© -Steven
Cerra , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“She was never a conventional
standards singer, indicating her individuality and occasionally her
disaffection in subtle ironies, almost subliminal variations and, even more
occasionally, hot blasts of fury. Like John Coltrane and Billie Holiday, she
was both respectful of her material and inclined to manipulate it without mercy
or apology.”
- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The
Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
I once asked the
late, Chuck Niles, a revered, long-time Jazz disc jockey on the Los Angeles FM
airwaves, how he approached programming his radio show.
Chuck replied:
“It’s simple really. Each hour I try to include something old, something new
and something sung by either a vocal group or a vocalist.”
He went on to say,
“Lately, I seem to be playing a lot of stuff by Abbey Lincoln.”
When I asked him
why, he explained: “I missed her the first time around.”
For the most part, I did, too.
If Abbey hadn't been married to Max Roach for much of the 1960's, I might have missed her completely.
Max has always
been a drummer that I idolized so I pretty much caught everything her recorded;
Abbey sang on Max’s 1960 Freedom
Now Suite [Oscar Brown wrote the
lyrics] and that was my introduction to her. The date and the album title may
bring to mind more about the social history of this period.
Over the years, I've caught a few other things by Abbey, but in thinking of Chuck Niles’
reference to Abbey, I realize that I really didn't know much about her music.
Richard Cook’s and
Brian Morton’s The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed. is always a
good place to start and so it was that the following annotations about Abbey Lincoln and her recordings helped make a “new beginning” for me in terms of an
appreciation of her music.
“Abbey Lincoln worked
as a singer in California Europe in the 1980’s led to a new and successful
contract with Verve. Now a matriarchal influence on a younger generation of
female vocalists. …
She was never a
conventional standards singer, indicating her individuality and occasionally
her disaffection in subtle ironies, almost subliminal variations and, even more
occasionally, hot blasts of fury. Like John Coltrane and Billie Holiday, she
was both respectful of her material and inclined to manipulate it without mercy
or apology. …
There has been a
tension throughout Lincoln's years with Verve between letting her build a band
of young, responsive players who can be molded to her idiosyncratic vision, and
surrounding her with established stars on the label's roster. The 1994 album [A
Turtle’s Dream Verve Gitanes 527382] is an almost perfect illustration
of the point. One of the joys of the record, as with some of its predecessors,
is flicking through and identifying one dream line-up after another - Metheny
and house pianist Kendrick, or Metheny and Barron with Haden and Lewis - only
to find that the saxophone solo you've just swooned to on 'A Turtle's Dream' or
'Not To Worry' is by the relatively unknown Lourau.
Like Betty Carter,
Lincoln
The voice is now
so confidently intimate, so easily conversational, that it becomes difficult to
think of Lincoln
Another excellent
source for information on Abbey’s uniqueness in the world of vocal Jazz is to
be found in the essay entitled Abbey Lincoln
Here are a few
excerpts from Gary
“The reemergence
in the early '90s of Abbey Lincoln as a queenly jazz singer and the simultaneous
rediscovery of the long retired Doris Day prompted my thoughts about parallels
and distinctions between them. In 1991, each was the subject of documentary
films: Gene Davis's You Gotta Pay the Band: The Words, the Music, the Life of Abbey Lincoln Lincoln
“Lincoln
“Lincoln
Abbey sings “I
Concentrate on You” in the following video with Tommy Turrentine on trumpet,
Julian Priester on trombone, Stanley Turrentine on tenor saxophone, Ray Bryant
on piano, Bob Boswell on bass and Max Roach on drums.
