Random A-List for Set: Jazz/Vocals

Jazz and popular (pre-rock) vocals.

Here are 12 A-list albums, selected at random from Set: Jazz/Vocals. Use your Reload button to get more.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams: It's the Talk of the Town and Other Sad Songs [1989, Hannibal]
In which 16 Netherlanders pay pomo tribute to near-tragic pop like "I Cover the Waterfront," "I Get Along Without You Very Well," and "A Cottage for Sale." About half the songs (the earliest from 1927, the latest from 1949) are new to me, and if I'd grown up with the originals, I might find the conceptual distancing a distortion, even a sacrilege. But at this late date it's their salvation. The four vocalists, who betray just enough accent to remind you where they're coming from, honor the era's well-enunciated conventions with care, and Roland Brunt's jazzy sax undercuts the violins without patting itself on the chops. If they were French they'd overdo the camp or the sincerity, but the Dutch have the mercantilist knack of respecting a culture for its natural resources. In fact, at this remove they probably understand it better than we do. A-

Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton: Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton [1997, Verve]
Our lesson for today concerns the persistence of culture. Or perhaps the inadequacy of the organic model in matters of style and genre. Or perhaps we should start with the relativity of age. At the time of recording, the session's driving force, trumpeter Payton, was 23. Its star, trumpeter-vocalist Cheatham (now deceased, and not a damn thing relative about that), was 91. One trombonist was barely 40, the other pushing 80. Clarinetist Jack Maheu--next to the trumpeters, the pacesetter here--was almost 70, the others in their fifties. Given his softer embouchure, Cheatham's solos are a little less forthright than Payton's, but both leaders are so immersed in New Orleans style that you rarely register the difference. As rendered here by tourist-circuit revivalists, working scholars, one original, and one pomo phenom, that style isn't dead, decadent, or ironically self-conscious, retaining its spry life and interactive unpredictability even though its revolutionary irreverence is lost to history. Payton keeps his song choices on the novelty side of Tin Pan Alley, where tastemongers are too good to travel unless Berlin or Mercer leads the way, and Cheatham, who only began singing professionally in his late fifties, breathes gentle humor into everything from "Stardust" and "I Gotta Right To Sing the Blues" to "Jada" and "Save It Pretty Mama." Somebody tell Neil Young about this. He's not fool enough to try it, and it'll make him feel good. A

Slim Gaillard: Laughing in Rhythm: The Best of the Verve Years [1994, Verve]
Operating so far to the left of Louis Jordan that he often passed as a weirdo, Gaillard stands as jazz's premier comedian-eccentric, the hepcat as novelty artist to end all novelty artists. Gaillard laughed in rhythm, barked in rhythm, clucked like a chicken in rhythm; he made up his own language, then adapted it to Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Incan; he was so fond of the suffix "rooney" (as in "You got the federation blues-o-rooney") that when introduced to Mickey Rooney he asked what his last name was. Although this 20-song collection from the '50s relegates "Flat Foot Floogie" to a medley and passes over "Cement Mixer (Put-Ti, Put-Ti)" and "Tutti Frutti" (o-rooney?), it swings and yucks whether the song is a remake, a new stroke, or a piece of Tin Pan Alley silliness. Having enjoyed a U.K. vogue before he died at 75 (or 80) in 1991, Gaillard is ripe. Be the first on your block. A

Slim Gaillard: Laughing in Rhythm: The Best of the Verve Years [1994, Verve]
Operating so far to the left of Louis Jordan that he often passed as a weirdo, Gaillard stands as jazz's premier comedian-eccentric, the hepcat as novelty artist to end all novelty artists. Gaillard laughed in rhythm, barked in rhythm, clucked like a chicken in rhythm; he made up his own language, then adapted it to Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Incan; he was so fond of the suffix "rooney" (as in "You got the federation blues-o-rooney") that when introduced to Mickey Rooney he asked what his last name was. Although this 20-song collection from the '50s relegates "Flat Foot Floogie" to a medley and passes over "Cement Mixer (Put-Ti, Put-Ti)" and "Tutti Frutti" (o-rooney?), it swings and yucks whether the song is a remake, a new stroke, or a piece of Tin Pan Alley silliness. Having enjoyed a U.K. vogue before he died at 75 (or 80) in 1991, Gaillard is ripe. Be the first on your block. A

