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Abbey Lincoln: Over the Years
by Mathew Bahl
Abbey Lincoln's career has always been one marked by constant growth and self-discovery. Over the course of her first five albums, beginning with 1956's Abbey Lincoln's Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love and ending with 1961's Straight Ahead, she transformed herself from a conventional pop singer into an intensely dramatic jazz singer. However, Ms. Lincoln soon found herself caught up in the profound social and musical changes that swept America in the 1960s. She spent the next three ...
read moreAbbey Lincoln: Over the Years
by Dave Nathan
During the 1960's Abbey Lincoln successfully combined political activism with a busy, successful career. After divorcing husband drummer Max Roach, the 1970's and 1980's found her relegated to the back burner of the entertainment world although she was still recording, mostly for Indie labels. Then came Stan Getz who recommended her to Verve Records and who played on Lincoln's so-called “comeback album", the successful You Gotta Pay the Band. Since then, she has been restored to her rightful place as ...
read moreAbbey Lincoln: Wholly Earth
by Jim Santella
Swaying gently and confidently, singer Abbey Lincoln possesses a voice and singing style like no other. When she’s hanging behind the beat, gently rasping heartfelt expression, or sliding around the pitch, the singer is in complete control of her performance and is offering it in her own sweet way. Bobby Hutcherson joins Lincoln on this latest project, bringing in the vibraphone for a traditional mainstream jazz feeling and opting for marimba when a mellower touch is required. She can shock ...
read moreAbbey Lincoln: Who Used To Dance
by Jim Santella
Abbey Lincoln is different. Although strongly influenced by Billie Holiday's dramatic feel for and presentation of a song's message, and embedded in bebop through her eight-year marriage to drummer Max Roach, the singer maintains her own distinctive manner of delivering a lyric. Seven of the nine tracks on Who Used To Dance are ballads that serve to demonstrate the graininess in Lincoln's voice, the long, tied-together whole note phrases, and the carefully articulated words; these are some of the characteristics ...
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