Chet

Chet Baker is not my favorite singer, but he is the singer whose voice most resembles mine in its sonority and timbre and range. I have to listen to him to find my own voice. I like certain things about his singing and not others. For example, I think his emotional "blankness" or coolness is remarkably and paradoxically moving. I like the sound of his voice, what people have described as its vulnerability or fragility. I'm not crazy about his intonation. I don't think I could afford to sing like that, because people would think I was merely flat. His phrasing would not work for me either. I like the intimacy and conversational tone of this phrasing, and his way around the lyric, but I don't know if I could afford to be that laid back.

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It is interesting that I first blogged about singing a long time before I started doing it. I had a master plan to start a couple of years in a row. That was before I took up my new and largely accidental hobby of songwriting. Sometimes things just take longer than you think.