Would a Singer Like Ella Fitzgerald be Appreciated Today?

[Paisley]

A singer and I were talking last night about the direction that music has gone. "It's all vocal acrobatics and emoting way too much," she said. The song "Dancing Cheek to Cheek" with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald was playing. "For a ballad that requires subtlety, nobody's doing it anymore." I mentioned Michael Buble. She replied that he takes a lot from Frank Sinatra rather than having his own style.

Do you think someone with a huge talent, like Ella Fitzgerald, would be a hit or more of a lounge singer today?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the problem today is that talent has little to do with it -- it's packaging that counts. There was some of that in Ella's day -- she became a hit with the general public because she was packaged as "that cute teenager who sings novelty songs," and it took her several years of things like "Chew Chew Chew That Bubble Gum" and "I Want The Waiter With the Water" before she got to sing serious songs. But nowadays, when you outgrow that heavily-packaged phase, you're passe.

 

[Yeps]

A singer and I were talking last night about the direction that music has gone. "It's all vocal acrobatics and emoting way too much," she said. The song "Dancing Cheek to Cheek" with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald was playing. "For a ballad that requires subtlety, nobody's doing it anymore." I mentioned Michael Buble. She replied that he takes a lot from Frank Sinatra rather than having his own style.

Do you think someone with a huge talent, like Ella Fitzgerald, would be a hit or more of a lounge singer today?

As to Michael Buble just taking his style from Frank Sinatra, it is not like Sinatra was that original. He was very very good, but he was singing the showtunes and jazz songs of the time. Michael Buble just happens to be picking some older songs to sing, although he does write some original stuff also.

 

["Skeet" McD]

Yes...and no

I speak as a classically-trained singer specializing in art song in English....also a dead art form.

Remember: the crooners "you folks" (i.e., the average 1930s-1950s pop culture fan that inhabits the FL) love were roundly (and, frankly, correctly) excoriated in their own day for their vocal acrobatics and lack of a proper singing technique. The microphone changed the equation, and allowed/caused the sharp divide between "classical" and "popular" singing.

Previous to the mike, no matter WHAT you were singing in public, the melody had to be written in a certain way and the method of vocal production had to be of a certain kind, because otherwise they wouldn't hear you in the back seats--in an opera house or a music hall. After the mike, "crooning" and the assorted grunts, growls, panting and moaning that are a regular feature of pop vocalism were possible. This isn't as sneering as it may sound: such things are effective, as the popularity of those singers who used the new possibilities to build their styles show....from Bing Crosby through to Johnny Rotten.

A bigger problem is perhaps the juvenilism inherent in modern culture. The songs Ella and company sang (leaving out the novelty numbers) were adult songs, speaking to an adult audience. Painting with a very broad brush, the songs Ella and Company sang dealt with more nuanced emotions and were better songs--which responded to a more nuanced performance--and were aimed at an audience that enjoyed the depth a good performer brought to the task...."It's quarter to three....." Sinatra's performance of that song is art of the highest caliber, IMHO.

There ARE folks out there in pop land who can, and do, do it: Marlena Shaw; Norah Jones. If there was more of a market (and we may hope)...you would be hearing more of it. The talent is there, in approximately the same amount it always has been. But more of it will become widely known only when there's a large demand again.

Having said that: you've set the bar amazingly high, Paisley. Those Louis and Ella sides are unapproachable, IMHO; such things happen only once...certainly in a life time, and I believe much more rarely than that. We must cherish them for what they are: true classics, as unlikely to be repeated as the reappearance of a Shakespeare or Leonardo.

As always, Just one man' opinion,

Respectfully,
"Skeet"

 

[Yeps]

[QUOTE="Skeet" McD]I speak as a classically-trained singer specializing in art song in English....also a dead art form.
"Skeet"[/QUOTE]

As another classical singer (in training) I am very impressed that you can specialize in English art songs. I cannot stand singing in English, as I am awful at it.

 

[Tomasso]

Do you think someone with a huge talent, like Ella Fitzgerald, would be a hit or more of a lounge singer today?

The latter, sadly.

 

["Skeet" McD]

As another classical singer (in training) I am very impressed that you can specialize in English art songs. I cannot stand singing in English, as I am awful at it.

I said I specialize in it...not that I support myself with it! The last singer who could do that was John McCormack, who died in 1945, and made his career doing so in the 1920s and 1930s. He is a perfect case in point of that other, pre-mike, world: his song concerts were giant events, the stadium-rock of the day, singing (unmiked!) to thousands....and included opera arias; lieder; parlor balladry; the latest foxtrot songs; and Irish folk material. The same audience knew, and enjoyed, them all.

English--for reasons I expect you know all too well--is right up there with Russian in terms of difficulty as a sung language. It CAN be done...all (proper) singing is essentially smoke-and-mirrors anyway: the audience thinks it hears you singing what you are, in fact, NOT singing; but English requires the utmost attention to these tricks. Just the dipthongs alone would be a challenge. But--if you want/need to do it--keep at it!

For what it's worth....here's me doing my thing:
http://www.james-joyce-music.com/sndclips/cd_preview.html

"Skeet"

 

[skyvue]

Ella was singing the pop of her day when she started. She likely would be singing the pop of today if she were just kicking off her career now, sounding very different and crafting a very different style than the one she's known for.

There's a long list of current performers who would have done just fine if they had born eighty or ninety years ago. But they'd sound entirely different than they do today, because they would have been influenced by a whole different range of sounds and styles.

