[Dixielandjazz] An Evening With Lensa Horne

[Don Ingle]

Steve Barbone wrote:it I used to have some 78's in my teen years of the 
Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street with Hank Lavine's jazz band 
and on one side I recall was Lena singing -- she was at that time and in 
performance every bit the jazz singer.  There were also several sides 
with Dinah Shore singing and she could belt out a J.C. Handy blues tune 
well enough to qualify as a jazz singer. Unfortunately, singers twend to 
be guided by A&R types into doing commercially drab material and lose 
the inner spirit of the jazz "feel" in their work. Good examples were 
Kay Starr, Rosemary Clooney, and others who became far mre noted for 
their pop pap than their jazz vocalizing. But some, like Clooney, came 
back to it later in their life and career and we got a new and fresh 
reason to listen to them.
Lena Horne -- I might add, had a direct link to classic jazz. She 
married a piano man who had worked and recorded with Beiderbecke, Lenny 
Haiden ((sp?) who was also a great studio arranger and conductor. I had 
a chance to hear her live in L.A. once at a Hollywood Bowl special, and 
when  she turned those flashing, direct eyes on you, even at a distance, 
the song, "Jeeper Creepers, where's you get  those peepers" came to 
mind. There was fire and sparks burning within when she sang that came 
through, and that is an element of most great jazz perfomance.
Hell yes, she's a jazz singer.
Don Ingle