The History of Jazz (84 page)

Shipp was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1960, and though jazz was heard frequently at his home—his mother had known that other great Wilmington musician, Clifford Brown—he also played in rock bands during high school and listened to artists such as Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire. This wide mix of early influences has been occasionally reflected in Shipp’s own eclectic approach to bandleading, which has found him sometimes drawing on hip-hop elements, synthesized sounds, loops, and other electronic effects, but also achieving equal success in all-acoustic settings. Certainly no one would mistake Shipp for a crossover or fusion artist, and he looks to music outside of the mainstream jazz tradition not so much for its commercial aspects but rather as part of his search for new sound colors he can incorporate into his uncompromising personal vision of jazz. Here, a ruthless domination of the music somehow coexists with the artist’s analytical and almost architectonic mindset, and the unresolved tension between these two approaches is perhaps the most alluring aspect of Shipp’s work. Listening to his music, one is reminded of those hard-nosed doctors who can cure the patient, but only by enforcing the most brutal regimen.

Yet this new earnestness in the postmillennial jazz scene is even more marked among the vocalists. The three most commercially successful singers of jazz-oriented material during the opening years of the new century have been Norah Jones, Diana Krall, and the late Eva Cassidy. Yet their vocal work is so cleansed of the skippetyippety-doo pyrotechnics of the previous generation, so introspective and austere, that some critics would contend that they aren’t real jazz singers at all. A tempting verdict—except that the history of jazz teaches us that attempts to exclude whole groups of performers by the application of narrow definitions are usually a sign that something important is underway in the art form. Certainly a different aesthetic sensibility is rising to the fore here. These three singers each operate at a subtle, microtonal level, creating hushed emotional effects through nuances of phrasing and a psychologically attuned performance style that is a world apart from the extroverted stylings of the past.

Diana Krall, born in British Columbia in 1964, is an adroit pianist as well as a star singer, and her early recordings often reminded listeners of another singing pianist, Nat King Cole. As her work evolved, Krall found her sweet spot in moody ballads and gentle bossa novas, and though she drew her repertoire from the most familiar standards, songs that jazz fans have heard countless times, this artist made them feel as raw as a fresh wound. Krall is at her best when she is most emotionally exposed, and few jazz singers are more skilled at turning the old tunes into plausible modern-day testimonies. Sometimes she brings down the tempo below forty beats per minute, a pace at which most vocalists would require a lifeline from the rhythm section to survive from bar to bar, but for Krall these slo-mo renditions give her access to new dimensions of these songs, aspects of George Gershwin or Cole Porter that are both true to the original impetus of the composition at hand yet also so new that it seems as if Krall is singing about a heartache that happened earlier today. Her talent made her a celebrated jazz diva—and her marriage to Elvis Costello boosted her fame further to a paparazzi level of notoriety—yet Krall’s popularity is less due to these trappings of grandeur than to a confessional tone to her music that, if anything, lessens the distance between the vocalist and her listeners.

Even Krall’s impressive record sales have failed to match the spectacular levels achieved by Norah Jones, whose 2002 debut album
Come Away with Me
sold a staggering twenty-five million copies. For a time, the fan fever for this music, and especially for the hit single “Don’t Know Why,” ran so high that her album accounted for more than half of the jazz compact discs sold in many retail outlets. Many critics and insiders, uneasy at this disproportionate success compared with
everything else in the art form
, tried to disavow any affiliation between jazz and Norah Jones. But one need merely hear her version of “Nearness of You” on this release, or her acute phrasing on the original compositions that have been her most popular numbers, to realize that Jones is not just one of the biggest-selling artists of her day but also one of the most talented. As with Krall, much of the “action” here could be missed by a fan not sensitive to the subtle microtonal shifts in the melody line that create the potent overall effect. With Jones it is tempting to link this skill to her father, Ravi Shankar, who was a master of the same types of effects on the sitar. But Jones, who was born in Brooklyn in 1979 and raised in Texas, also incorporates a gentle country twang to her singing, and includes Willie Nelson, alongside Billie Holiday and Bill Evans, when listing mentors and influences. Jones’s greatest impact, however, may be less in the specifics of her interpretations than in her blending of the jazz vocal tradition with the ethos of the singer-songwriter, especially its emphasis on promoting new material and tone of intimate self-expression. In the aftermath of the success of
Come Away with Me
, a host of new young jazz singers with original songs arrived at the doors of record labels. Much of this music proved ephemeral and undistinguished, but this collective decision by singers and industry execs to move beyond the repetition of Tin Pan Alley favorites and consider a broad range of contemporary attitudes has to be a healthy development for the art form.

