Vocal Jazz - Contemporary Jazz Vocalists

Contemporary Jazz Vocalists

Brazilian-born Flora Purim released her first solo album in 1973, entitled Butterfly Dreams, on LP through Milestone Records, and is most renowned for her remarkable vocal range. Her first exposure to mainstream audiences was through two recording collaborations with Chick Corea, an important pianist and composer, entitled Light as a Feather and Return to Forever, in 1972 and 1973, respectively, which stand to date as significant developments in the field of fusion jazz. Purim’s approach to vocal jazz included Latin jazz, using a "percussive" element in her work.

Al Jarreau made his first impressions on the world through the 1975 release of his We Got By album on Reprise Records, which won him a German Grammy award, as did his following 1979 release Glow. Jarreau’s music features elements of Pop, Jazz and R&B, and he is also the only person to hold Grammy awards for all three styles of music. Jarreau is renowned for being able to perfectly imitate the sound of guitars, electric basses, upright basses and percussion instruments, and tends to improvise performances using that talent rather than "sing songs". Jarreau’s experience with performance and singing has its roots in his early childhood, where he and his brothers performed together in a close harmony group, later singing in the church choir.

Jazz guitarist George Benson shocked his audience in 1976 by releasing an album, This Masquerade, on Warner Brothers Music, on which he sang- to winning effect. Having released his first album twelve years prior, a collaboration with Jack McDuff, entitled The New Boss Guitar, describable as “Soul-Tinged Bebop”, released through Riverside Records. Benson’s guitar overshadowed his skill as a vocalist, and he appeared for many years as a sideman for some great names in Jazz, including Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, before going into the studio with Tony LiPuma as producer- making an album that proceeded to win him a Grammy award for making the “Record Of The Year”, probably attributable to the close relationship between his singing style and his guitar playing- melodic and chromatically fluent, with a touch of blues influence, the emphasis on sensuous, soft vocal lines. Describing his music, Benson says: “I really like when people kick up their heels and go crazy.”

Dianne Reeves is well known for her fluent improvisational style that mixes Jazz with R&B Elements, for which she has won four Grammy awards since her first release in 1977, Welcome To My Love, on Alto Records. Born into a musical family, her father being a trumpet player and her mother a singer, Reeves has to date released 18 solo albums, and appeared on 24 other albums as a guest, and is best known as a live performer rather than a studio singer, having appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic, singing in her own smooth improvisational scat style. Dianne Reeves was featured prominently as the vocalist performing in the studio adjacent to that of Edward R. Murrow in the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck.

Bobby McFerrin has released 19 albums, and has received ten Grammy awards, since his first self-titled release in 1982, and has the first a cappella song on Billboard Magazine’s "Hot 100" chart, “Don't Worry, Be Happy” (1988) to his credit. He has since 1994 held the position of creative chair at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the USA’s largest chamber orchestra- McFerrin moves easily between the worlds of classical music and jazz, working as a conductor and releasing recordings of classical music, although it is his incredible four-octave vocal range that earns him sold out unaccompanied and fully improvised world tours; McFerrin has the remarkable ability to turn concerts into large-scale "workshops", where the audience plays an integral role.

Diane Schuur is renowned for her re-workings of popular music into jazz-style, as with her 2005 release, Schuur Fire, where, for instance, Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” is reworked into Latin jazz. Blinded shortly after birth by a hospital complication, Schuur’s 3½ octave range has earned her a place playing with the Count Basie Orchestra, filling the shoes Billie Holiday left behind, for which she won a Grammy Award. Given her blindness, Schuur is forced to put all of her energy into her singing in order to communicate with her audience- which she, with her bluesy vibrato, manages to do better than most sighted singers.

Betty Carter, known for her total commitment to the art of jazz singing, a singer whom Carmen McRae called "the only real jazz singer," went outside the boundaries of accepted vocal jazz. Her improvisational skills allowed her the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct melodies in interesting and challenging ways. She was an innovator, a singer who constantly took risks.