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Why René Marie Can't Keep from Singing
by Mathew Bahl
"I don't like being bored while I'm singing," laughs René Marie. The Virginia-based vocalist and MAXJAZZ recording artist is explaining why she sings jazz. “You don't know what somebody's going to say, musically, or what somebody's going to do. If you go to a rock concert or pop, they want to hear the ...
Ella Fitzgerald
by Mathew Bahl
This article was first published in June 2004. Considered by many to be the 20th century's greatest female singer of jazz and American popular song, Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) is one of the few singers whose work transcends generations and musical genres. Fortunately, over the course of a career that spanned six decades, “The First ...
Vocal Jazz: 1969-2001
by Mathew Bahl
The Dark Age followed by the Renaissance. The tumultuous changes of the 1960s radically changed the American musical landscape. Jazz fell off the American cultural radar, nightclubs closed their doors and record companies moved on to rock. With few opportunities to work and little money to be made, jazz became a music played by ...
Vocal Jazz: 1917-1950
by Mathew Bahl
There have been as many variations on the definition of vocal jazz as there have been people with opinions. Over the years, the consensus within the jazz community has shifted frequently as critics and fans have wrestled with the often-competing imperatives of improvisation and interpretation. For some people, vocal jazz should be exactly that -voices improvising ...
Vocal Jazz: 1951-1968
by Mathew Bahl
These 17 years play out like the vocal jazz equivalent of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Much of the core body of work that makes up vocal jazz was recorded during this relatively short time span. These were the years that saw some of the greatest jazz singers working at the peak of ...
Remembering Etta Jones
by Mathew Bahl
There always seemed to be something indestructible about Etta Jones. You could hear it best on up-tempo tunes when she would swing with a joyful abandon and an almost godlike authority. But even when she sang the most tragic and heart wrenching of ballads--and she sang more than her share of tragic, heart wrenching ballads--Jones conveyed ...
Truth, Tradition & Karrin Allyson
by Mathew Bahl
Honesty...“That's the goal," explains jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson. “I think it's important to be honest when you're singing and playing and not to sound like someone else. We all have influences and people we love, but we are own people."Nearly every aspiring jazz singer talks about finding his or her unique voice. ...
Diana Krall: Cool Jazz on a Hot Florida Night
by Mathew Bahl
Jazz critics have a tendency to recycle the same ideas over and over again regardless of whether any actual evidence exists to support their position. A favorite punching bag for decades has been the jazz artist “selling out" by leaving jazz to become “commercial." When Diana Krall's CDs began camping out at the top of the ...
Ann Hampton Callaway: Signature
by Mathew Bahl
The gap between Barbra Streisand and Ella Fitzgerald is wide, a fact that Ann Hampton Callaway has no doubt discovered. Ms. Callaway began her career in the early 1980s as a rich-voiced, highly musical cabaret singer with a preference for intensely dramatic ballads. In the mid-90s, she changed directions and embraced vocal jazz. Although some of ...
Ramsey Lewis and Nancy Wilson: Meant To Be
by Mathew Bahl
The careers of singer Nancy Wilson and pianist Ramsey Lewis have followed parallel lines since the early 1960s. Although both began as jazz artists, they soon found greater fame and fortune in contemporary pop and have rarely looked back since. In 1982, Mr. Lewis and Ms. Wilson teamed up for a vapid, forgettable collection of smooth ...
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