My vocalists (female)

 This is one of deepest categories. 

Sarah Vaughan is the best of all, especially in her first period. She had bad periods, when she was singing inferior songs or gave into her mannerisms. At her best, she was sublime. 

Billie Holiday is incomparable in emotional impact.  Sarah learned from Billie. 

Ella has probably the most consistent career. She is as good as the other two I have named before her.  The song-book albums are classic. 

After them come Dinahs Washington. What a pure sonority and blues feeling. And Nancy Wilson, with marvelous diction and ability to put across the lyrics.   

Carmen McRae and Betty Carter... They are ok, but I almost always feel they aren't as good as my big 5.  I'd rather be listening to someone else, like Eva Cassidy or Anita O'Day.  All these are good as well, though not as well known.  

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Singers I don't like: Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln.  They sing off tune, rather than altering the melody in PRECISE ways like Sarah or Billie.  Blossom Dearie... She is good, but doesn't have a good-sounding voice. Diana Krall. Not my favorite either.  Dianne Reeves is much better. 

For some reason some variant of the "Diane" name is ascent among female vocalists of the 20th century, like Diana Ross or Diane Schurr, Dinah Shore, etc...  

My Vocalists (male)

 #1 is Ray Charles.  Yes, I know he not strictly a jazz vocalist, but he is probably the best jazz vocalist in spite of this. He is also the best country and the best soul singer. 

Louis Armstrong got the whole thing going.  His singing is incomparable.  

A personal favorite is Chuck Baker, for an arbitrary reason: his voice is kind of similar to mine in timbre and range. I like the fact he doesn't have to have a rich, Johnny Hartman type of voice. 

But I also like Johnny Hartman!

Sinatra? Well, yes.  I have many good Sinatra associations, but I am not crazy about his mannerisms.  The same with Tony Bennet. 

Nat King Cole is one of my favorites as well.  He has impeccable jazz phrasing, and also a beautiful voice. I hate, though, the lazy hazy days of summer. That is as painful as Satchmo's "It's a wonderful world." 

The depth of the male vocalists is not the same as with the women.  

 

Kindness

 I got a message from someone who couldn't attend my retirement party, who had been interim (outside of the department) chair of my department, and is now an associate dean. Anyway, she also highlighted my kindness. Obviously, this is the highest possible compliment, because it can only come from outside the self. We can't measure our own kindness, because that can only be judged by those on the receiving end of it. 

Remember that Ellen DeGeneres created a whole brand around kindness, but was abusive to her own staff. Literally, her brand of skin care products is called "Kind Science." Once someone sets themselves up as being kind, be careful!  But I'm fine with other people saying it.  

Music and cognitive complexity

 I was listening to an interview with drummer Steve Gadd. It struck me that to know about music involves multiple cognitive, emotional, and kinetic factors. The entire body and mind are involved. 

The little I know about jazz drumming, is probably very little in comparison to what I know in general, but it is is fairly intricate knowledge (as far as it goes; I am not a great drummer), about the kind of cymbal sound that might be preferred, the size of the bass drum, implication of drum tunings, particular rhythmic patterns, like displaced quarter note triplets. Subtlety of the ride cymbal pattern.  A little bit about the history and evolution of playing drums, the interaction between drums and bass and piano. I've spent years of active listening, not just having music on in the background.  

Yet when I was hearing a podcast or video with some musicians taking apart a Ray Charles album, I was amazed by the level of insight they had. (The great bassist Christian McBride was part of this conversation). I never realized that Roy Haynes was on this album, playing "I got news for you," etc... Obviously the level of insight here was higher than mine by several degrees of magnitude. 

It's not humility to say this, it's simply a recognition of reality.  There is a granular knowledge there that I can learn from, even without sharing it.  

And I have that kind of knowledge in my own field, as well.  And the things I know about music are part of the total package of what I know, as a scholar of word and music. 

Monk's Motif

 A lot of Monk's songs are blues.  He also liked the 32 AABA form, and some oddly shaped forms that don't fall into those categories. He liked contrafacta.  

The motifs are angular and difficult, but also catchy and melodic. Think of the central motif of "Straight no Chaser," or "Misterioso," or "Blue Monk,"  Think of Andrew Hill. I like him a lot, and he is also a piano player known for original songs, somewhat in the Monk mode, but I can't hum a single melody to an Andrew Hill composition, despite my having listened to them many times. Ornette is a much more talented melodist than Hill is.  

What interests me about the motif is how small it can be.  The technical definition is the shortest possible musical idea. Bernstein in his concert for young people points out that the motif is not a tune, and longer melodies are not as useful as building blocks than these very, very short ideas are. Not that I don't like what LB is calling "tunes," but I also like motivic development. Sometimes, I guess, there is a lot of motivic development that might be be intelligent composition, but that I don't feel as super interesting. You can have to best of both worlds if the original motif is distinctive and catchy rather than bland.  

 

Dream of Mozart

 I am singing Mozart's Requiem today with the faculty / staff choir. In anticipation of this, I dreamt that I left my music in the car. Some colleagues (who are not in the choir) had shown up as well to sing. I was a little miffed at that, since they hadn't been to rehearsals all semester.  One had a solo, and he was practicing it in a very trained voice. (In reality I don't think he sings at all.) This solo had no relation to Mozart at all.   

I went outside to get my music from the car, but I couldn't find that car. I kept clicking with the key fob so the car would beep at me.  

I woke up relieved that I knew where my car is, and I had not lost it.  

Wrong notes

 Victor Wooten says you are never more than a half step away from a right note. Monk says none of the 88 notes on the keyboard are wrong notes. The worst possible note is probably the fourth played against the maj 7. So play CEGB in the left hand and F in the right.  That sounds pretty terrible. But against a 7 chord (Bb) it sounds ok. 

You can play every note in the scale and except for the fourth and the seventh, and you have a pentatonic scale. Think of the beginning of "Someone to watch over me."  You can pretty much improvise over the blues with six of seven notes. 

All the notes that aren't in the key are chromatic leading tones or chord alterations. So a wrong note can be corrected by playing a right note right after it.  

Improvisation is easy then.  The caveat is that there is no guarantee that the ideas you play will be any good. Here other factors come into play. You have to play with rhythmic dynamism.  The improvisation cannot be too random, or too predictable. You have to have enough technical ability to play what you want. 

The best thing is to find that you have played something that you liked.  Then you can use your own taste as the guide.