There have been many great songs written in the rock era, but they are often more personal in nature, with lyrics that very specifically express the writer's emotions and state of mind. In the standards era, the sentiments expressed were more universal. I would also argue that wit and wordplay were more highly valued then.

It was rarely hard to figure out what a song was about in those days. The lyrics were more straight-forward (which is not to say they weren't poetic or artful); now, lyrics can be a bit opaque and hard to solve unless one happens to hear the composer spell out his ideas in an interview.

 

[Greyfox]

I STILL appreciate her today!

 

[Chas]

[QUOTE="Skeet" McD]
Remember: the crooners "you folks" (i.e., the average 1930s-1950s pop culture fan that inhabits the FL) love were roundly (and, frankly, correctly) excoriated in their own day for their vocal acrobatics and lack of a proper singing technique. The microphone changed the equation, and allowed/caused the sharp divide between "classical" and "popular" singing. [/QUOTE]

And Louis Armstrong came along and completely changed the rules.

Would Ella make the same splash today?

My opinion would be definitely not. She was clumsy, unkempt and not very pretty. When Chick Webb first saw her, he reportedly said to Taft Jordan "you're not putting that on my bandstand!" Then he heard her sing and realised what potential she had.

If she was around today? I suppose she'd be influenced by the R&B singing style that we know today - overwrought and characterized by ridiculously overdone vibrato. Singers like Holiday, Fitzgerald and O'Day were very much influenced by the instrumental soloists they worked with - i.e. Holiday and Lester Young. Their style was developed by working with these virtuoso instrumentalists. Contemporary pop music has no such parallel as the era of the virtuoso soloist is long past.

Ella's delivery is completely out of sync with what singers do nowadays.

 

[Fletch]

I don't wanna hop onto the hearse here, exactly, but it is true that the cultural referents for the adult pop song idiom of the midcentury have mostly been allowed to wither. It is becoming a regional and/or subculture specialty, something you hear mostly in big coastal cities or at gatherings of people with a theatrical bent.

The instrumental influence is, as Chas suggests, long past. Singing now is best understood as a way to embody emotion - not suggest or allude to it. That more restrained approach, typical of the crooner era, is now considered arch and (ironically enough) even campy.

When saying a singer like Bublé imitates Sinatra, or bases his style on Sinatra, one has to realize that he may not really have a choice. It may be that out of all the male singers of that era, only Sinatra, with his carefully casual delivery and swing, is still relevant to any great number of people. Sad, but perhaps true. Bublé's options to reach a serious audience today may have been limited to two - a dramatic cabaret/Broadway style or the Sinatra idiom.

As for Ella, I think that today she would probably be chided for sounding too White. That era had its stereotypes; so does this era.

 

[Chas]

More young guys have to get into jazz vocals; check the roster of any jazz festival and all the singers are women.

It's really too bad that Frank is the only influence for male singers. He surely isn't my favorite. I would like to try out my chops at singing- I look to Hot Lips Page, Al Hibbler, Herb Jeffries and Nat King Cole for my templates.

Clyde McPhatter and Jackie Wilson are wonderful templates as well, but not for me, per se.

I agree, Fletch. Restraint is where it's at. Case in point....

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[skyvue]

It may be that out of all the male singers of that era, only Sinatra, with his carefully casual delivery and swing, is still relevant to any great number of people.

I would offer Nat King Cole as another singer who still resonates today.

(Edit: I see now that Chas beat me to it.)

 

["Skeet" McD]

More young guys have to get into jazz vocals; check the roster of any jazz festival and all the singers are women....I would like to try out my chops at singing- I look to Hot Lips Page, Al Hibbler, Herb Jeffries and Nat King Cole for my templates.

Well....come on in, the water's fine!

"Skeet"

 

[Chas]

More beauty in execution. This stuff makes me tweak.
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[Fletch]

Anent that gender issue...jazz deals with it by not dealing with it. It's the most progressive art form that still embraces de facto segregation. Not so much by color as it once did - altho that's still bubbling under the surface - but thoroughly and decisively by gender. It's changing - at least for female instrumentalists in New York - but slowly. And there is still a lot of reluctance to discuss the issue. Feelings get hurt fast.

 

[Chas]

More male jazz singers and more female saxophonists can only be good for jazz. Feelings be damned. I have a strong suspicion that jazz educators are largely to blame.

 

[Lady Day]

Ella wouldnt even be able to do pop music today. Shes not a sex pot. Thats MAJOR criteria today, more so than talent.

Marketing today is more image than talent, especially in specific pop music markets. Vocals that the populace have been conditioned to like can be auto tuned to make more palatable, but the image of a singer is something that sells before talent.

Also there are no real songwriters anymore to pluck a vocalist up and have them sing their material. Now you are expected to do it all as a performer, and thats just downright unfair to the performer and the audience.

LD

 

[Chas]

No cleavage, no record deal. Slip some silicone in there and run Pro Tools.

 

[Fletch]

I have a strong suspicion that jazz educators are largely to blame.

I attended SUNY-Purchase, one of the better jazz programs in the Northeast, for a semester a few years back. The number of females in the program (faculty or students) was laughable - less than 5%.

Jazz education is like any music education - it's craft training. You're not developing the whole mind. You're not concerned with the greater context of what you do. Sometimes it can be downright anti-humanistic, like when you're trying to develop machine technique or efficiency, and you have to let brute frustration get right in your face and stay there.

There are exceptions - a lot of bright, caring individuals - but I'm thinking of the field, the discipline.