[Dixielandjazz] Diana Reeves

[Steve Barbone]

Singer Diana Reeves gives this advice to her students: "what do you think
makes a great singer? It¹s obvious with her. . .  that it¹s your spirit."

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

NY Times - April 20, 2007 - By BEN RATLIFF

Listening With Dianne Reeves - Looking Beyond the Phrasing, to the Spirit

DENVER ‹ ³It¹s been cold here lately,² Dianne Reeves said this month,
readying plates of food for a late lunch, ³so I decided to make some lamb.²
She laid out the meal on the center island of her kitchen here, including
sweet iced tea made from hibiscus leaves brought home from Turkey and
cornbread that she has been perfecting, trying to replicate a version she
admired at a local restaurant. Explaining how she likes to cook, she said:
³It¹s the same thing with how I sing. I work with my ear and try to make it
feel right, or I just keep changing it until I like the way it tastes.²

So does every musician. But from Dianne Reeves this formula sounds
excessively humble. Ms. Reeves isn¹t stumbling around in the dark; she has
the training, the tools, the instrument. Hers is a big and forthright voice,
one that sounds as if it might have been trained over the blare of a touring
big band, except that such a model hardly exists anymore.

She is a jazz singer who has absorbed some of the loftiest and most
difficult models: Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter, Shirley Horn. She treats
standards with skyscraper authority, drawing a circle of repertory wide
enough to include material from her favorite singer-songwriters; she has her
own vocal and performance devices, subdividing vowels into a dozen notes,
pouring forth welcomes and singsong advice to her audience.

Her most recent record, which won her a fourth Grammy Award, was the
soundtrack to the 2005 film ³Good Night, and Good Luck,² in which she climbs
into the 1950s without affectation. On it she performs standards with a
small backing group, a setup reasonably close to the one she will use
tonight and tomorrow at Jazz at Lincoln Center¹s Allen Room. (Her trio will
consist of the pianist Billy Childs, the bassist Reginald Veal and the
drummer Gregory Hutchinson.) But she has also become known for her own
songs, often concerned with, as she puts it, ³telling stories²; they hit a
gently counseling chord, encouraging pride and self-reliance.

She has been a long time forming. The present version of Dianne Reeves comes
after 30 years of wending among swing-based jazz, West Coast pop-jazz of the
1980s and versions of black-diaspora songs and bossa nova from jobs with
Harry Belafonte and Sergio Mendes. And before that, a lot of church singing.

Yet Ms. Reeves seems firmly of a place and time: the middle of America, and
the middle of the 20th century. This comes out in her manners but also in
her preoccupation with spirituality, and with a protective psychology that
can accommodate frailty and self-doubt.

Last fall she turned 50. Since 1991 she has lived on a well-tended stretch
of a well-traveled thoroughfare in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver,
five minutes from her mother (who still lives in the house where Ms. Reeves
grew up) and not too much farther from her sister. She was home recently
only for a brief stop between tours, but as friends and relatives came in
and out of the kitchen through the afternoon, she seemed rooted.

Born in Detroit, she moved to Denver with her mother and her sister at the
age of 2, after the death of her father. Her grandmother, Denverada Howard,
was born in Denver in 1896 and named after the city, and her grandmother¹s
father was a founding member of the oldest black church here, Shorter
Community A.M.E. church in East Denver.

Ms. Reeves belonged to that church but also went to Roman Catholic school
with daily Mass and attended a Baptist church on Sunday. ³For us as kids,²
she said, ³we had the feeling that there was nothing we couldn¹t do or deal
with, because we believed in God and we believed that God would make a way.²

A test came during the first school busing experiments in Denver, when Ms.
Reeves was sent down the same road she now lives on, far into South Denver,
to a white junior high school. It was a tense period: Parents of the white
children wanted the black children out, and there were racist editorials in
the local paper. In retaliation the school¹s black, Texan music teacher
organized a revue that combined the poetry of Langston Hughes and songs like
³Blowin¹ in the Wind,² ³He Ain¹t Heavy, He¹s My Brother² and ³Joy, Joy² by
the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

³It was a powerful thing, and it served to bring people together,² she said.
³It really changed my life. I really understood that I wanted to sing songs
that meant something to me.²

Asked to listen to and comment on some music of her choosing, Ms. Reeves put
forward Aretha Franklin first. ³Amazing Grace,² Ms. Franklin¹s live gospel
album, released in 1972, was a record that hit Ms. Reeves hard in high
school; at the time she was singing Franklin hits with a group of friends
who called themselves the Mellow Moods.

³Every time one of her new songs came out, you¹d learn it,² she said. ³But
when this came out, it was, like, ahhh. On the album cover she had her hair
all tied up, and she had African attire on, sitting in front of the church.²

On ³Mary Don¹t You Weep,² Ms. Franklin at first sounds serene ‹ ³We¹re going
to review the story of the two sisters, Mary and Martha,² she begins ‹ and
then the choir starts applying pressure over a slow tempo, making its
refrain eerily quiet, occasionally bursting out to high volume.

