Jazz Singing Since the 1940s

Abstract

Abstract Singing is the key area in which jazz interacts with the bigger, broader world of popular culture just beyond its boundaries. Although not a hyphenated term, jazz singing is in fact a hyphenated concept. In its narrowest definition, the phrase refers only to vocalists who do exactly what musicians do: improvise choruses of wordless melody on top of chord changes. At its broadest, the term stretches to the furthest reaches of classic American pop. This was particularly true in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when the swing era was so embedded in the collective mindset that even pop stars like Perry Como and Dinah Shore recorded credible jazz performances. Similarly, without exception, all of the major figures of jazz singing, from Louis Armstrong to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, and Mel Torme, also have at least one foot in pop. Even Betty Carter, who was as “pure” a jazz singer as it’s possible to be, had a firm footing in standard song form and the popular repertory. For most of his career, the late Johnny Hartman worked with jazz musicians and in jazz clubs but insisted that he was not a “jazz singer”; “I’m an all-around singer,” he would say. He thought that the jazz classification pigeonholed and therefore limited him.