That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

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Part II: Jazz Greats and Great Jazz: An Evolutionary Riff
As composers created a songbook of American classics, singers became
interpreters of catchy lyrics and remarkable melodies that have become
“standards” of the jazz repertoire. For most of these singers, the jazz notion
of improvisation came less in the form of radical invention and more in the
form of interpretation — adding your personal signature to the melody with
individual voices and phrasings.
In front of the big bands of the 1930s and 1940s, singers scaled new heights of
popularity and creativity. In the jazz ensembles of the late 1920s, singers sang
an occasional number, but during the swing era, several bands built their success
around singers in the same way that band leaders such as Duke Ellington
and Count Basie composed and arranged music around their best instrumentalists.
Check out the prominent male and female singers in the following list:
� Ivie Anderson (1905–1949): As an expressive interpreter and inventive
improviser, Anderson starred as the vocalist in Duke Ellington’s big band
through the mid-1930s. For her ability to carry a song while fitting within
the band, she was one of Ellington’s favorites.
� Mildred Bailey (1907–1951): She was the wife of vibraphonist Red
Norvo and had a delicate voice and solid sense of swing. Bailey is best
known for the music she made during the 1930s with Benny Goodman
and Paul Whiteman.
� Connee Boswell (1907–1976): Boswell was acknowledged by Ella
Fitzgerald as an important source of inspiration. She recorded with Bob
Crosby’s band, and during the 1930s, Connee helped invent multi-part
jazz vocal harmonies as one-third of the Boswell Sisters.
� Bing Crosby (1903–1977): From his roots in Chicago jazz, Crosby
became a pop sensation as a big band crooner with bands led by Paul
Whiteman. With Paul Whiteman (discussed earlier in this chapter)
during the late 1920s, Crosby’s strengths relied on warm personalized
vocals and improvisational scat-singing.
� Doris Day (born 1924) and Rosemary Clooney (1928–2002): They
became famous through their movies, but each held a leading lady role
in the big band era. Day sang sweetly and emotionally with Bob Crosby
and Les Brown’s bands. Clooney’s first hit was the 1951 “Come On-A My
House.” In the 1950s, she recorded several songs with Bing Crosby and
starred alongside him in the popular 1954 holiday classic “White
Christmas” — the kind of ballad that became her strong suit. She also
hosted her own television program in the ’50s.
� Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996): She became a queen of swing during the
songwriting boom of the 1930s. Her first hit was the 1938 “A-Tisket, A-
Tasket.” When Chick Webb passed away in 1939, Fitzgerald stayed on to