Eva Cassidy’s situation is quite similar to Jones’s, both in her mastery of chiaroscuro shades of phrasing and in the jazz establishment’s reluctance to embrace her as one of its own. Fans have been unequivocal, however, in their advocacy of this singer, who tragically died from melanoma in 1996 at the age of thirty-three. She was little known during her lifetime, and her posthumous rise to fame ranks as one of the most unexpected and gratifying grassroots movements that the music world has witnessed in recent times. Cassidy thus has the rare distinction of ranking among the biggest-selling singers in a century she didn’t survive to see. If she had lived longer, Cassidy herself could have made clearer to what degree she should be considered a jazz singer. Yet her performances of “Autumn Leaves,” “Fields of Gold,” and “Over the Rainbow” suggest that, whatever label one chooses to apply to her work, Cassidy was one of the most emotionally astute interpretive vocalists of recent decades and very much aligned with the earnest tone that is increasingly on display in jazz clubs and on recordings.

It would be wrong to infer from these three prominent examples that all jazz singers have put their scat singing under lock and key and opted for moody ballads in the new millennium. Jamie Cullum struts and prances on the stage and does handstands on the piano when he is not delivering scintillating versions of both familiar old songs and clever new ones of his own invention. Kurt Elling has kept the bohemian spirit of the Beat Generation alive with his forceful onstage personality, spirited delivery, and smart arrangements of material—performances that are clearly rooted in the jazz tradition yet sound very vital and modern. Patricia Barber can sing the old tunes straight from the heart, deconstruct them like arcane literary texts, or write some of the most poetic and adventurous new songs of the current day. Her live recording in Paris starts with her singing: “Did you ever think a piano could fall on your head,” and one would have loved to watch the French audience try to do real-time translations of her outré lyrics. Her music defies easy categorization and is all the more worth hearing for its freedom from the conventional and prosaic. Roberta Gambarini and Jane Monheit, in contrast, are so deeply embedded in the tradition that one might think a time machine has transported them from the 1950s jazz scene and placed them smack dab in the middle of the current day. Yet when it comes to retro, they can hardly match Michael Bublé, Matt Dusk, Peter Cincotti, and Tony DeSare, who channel Frank Sinatra through Harry Connick—without much real jazz sensibility to their music, but with a Rat Pack stage presence that apparently taps into some subliminal desire among audiences to resurrect the glamour of days long gone and entertainers dearly departed.

The younger male singers on the scene could perhaps learn a thing or two from vocalist Bobby McFerrin, who has achieved sales few of them have any hopes of matching, yet has done so by breaking almost every rule of career management. While others of his generation looked to recreate earlier styles, McFerrin pursued
sui generis
projects, ranging from solo voice concerts to the mimicry of horn parts (hear his uncanny trumpet imitation on the soundtrack to the movie
‘Round Midnight
)—in addition to his many non-singing activities, which include conducting symphonic orchestras and furthering various music education endeavors. His intonation, range, and improvising skill drew rave notices from the start of his career, but his stage presence and willingness to defy expectations soon proved to be defining trademarks of his oeuvre, almost as much as his vocal pyrotechnics. McFerrin has surprised and at times irritated listeners—yet no doubt delighting others—with the unpredictable zigzags his career has taken. He achieved tremendous success with his 1988 reggae-inflected hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” although one suspects that few of the radio listeners who pushed it up the charts realized that it was one facet of an ambitious project in which all of the parts were overdubs of McFerrin’s voice. McFerrin evinced little interest in capitalizing on his growing renown after this crossover hit, choosing to take a sabbatical just at the moment when he could have packed concert halls and conquered the airwaves with follow-up tunes. His ensuing projects included an intriguing series of duet recordings, each provocative in its own way but hardly destined for the
Billboard
charts: with actor Jack Nicholson on narrative-and-voice versions of Rudyard Kipling stories; with cellist Yo-Yo Ma in renditions of classical pieces; and with Chick Corea in interpretations of familiar jazz material. His body of work, as it has developed, has maintained the highest standards of musicianship and creativity while avoiding allegiances to the passing fads and ideologies of jazz discourse. For this reason, he is often neglected in discussions of various trends and styles in the jazz world—when others jump on bandwagons, McFerrin is invariably missing in action. Yet his life-affirming humanism, his childlike curiosity about the possibilities of sound, and his refusal to be caught in the clichés of another era would be well worth emulating by later generations of jazz performers.

