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62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL JAZZ ARTIST MALE VOCALIST GREGORY PORTER Feeling Free BY GEOFFREY HIMES | PHOTO BY SHAWN PETERS For a long time, it seemed as if vocal jazz was stuck in a stylistic rut while instrumental jazz was evolving rapidly—one style after the other. While sax playing was being overturned every five years by the likes of Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sam Rivers, David Murray and Michael Brecker, jazz singing seemed relatively unchanged as each generation continued to model themselves on Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat “King” Cole. Things loosened up in the mid-’90s, thanks to Cassandra Wilson and Kurt Elling. Wilson proved you could apply post-bop principles to jazz singing while incorporating both the repertoire and character of post-Beatles rock and soul. She soon inspired the likes of Norah Jones, Lizz Wright and René Marie to follow a similar path. Elling married virtuosic technique to smart, unpredictable material. But since his arrival on the national
scene nearly 20 years ago, fans of male vocal jazz have been waiting for the next breakthrough artist. Now he’s here. A former college football player from Southern California who wears a bushy beard and a distinctive black-knit cap with a visor and ear flaps, Gregory Porter has devoted most of his albums and concerts to his own compositions, which owe as much to Donny Hathaway and Bill Withers as to George Gershwin and Jon Hendricks. Porter has won over a growing audience as well as critics, who honored him as the top jazz artist and male vocalist in the 2014 DownBeat Critics Poll. (He topped the categories Rising Star–Jazz Artist and Rising Star–Male Vocalist in last year’s Critics Poll.) Porter became a star not by consciously rebelling against business as usual but by entering the jazz field as an outsider oblivious to the unspoken rules. “I had a healthy ignorance of what I should do,” he sheepishly admitted. “My first record company wanted me to do standards for my first record. But I was writing and I said, ‘Let me sing my own little songs and see what happens.’ I wanted to try something new, something that was connected to the tradition but maybe sung in a different way. I know the audience isn’t supposed to be the guide to the artist, but sometimes they are. Before I made that first record, I was including my own songs like ‘1960 What?’ in the same sets with standards like ‘Moody’s Mood For Love,’ and the audience was getting excited about my songs. I think jazz fans were eager to hear some different songs.” The term “singer-songwriter” is most often used in the folk and rock fields, but it fits Porter, because his singing is shaped by the songs he writes and vice versa. His latest album, Liquid Spirit (Blue Note), and his two previous discs— Water and Be Good, both on Motéma—have all featured original material, and they’ve all received glowing reviews. In concert and in the studio, Porter’s voice echoes the testifying fervor he learned at his mother’s church in Bakersfield, Calif. It makes sense that he would write songs with moral points expressed in down-home metaphors. His lyrics and melodies resemble the streetwise vernacular of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, so it’s not surprising that his vocals do as well. “I’m still pulling from Stevie,” he said. “I’m really dealing with the influences from my youth to write new stories that reflect my personal issues. What I do on Liquid Spirit is what we did every Sunday morning, but now they play it on VH1 Soul next to Beyoncé, so it seems current. There’s something in my music pop fans can relate to, but then they say, ‘Why did you do that? Why didn’t you do the second part the same way you did the first part?’ “And I say, ‘Because I’m a jazz singer, so I’ll deviate in the melody. I’ll sing ahead of the beat or behind the beat; I’ll change the harmony. If it feels free, it feels right.’ Last month’s concerts will be a little different than next month’s concert, because I’ll find something new in the melody or something new in the lyric that I’ll emphasize. I feel bad for pop singers [who are] expected to sing the same song in the same way in the same key 20 years after it was a hit.” Porter rejects the idea that he’s doing something unprecedented in jazz. He regards vocal jazz interpretations of songs by Wonder and The Beatles during the 1960s and ’70s not as commercial compromises, but as signposts pointing the way forward. He notes that listeners sometimes forget how artists like Leon Thomas, Andy Bey and Etta Jones bridged the gap between the Great American Songbook and soul music, not to mention the obvious jazz influences heard in the music of Hathaway, Gaye and Ray Charles. “When you’re talking about that post-Civil Rights, feel-good, looking-up music of Marvin and Donny,” Porter said, “that existed in the music of Leon, Andy and Esther Phillips. But it didn’t seem to get the official stamp. It came out of that gospel-soul tradition, so it might not have been embraced by the jazz establishment. I would love to have seen a show where Leon, Andy and Frank Sinatra were on stage together, because that’s the full spectrum of jazz vocals.” DB
Page 1: AUGUST 2014 U.K. £3.50 DOWNBEAT.CO
Page 6: AUGUST 2014 On the Cover 62nd Annua
Page 10: Chords Discords Fueling the Flame T
Page 14 and 15: Riffs Cyrus Chestnut Litchfield-Bou
Page 16: every day getting ready to go to a
Page 19 and 20: Hersch, Bey & Barber Among Artists
Page 21 and 22: CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT YOUNG PROVO
Page 24: Salvant topped four categories in t
Page 27 and 28: hip-hop, neo-soul and a lot of sing
Page 29 and 30: 11 Dave Douglas, Time Travel (GREEN
Page 31 and 32: Hall of Fame inductee Jim Hall
Page 33 and 34: Ben Riley, “I heard it in a recor
Page 36 and 37: 62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL VETERANS
Page 38: 62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL HISTORICA
Page 43 and 44: MARIA SCHNEIDER Orchestral Prowess
Page 45 and 46: with a human depth and perspective.
Page 47 and 48: PAUL NATKIN/PHOTO RESERVE “Once a
Page 50 and 51: 62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL RISING ST
Page 52 and 53: By Phillip Lutz Photo by Shaun Made
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Page 56 and 57: 62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL Complete
Page 58: Nicole Mitchell Jane Ira Bloom Dr.
Page 61 and 62: Brian Bacchus ............ 25 Fran
Page 64 and 65: 62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL Tia Fulle
Page 66 and 67: 62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL Terri Lyn
Page 68 and 69: 62 nd ANNUAL CRITICS POLL The Criti
Page 71 and 72: Masterpiece Excellent Good Fair
Page 73 and 74: The Critics John McDonough John Cor
Page 75 and 76: Jazz / BY TED PANKEN Anthony Braxto
Page 77 and 78: Felipe Salles Ugandan Suite TAPESTR
Page 79 and 80: Blues / BY FRANK-JOHN HADLEY Still
Page 81 and 82: Beyond / BY KEN MICALLEF Country Co
Page 83 and 84: Roscoe Mitchell with Craig Taborn a
Page 85 and 86: Historical / BY JOHN MCDONOUGH Arms
Page 87 and 88: George Mraz & Emil Viklický Togeth
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Books / BY AARON COHEN High Blood P
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akin to what Leonardo Da Vinci had
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Michael Blake SOLO Woodshed BY MICH
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Toolshed Sabian HHX Omni 2 World-Cl
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Toolshed W02 Professional alto Yana
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Jazz On Campus School Notes Kate Mc
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DB Buyers Guide Andrew Hadro Music
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