember when the band leader's name was on the record
label in large print, and all the sidemen's names in smaller print.  The
singer's name was also in very small print, if it was mentioned at all.




More information about the Dixielandjazz mailing list