Don't look now, but jazz singing has quietly become the new Easy Listening. And boy is it big business. At a time when jazz instrumentalists are lucky to see sales in the low five figures, Diana Krall's last three studio albums have all been million-sellers, certified platinum in the U.S. Then there's newcomer Norah Jones, who is widely expected to sweep the Grammy Awards this Sunday, and has so far sold more than four million copies of her debut, Come Away with Me. Last month, the album shouldered aside Eminem and Shania Twain to spend several weeks atop the Billboard charts.
Jazz singing has gotten so hot that even pop vocalists want a piece of the action. Aging rocker Rod Stewart snuck back onto the charts last year with a collection of standards called The Great American Songbook, and wound up with his biggest hit in years, while k. d. lang's latest release was an album of duets with jazz crooner Tony Bennett, called Wonderful World.
With a host of others - Jane Monheit, Cassandra Wilson, John Pizzarelli, Jaqui Naylor, Eliane Elias - queuing up to join the gold rush, it would seem that there has never been a better time to be a scat singer. Yet funnily enough, what these best-selling jazz singers deliver has little to do with jazz, beyond a walking bass and an occasional piano solo.
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