I was thinking that it was time for some ‘vocalese’ – that somewhat minority-appeal genre of jazz invented either by Leo Watson, King Pleasure or Eddie Jefferson or all three, whereby a jazz singer transforms a solo, often a sax solo, into a song by adding lyrics that usually sound improvised. Personally, I love it, but I remember giving my father a cassette recording of a double LP by Eddie Jefferson and he was bemused by the results. Like Lee Morgan incidentally, Eddie Jefferson was shot and killed (at age 60) when leaving a gig in the early hours of the morning. His assassin was said to have been a disgruntled dancer whom the singer once fired, but he was acquitted, so we have to believe in this day and age that it wasn’t him. Pointe finale.
Anyway… I was checking out live performances of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, the vocal trio par excellence who popularised vocalese around the end of the 1950s and early ‘60s following the success of their Sing a Song of Basie album, paving the way in the process for Manhattan Transfer (a guilty pleasure of mine). But I couldn’t find what I was looking for. The swinging eight-minute version of Sonny Rollins’ ‘Airegin’ (Nigeria backwards) boasted some fabulous scat-singing by Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert, but not by Annie Ross, and it all went on a little too long.
However… I keyed in Kurt Elling, one of the greatest contemporary male jazz singers, who never shied away from a bit of scatting or vocalese (witness, for example, his transformation of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Night Dreamer’ – and if you can overlook the dodgy mullet and the long flowing shirt, I would highly recommend this Newport performance). At which point, I should thank a guy named Chas from around here who lent me three early Kurt Elling albums when I was sweltering in a caravan during the heat wave of 2003, thus introducing me to the singer and his works while helping to alleviate my temporary domestic misery.
So anyway… I stumbled upon Elling’s performance of ‘Take Five’ in the company of Al Jarreau, a timely reminder that some of the latter’s rather hackneyed post-disco output shouldn’t obscure the fact that he had both a terrific voice and the ability to swing when singing jazz. Together they manage to transform into something errr quite remarkable Paul Desmond’s jazz standard. With its unusual 5/4 time signature, that infectious piano refrain, the airy tone of Desmond’s alto sax and Joe Morello’s elegant and educated drum solo, it vies with the likes of Miles Davis’ ‘So What’, John Coltrane’s ‘Impressions’ and Herbie Hancock’s ‘Maiden Voyage’ as the most instantly recognisable number of that epoch. I have heard so many versions of it in my time – from Tito Puente’s blistering version to the Sachal Studio Orchestra’s extraordinary sub-continental variation on a theme – but this one really stopped me in my tracks.
What seems so remarkable about it is the way that two masters of their craft feed off each other, in the process creating something that’s intricate and highly textured while feeling totally spontaneous. Did they rehearse this in some way? I find it hard to believe, yet if they did they convey a remarkable feeling of it all being right off the cuff. It’s surely as hard to fake that as it is to simulate the sheer joy they seem to experience in each other’s company. Their voices are as complementary as Roland Kirk’s holy trinity of stritch, manzello and tenor sax, with Elling’s slightly Sinatra-like timbre hovering over the proceedings like a kestrel on the lookout for prey. Whether trading rhythmic motifs or singing the lyrics, presumably those of Al Jarreau from his 1970s pomp, the two of them seem made for each other. As for the band, I know notheeng, but the gentleman who emerges at the end does look a little like that soulful pianist, Ramsey Lewis, whose name is mentioned in the comments.
Time marches on of course and Kurt Elling is now one of the elder statesmen of vocal jazz, while the ‘acrobat of scat’, as Al Jarreau has been called, is now six feet under, dying in 2017 mere days after announcing his retirement – which suggests that it’s not a viable thing for lifelong entertainers to attempt. He left a fair old legacy, some of it like 1977’s Look To The Rainbow still as fresh as the day it was made, some of it that hasn’t worn too well over time; while Kurt Elling continues to compile his own. Their backgrounds weren’t unrecognisably different: the son of a preacher man and a mother who played piano in church, Jarreau sang with the Indigos, no doubt a doo-wop group, in the early ‘60s before singing with a piano trio led by George Duke and going professional at the end of the decade; while Elling was the son of a Lutheran choir master and grew up singing in choirs before developing his interest in jazz in general while at college and vocalese specifically courtesy of another male jazz singer whose vocal timbre is not that dissimilar, Mark Murphy. He sent a cassette demo to Blue Note – and got the gig! Fortune favours the brave.
Those overlapping influences gelled in these four minutes of sheer bravura. ‘Amazing’ is, as an observer comments, one of the most over-employed words in the English language – on a par these days with ‘massive’ and ‘awesome’ – but this performance of a tricky jazz standard is dazzling, delightful and truly amazing.
