"Eddie Henderson came up with the idea of putting lyrics to other people's jazz solos, and Jon Hendricks perfected it," Elling explains. "Mark Murphy turned to the poetry of the Beat writers and used that concept as a launching pad." Elling adds his "poetry on the fly" creating lyrics for jazz solos, into the kettle and takes the form even further into the realm of improvisation. "I feel strongly about one thing," Elling continues. "Singers need to take a quantum leap forward if they're ever going to catch up to what the instrumentalists are doing."

Kurt Elling was born on November 2, 1967. He began singing in church at a young age and studied the violin and French horn. He studied history and religion at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN. "A friend of mine down the hall was a big jazz fan, and he started hipping me to Dexter Gordon, Dave Brubeck and Herbie Hancock," Elling remembers. "It seemed like a natural thing to start singing that music. I turned to Ella [Fitzgerald] right away because she was really swinging and because with her scat-singing, she went beyond the usual boring pattern of singer/horn solo/singer." Elling began sitting in with a student combo and joined the college's jazz orchestra.

Upon graduation, he returned to his hometown as a graduate student at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. His plan was to train as a philosopher and ethicist in order to become a professor of religion. "I know now that what I really wanted was to be a very well-read and philosophical poet," Elling reveals. "Unfortunately, they don't teach courses in that!" His lack of interest in his academics forced him to spend three years trying to complete the one-year master's program. He is still one language credit shy of his degree.

As his interest in academics decline, so his musical activities increased, and the early nineties saw Elling paying his dues gigging around Chicago. He eventually became a fixture at the Green Mill's Monday night jam sessions led by saxist Ed Peterson, who offered Elling a little friendly advice. "Ed told me, 'I dig what you're doing, the scat stuff is cool, but when it comes to improvising, I’m still heavier than you. There are a lot of guys heavier than you, and every musician out there can tell that's not your strength. But when you make up your own lyrics when you're singing, THAT'S cool! That's your thing."

Elling took the advice to heart and began develop this aspect of his vocal art more rigorously. He gravitated toward Laurence Hobgood, the pianist in Peterson's band. Hobgood's innate musicality, his willingness to teach and explain, made him a perfect complement to Elling's raw exuberance. Hobgood then introduced the singer to his partners in Trio New, bassist Eric Hochberg and drummer Paul Wertico (of Pat Metheny's group), and the trio became Elling's regular accompaniment.

When the singer was ready to record a demo tape, co-producer Hobgood did much to shape the project and funnel Elling's ideas. "We started to work on some ideas that developed as we performed together," explains Elling. Good fortune was about to flood his way. Some friends lent him money to go into the studio, and Elling's first album was cut. He sent the tape to a friend's manager, simply to get some input, but the manager wanted to represent him instead. The manager began shopping the tape around to various record labels. One day Elling picked up the phone to find Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall raving at him from the other end,

"He had just read an article about me in the Chicago Tribune a few days earlier," Elling remembers. "So now he gets this tape, and the name is fresh in his mind. He pops it in on the way to his dentist, and three days later calls me from his car phone and says he wants to sign me."

Sign him he did, and Elling's recording debut Close Your Eyes was released on Blue Note several months later, in the spring of 1995. "We did everything hear in Chicago," Elling says proudly. "Blue Note bought the album we made here: they changed nothing, not the concept, not the players."

The album recorded by Chicagoans was good enough to garner the singer critical raves, dates at Carnegie Hall and all the major jazz festivals, and in 1996, a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal. The rest of 1996 was equally eventful. He married his true love Jennifer, gigged everywhere from New York to Tel Aviv and recorded his follow-up, The Messenger. The vocal powerhouse even camped out for a month in Los Angeles, hitting all the clubs he could and spreading his jazz message.

In 1997, The Messenger earned Elling his second Grammy nomination. That spring, Elling settled into New York for a month-long trek through the clubs of the jazz capital and took the east coast by storm. Afterward, he headed into the studio with Hobgood, this time joined bassist Rob Amster and drummer Michael Raynor, with special guests drummer and associate producer Paul Wertico, guitarist Dave Onderdonk, soprano saxist Brad Wheeler and Chicago legends tenorman Eddie Johnson and fiddler Johnny Frigo.

The result was This Time It's Love where Elling takes on a new set of tunes and reinvents some old favorites. On this album, fans of Elling will get the benefit of material well rehearsed. "All of these tunes, except for two, I've performed live. I never performed 'I Feel So Smoochie' and 'A Time For Love.' However, 'My Foolish Heart' has opened my show for two years. Recording this music now is a natural step for me." Elling's approach is a variation on time-tested methods. "One of the things that you do is show people your ideas as a player and relate that to what they already understand. It's like a rerouting. When you hear Jon Hendricks do 'Freddie Freeloader,' it's like hearing it for the first time, hearing with a singer in a whole new way. 'Freddie's Yen for Jen' is a new vocalese on Freddie Hubbard's 'Delphia,' from his great record Red Clay. On 'She's Funny That Way,' I kept the original verse but the chorus is a vocalese to a Lester Young line." With this attitude, this approach and this music, Elling demonstrates why he is the hottest singer in jazz.