Al Jolson: Let Me Sing and I'm Happy: Al Jolson at Warner Bros. 1926-1936 [1996, Turner Classic Movies/Rhino]
It's hard now to grasp that, generation gap aside, this native of Lithuania was nothing less than the Elvis of the first half of the 20th century. But fame was fleeting in that trendy, technology-driven era, and by the mid-'30s, as foolish kids and fickle oldsters embraced the big-band fad and "crooning" style, "The World's Greatest Entertainer" was slipping badly. While it's true enough that his emotionality was too cornball for an emerging generation of pseudosophisticates, the biggest problem was his resistance to new media--his radio shows were spotty, and much worse for history, his studio recordings were stiff. As anyone who screens The Jazz Singer learns, however, movies were the exception. Hollywood let him roll his eyes and shake his fanny in front of onlookers who could feed him the approval he craved. Whether he's wearing burnt cork or pancake makeup, appropriating Irving Berlin or an Oedipal kiss from his mammy, his verve, spontaneity, and sexual magnetism are as startling as, well, Elvis's. A-

The Mills Brothers: All Time Greatest Hits [1997, MCA]
Far blander than Decca's other prerock crossovers, the Ink Spots, these sons of the barbershop cultivated normality whether they were guesting for Bing, accompanying Ella, or bringing ditties to market. The 16 songs here are as anonymous as they are memorable, just like the close blend of brothers who shared so much DNA that on record they could almost be one Mills plus overdubs. None of their army of imitators ever got near their generic sound. A-

Frank Sinatra: Sinatra '57: In Concert [1999, DCC]
The big deal about the new George Jones record is supposed to be that, due to his near-death experience, he didn't get to overdub the vocals. He should have. One of the few better singers in this century was also a perfectionist cautious about preserving his live shows. Of those officially released so far, this is the most impressive, its lighter and less precise attack good for a grace that's rarely so prominent in the studio work. The audio is exquisite, the repertoire is choice, the excellent Nelson Riddle arrangements are mixed way below the voice, CD technology lets you zap his monologue, and just to affirm our common humanity, he hits a clinker on "My Funny Valentine." A-

Frank Sinatra: Sinatra '57: In Concert [1999, DCC]
The big deal about the new George Jones record is supposed to be that, due to his near-death experience, he didn't get to overdub the vocals. He should have. One of the few better singers in this century was also a perfectionist cautious about preserving his live shows. Of those officially released so far, this is the most impressive, its lighter and less precise attack good for a grace that's rarely so prominent in the studio work. The audio is exquisite, the repertoire is choice, the excellent Nelson Riddle arrangements are mixed way below the voice, CD technology lets you zap his monologue, and just to affirm our common humanity, he hits a clinker on "My Funny Valentine." A-

Teri Thornton: I'll Be Easy to Find [1999, Verve]
A veteran of polio, cancer, incarceration, and cabdriving whose perfect pitch and three-octave range were getting raves when she was in her twenties, Thornton transfigures the showboating artiness that puts pop fans off jazz singers. Since I've lived happily without Sarah Vaughan and Abbey Lincoln, at first I didn't trust my pleasure in the soulful concentration, harmonic subtlety, and deliciously curdled timbre of Thornton's first record since 1963. But from her self-composed blues to her rearranged "Lord's Prayer," her occasional piano to her consistent standards, this woman knows how to serve a song her way. If she's making something of "It Ain't Necessarily So" and "Nature Boy" at this late date, it's only because she's waited a long, long time. A-

Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson: Kidney Stew Is Fine [1979, Delmark]
Cut in the early '70s with an all-star band featuring T-Bone Walker and Jay McShann, this was winning various grand prix in Europe as Wee Baby Blues long before it was released here. More tentative and human-scale, more felt perhaps, than The Original Cleanhead, it sacrifices power and presence as a result, but the material sounds loud enough, and at times Walker threatens to steal the record. A-

Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson: The Original Cleanhead [1970, Blues Time]
A worthy introduction to one of the cleanest--and nastiest--blues voices you'll ever hear. He also plays alto sax with the solid adaptability of a territory man who's been on the road since the '40s, although not as cannily as Plas Johnson, who together with Joe Pass heads a committed supporting cast. How's that again, Cleanhead? You've been balled a long long time? A-