Sarah Vaughan's Birthday Is Today

The extraordinary jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990), known as "The Divine One," was born on this day. Vaughan, a native of Newark, New Jersey, where there is a street named for her, would have celebrated her 101st birthday.

A Jazz Portrait: Nina Simone

Nina Simone (1933-2003), born Eunice Kathleen Waymon. She was called by her admirers the High Priestess of Soul. Her many talents included singer, pianist, and songwriter ("Mississippi Goddam"). Simone was also a noted civil rights activist. This portrait of Simone is by Armando Alleyne (born in November 1959), an artist who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The Divine Sarah

Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan by Elaine M. Hayes (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017) is a true page-turner. One memorable scene is the one in which Sarah Vaughan and her bandmates were touring the South in the band's bus in, I think, the 1950s. A vehicle rode alongside the bus and one of its occupants started shooting at it. Everyone quickly ducked for cover. Miraculously no one was hit. One of the perils of being black Down South at that time.

A Desert Island Disc

This Al Jarreau album, Breakin' Away, released in 1981, is one of the jazz albums I would want to have with me if I were stuck on a desert island. (My favorite song on the album is "Roof Garden," a foot-tapping number.)

As you can see, Jarreau, who died in 2017, unlike many men, was not afraid to be seen wearing pink, especially on an album cover.
 

Let's Hope For An Al Jarreau Biography

I recently joined a Facebook group devoted to the jazz singer Al Jarreau, who died in 2017. It's called the Al Jarreau Family Group and has more than 32,000 members who post comments, photos, album cover art, videos, and anything else that's Al Jarreau-related.

I began listening to Jarreau in the mid-seventies when I bought his album Glow, which, according to Wikipedia, was his second album. It was released in 1976. I believe I bought the album at a Discomat chain store in the Times Square area. From that point on, I became an Al Jarreau fan.

Because there are so many people who cherish his singing talent, I posted on the site a question: "Does anyone know if there is a biography of Al Jarreau in the works? Or maybe a scrapbook publication or a special magazine issue about him?"

A day later, Shannon West, who publishes a website called jazzseries.com/wordpress, responded: "The posts he did over the years when he was doing the diary/journal/blog narrative on his website gave such wonderful insight into what he was doing at the time--traveling, recording, touring, etc.--and he writes narrative as expressively as he writes songs. I wish they could dig up the archives and compile them....Nobody could write Al better than Al so my vote is to edit and release the 15 years or so of archival posts."

I think that would be a wonderful idea including photos, song lyrics, diary entries, correspondence, etc. That could all be part of a special collectors issue magazine. On the cover could be photographer Richard Avedon's black-and-white photo of Jarreau from the front cover of his 1980 album This Time. I bet the issue would sell out immediately and require several reprintings.

A Singer Who Can "Sang"

In Curtis Davenport's review of a debut album called Home by jazz singer Shirley Crabbe (Jazz Inside magazine, May 2012), he stated enthusiastically that "the lady can sang!"

He went on to explain the qualities of such a singer. "Those who can 'sang,' cause a smile to come to your face and occasional goosebumps when they vocalize."

"[T]hose who can 'sang,'" he continued, "aren't necessarily those who employ the type of amateurish vocal histrionics often heard on 'American Idol' or 'The Voice,' instead they are those who have a good voice, an understanding of the meaning of their lyric and an ability to interpret that lyric in a way that makes you feel the song they are singing."

This explains why I am such a big fan of the late singer Carmen McRae (1922-1994) and why I hope to obtain every album she ever recorded. She also could "sang."

After reading Curtis Davenport's review, I am now interested in hearing Ms. Crabbe's vocal skills.

And although the review was published six years ago, the comments are still relevant and timeless.

R.I.P. Natalie Cole

I own two CDs by the recently deceased Natalie Cole (1950-2015). My favorite of the two is Ask a Woman Who Knows (Verve). This CD would be among my desert island discs, those recordings I would want to bring with me if I was stranded on a desert island.

It is one of the few CDs I own that I would play from beginning to end because all 13 tracks are gems. The songs I particularly like are "So Many Stars," "The Music That Makes Me Dance," "Soon," "Tell Me All About It,"and "My Baby Just Cares for Me," which is on the final track. Her performance of this particular song is a real showstopper.

Now she has joined her father, Nat King Cole, in Heaven to perform eternal duets.

The Fabulous Carmen McRae

Carmen McRae (1922?-1994) really knew how to breathe life into a song. On her recording of George and Ira Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On?," there is this wonderful lyric: "What a kick/how I buzz/boy you click like no one does." When she gets to the word "buzz" she stretches it out like the sound of a honeybee in flight--"buzzzzzz." Carmen McRae, what an artist!