³Listen to the backgrounds,² Ms. Reeves said, and she started banging her
hand on the table to the one-two-three of the chorus¹s clapping. Ms.
Franklin enters into a complex series of actions with the band and the
choir, half rehearsed, half spontaneous. She invokes Lazarus three times;
the third time she hollers, and the choir goes off like a siren.

³It¹s the spirit,² Ms. Reeves said. ³It¹s what she knew about. For the
people in the congregation it¹s a statement of faith and belief. But it¹s
also that whole thing of ŒLet¹s gather around, and I¹m going to tell you
this amazing story.¹ ²

This is gospel music straight up and down, though. Listening to Ms.
Franklin¹s phrasing and the pacing of her emotional involvement, does Ms.
Reeves get lessons that she can apply to, say, ³How High the Moon²?

³Oh, absolutely,² she said. ³It¹s timing. It¹s that thing that just makes
your spirit rise ‹ that ability to really savor words and savor a story.²

Ms. Reeves likes talking about music that isn¹t specific to one generation.
³The majority of the stuff I listened to, my parents listened to ‹ until I
started listening to Parliament-Funkadelic,² she said.

She next chose a track from the 1964 recording ³Sam Cooke at the Copa,²
another taste she shared with her mother and stepfather. It was the medley
of ³Try a Little Tenderness,² ³(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons² and
³You Send Me,² and it was as much vamping as song playing. As with the
Aretha Franklin record, Cooke constantly turns to talking-through-singing to
engage his audience through transitions. This was a trick Ms. Reeves learned
early on, as a performer in high school, especially with her uncle, a
bassist with the Denver Symphony who played jazz at his Unitarian Church,
and in club dates with the pianist Gene Harris, who moved to Denver when she
was a high school junior. She hated the spaces between songs, and she needed
to figure out what to do about them.

At first Cooke sounds as if he¹s stalling: ³Oh I never, never/I never,
never, never, never, never treat you wrong darling,² he sings.

He frames these vamps as meta-songs: He¹s singing them to the men in the
audience, he says, because men ³have a tendency to neglect the ladies.² And
as he sings he puts the lyrics in quotation marks, recasting them as
mollifying speeches men can deliver to their women. He improvises through
the vamping, and he cues the band when he¹s ready to enter the song. ³And
also, you have to tell her, ŒDarling, you send me,¹ ² he sings,
conversationally. ³ ŒI wouldn¹t tell you if I didn¹t mean it¹ ‹ that works,²
he jokes. ³ ŒYou thrill me, honest you do.¹ ²

Why is that performance such an ideal for Ms. Reeves? It could be considered
Cooke just doing business, running through teasers on the way to a surer
set-piece. ³Because he¹s standing right on the edge,² she answered. ³He¹s
thinking, he¹s forming the words in his mouth. I can tell, because I¹ve been
there.²

There were other reasons too. ³He¹s so classy. Yeah, that whole idea was you
go out onstage and you entertain. You don¹t bring that other craziness. You
bring your joy, and you tell them stories.²

³And he¹s communicating to the band vocally when to start each song,² she
added. We went back to a few moments just before the band begins ³Try a
Little Tenderness.² ³He just cued them,² she said, then pointed out another
critical moment, just before ³You Send Me,² where some flutes create a kind
of path to the song¹s entry.

How do we know that in some cases the band isn¹t cueing him? ³Well, in that
last case ‹ maybe, I don¹t know,² she said. ³You¹d have to see it. But
that¹s all part of gospel singing, cueing. And I really think he was in
control.²

On the outside Ms. Reeves would seem to have little in common with Shirley
Horn, who loved slow tempos and nearly whispered her songs. Ms. Reeves chose
to listen to ³Here¹s to Life,² from Horn¹s 1992 record of the same name.
Horn was a passionate singer, but tough and concise, with a kind of Bogart
sibilance. She played piano as well, using those harmonies as an extension
of her voice. As we listened, Ms. Reeves copied the tiniest details of the
vocal performance: the little ³mm² added to the end of the line ³so give it
all you got² in the first verse; the tiny, sharp intake of breath after the
line ³and all that¹s good get better,² toward the end.

³If you broke it down, you could say it was her phrasing,² Ms. Reeves said.
³But it¹s beyond phrasing. It¹s breathing life into an inanimate object. The
first time she says, ŒHere¹s to love,¹ she pulls back. She makes it very
tender and simple. The second time she says, ŒHere¹s to love,¹ the Œlove¹ is
bigger. She has this picture into something. Shirley does that. Nina Simone
does that. Carmen McRae does that. If they say Œlove¹ in a certain way, they
can mean it sarcastically, or like they¹re passionately in love with you,
and you¹ll understand it.

³When you listen to her you start to understand what the voice is,² she
continued. ³When I¹m working with students, I ask them, putting a Œgreat
voice¹ at the bottom of the list, what do you think makes a great singer?
It¹s obvious with her, and with Aretha, that it¹s your spirit.²