A host of other singers (some discussed elsewhere in this volume) are also creating strong, vibrant work in the new millennium—artists such as Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Luciana Souza, John Pizzarelli, Nnenna Freelon, Esperanza Spalding, Ian Shaw, Kevin Mahogany, Diane Schuur, Kate McGarry, Madeleine Peyroux, Gretchen Parlato, Karrin Allyson, Tierney Sutton, Sara Gazarek, and Julia Dollison—individuals who may not have matched the popularity and fan devotion of Krall or Jones or McFerrin, but have demonstrated artistry of the highest rank and are contributing to a jazz vocal scene that is much deeper and richer than most fans realize. The biggest challenge many of these performers face in furthering their careers perhaps comes from the obsessively image-driven approaches of the leading jazz record labels, who seem increasingly fixated on a singer’s glamour and looks rather than musical talent—a perspective that inevitably leads to a dilution of standards, a churning of rosters, and an unwillingness to support artists for the long run. These and many other vocalists have the requisite talent, but will the music industry provide them with the platform they need to reach their full potential?

Turning our attention to the state of jazz trumpet in the new millennium, we might be forgiven for seeing this instrument as the main upholder of time-honored traditions in the current environment. When we examined the careers of Wynton Marsalis, and other trumpeters from New Orleans such as Nicholas Payton and Terence Blanchard, we saw how these artists’ particular visions were informed by the heritage of their hometown, and that their aspirations for the future of jazz were often married to a celebration of music’s past. Yet this historically charged approach to the horn is not restricted to performers raised in Louisiana. Philadelphia-born Wallace Roney is a contemporary of Marsalis’s, but he is perhaps best known as an heir to the legacy of Miles Davis. This pigeonholing is not entirely fair: Roney’s work with Art Blakey, Chick Corea, Kenny Garrett, and others has shown that he is anything but a one-dimensional acolyte of Mr. Davis. Yet Roney’s close affiliation with Miles— capped by his stepping in to play Davis’s own parts side-by-side with the master at a historic concert at the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival shortly before Davis’s death—testifies to his close affiliation with this earlier body of work. As we will see in our look at European jazz scene, a number of trumpeters across that continent have found inspiration in the stylings of cool school icon Chet Baker, and there is similarly no shortage of younger players following in the fingerings of Freddie Hubbard, Don Cherry, Dizzy Gillespie, and other past masters of the jazz idiom. If jazz is becoming a museum, the trumpeters have proven to be the most fervent curators.

This return to the roots was controversial in the 1990s but is less so in the new millennium. In fact, the most striking fact about the jazz scene of post-2000 is the gradual lessening of tension between the combative camps that have long dominated the art form. In the 1940s, the battle was between bop and swing; in the 1950s it was East Coast versus West Coast; in the 1960s it was free versus tonal; in the 1970s it was fusion versus acoustic; and in the 1980s and 1990s the the progressives bickered with the new traditionalists. It seems that jazz players (but even more the fans and critics) have rarely been able to celebrate their own personal vision of the music without putting down some other contingent. This contentiousness didn’t disappear overnight when the calendar turned to a new century, but the overall trend has been unmistakable. Back in 1960, sociologist Daniel Bell stirred controversy by announcing the “end of ideology” in a famous essay—a prediction that proved to be premature, to say the least. Yet jazz musicians are now showing sociopolitical thinkers what this freedom from cant actually looks like.