Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Baritone and I

In my recent listening to Hans Hotter, I've gotten to thinking about the baritone voice.  It is, I think, the quintessential American voice.  It is the most naturalistic of voice types, in the sense that it is the voice that most closely approximates the pitch of (male) human speech, and thus it can be manipulated in all kinds of ways:  think of Bing Crosby's crooning, for instance, and then think of the very different male vocal style that supplanted it: the revolutionary singing of Frank Sinatra, in turns swaggeringly declamatory and beautifully, evocatively conversational.  In its very naturalness, the baritone voice apotheosizes the frank, unadorned American aesthetic.  I suppose it's no accident that my favorite singers are baritones:  Thomas Quasthoff, Thomas Hampson, Thomas Allen (that's a lot of Thomases, come to think of it), Hans Hotter, Sinatra, Johnny Hartman.

Kurt Elling's is one of the most true and beautiful American voices I know.  He wrote his own preamble to a song made famous by Sinatra, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning."  Listen carefully, and you'll hear that he makes even his breaths part of the expressive landscape of the piece.  He and his pianist, Laurence Hobgood, do the song as a slow, sad waltz, with the accompaniment picking out a resigned, lonely, late-night heartbeat figure.
 

Oh, and if you click on the Johnny Hartman link, be sure to listen past Coltrane's introduction.  The story goes that, in the recording session, Hartman was so enthralled by Coltrane's beautiful solo that he forgot to come in.

22 comments:

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Possibly unrelated . . .

I remember reading that Michael Maguire, whom I know best as Enjorlas from Les Miserables, is a baritone who kept trying to sing as a tenor. Last year, I found an amateur video of him singing the US national anthem for his graduating Law School class, and under it was someone's happy observation that Maguire was finally embracing his natural baritone.

Pentimento said...

Baritones often try to be tenors, because tenors are rock stars. Sometimes it works: Plácido Domingo started his career as a baritone.

maria horvath said...

I just listened to "My One and Only Love" and my heart soars.

Pentimento said...

Isn't it great? :)

My favorite Coltrane/Hartman song is "They Say It's Wonderful." It is so poignant. You can find it on Youtube. Have you listened to the Kurt Elling clip?

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Hmmmmm. And from where I stand, sopranos get all the good parts. I've always felt a little unhappy about being an alto--and there are a reasonable number of successful alto singers in the Pop world.

Pentimento said...

Well, in opera, most of the good female roles are sopranos. But there are so many of them! I heard a joke once, before everyone had mobile phones: Q: What is the definition of optimism? A: A soprano with a pager.

Rodak said...

Kurt Elling was new to me. "Wee Small Hours" is a song so sad that I very nearly can't bear to listen to it. I have Sinatra's rendition, but find myself avoiding that CD.
I also own the Coltrane-Hartman recording. I never considered, until you pointed it out that Hartman simply failed to come in after the intro. I thought they were just allowing Coltrane to shine.
Slightly off-topic, I'm wondering if you know the recording by Karrin Allyson on which she sings all eight of the standards on Coltrane's beautiful record "Ballads" (and adds three others, including a vocal version of "Naima")? It's nice music.
Thanks for introducing me to Elling.

Pentimento said...

Oh yes, it's devastatingly sad, agreed.

When I was getting my doctorate, I taught a writing class for music majors (mainly students in the Jazz Studies program) at City College of New York. Toward the end of one semester, I gave an in-class writing assignment in which I played the Sinatra and Elling recordings of the song, and asked the class to write a critical essay on which version was better. I got some really wonderful, inspired essays. About 90% of them leaned toward Kurt Elling, and, though I love the Sinatra recording, I have to agree with them.

I do not know Karrin Allyson. I'll look for that recording.

Rodak said...

Karrin Allyson is not what I would characterize as a great vocalist. She is able to deliver a song with some feeling, however. My favorite on this album is "What's New?" I made a cassette years ago that alternates her takes on each number with Coltrane's instrumental version. I still play it quite often. Karrin Allyson has a "smokey" voice. One would like to see her perform in an intimate piano bar setting.

Here is one of the tracks from that album. Not my favorite, but representative, I guess...

Pentimento said...

Thanks for the link, Rodak. I like it.

Pentimento said...

Speaking of "What's New," do you know the legendary Helen Merrill recording with Clifford Brown et al.?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2mnND2_ovQ

Pentimento said...

And P.S.: Helen Merrill is a native of that great borough, the Bronx.

Rodak said...

Yes. I have that album. It's one of my favorites.

Rodak said...

Yes. I have that album. It's one of my favorites.

Rodak said...

Another couple of recordings featuring female vocalists doing standards with jazz arrangements that come immediately to mind are "Blue Rose"--Rosemary Clooney with Duke Ellington, and "In the Night"--Dakota Staton with the George Shearing Quintet.
I'm also wondering if you are familiar with Patricia Barber? I particularly like her recording "Nightclub".

Pentimento said...

Of course you like Helen Merrill! I actually saw her at the Blue Note once in the early 90s. I don't know Patricia Barber. My most favorite female jazz singer is Betty Carter, which you probably knew already. I like Stacy Kent too, and Dee Dee Bridgewater.

Rodak said...

I don't have any recordings by any of those ladies, although I'm familiar with their names. I'll have to look into that in the future.
I envy you seeing Helen Merrill. Probably my best legends of jazz story is having seen Charles Mingus in the Village in the 1970s. After which, I wrote:

UPON SEEING THE CHARLES MINGUS QUINTET

Supposing Jesus
were a saxophonist--
Ah, Good Lord,
such sweet jazz!

Pentimento said...

Amazing. Who was playing sax?

One of my favorite books is Mingus's Beneath the Underdog. It is totally obscene, but it's a fantastic book.

Rodak said...

Unfortunately, I don't know who the musicians were. That was some years before I got into jazz in a big way. I don't even remember the venue for certain. It was either the Village Vanguard or the Village Gate. My wife and I went with a friend, like my wife, a dancer. Sadly, she died in 2007. She also turned me on to Eric Dolphy when we visited her at Duke University, where she was teaching dance. She and I did a collaboration in those days (my verse, her choreography) which was performed by her students at Duke.
Please forgive me for using your blog to memorialize Carol, but the memories are now gushing.

Rodak said...

I've read Beneath the Underdog. I may even still have a copy of it around. I'll have to look.

"You have no fear of the underdog/
that's why you will not survive" ~ Spoon

Pentimento said...

That's a sad loss, Rodak. I'm sorry.

Rodak said...

Yes. Thank you. The saddest thing to me was that we had just gotten in touch with each other, after a hiatus of quite a few years, a few weeks before she died.