Jazz a question

[sammyyummy]

Just got re-introduced to the music of underrated yet influential jazz artists: Mose Allison, Mark Murphy and Eddie Jefferson and Ive been listening to them all weekend.

Mose Allison's sparse country-blues-jazz musicality ("Your Molecular Structure), Mark Murphy's straightforward delivery and sharp scats (My Favorite Things", and the very infectious joy of Eddie Jefferson's vocalese jazz style (Moody's Mood) are just rewarding to listen to. It is in sharp contrast to the vocal jazz treatments by Sinatra, Bennett and Torme.

Anyway, during the weekend, I also came across an article that posed an interesting set of questions:
1. what is a jazz singer?

there are jazz aficionados for instance who think betty carter was a jazz singer but ella fitzgerald was not (ella was referred to as a vocal stylists similar to sarah vaughan). there are those who hail torme as a jazz vocalist but not sinatra and sammy davis jr. are aretha, streisand jazz? buble?

2. what is a jazz song?

are standards and the american songbook by default jazz songs or were they merely "pop" songs of an older generation? is norah jones' "dont know why" a jazz song or is anita baker's "giving you the best that i got"?

Your thoughts?​

 

[twoton]

"Man, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."
--Louis Armstrong.

I know that's not what you're asking, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

 

[sammyyummy]

 

[twoton]

I guess I don't know what a jazz singer is, other than to say a jazz singer is a vocal artist whose art is to sing songs that are technically defined as jazz songs. I don't know what that definition is, although I suspect it has something to do with the time, rhythm, and scale that's used. For example, a blues scale, a syncopated rhythm, maybe?

The Standards were the pop music of the era, and they tended to follow the rubrics of jazz. Although, since then musicians have taken "jazz" far beyond the concepts of the 1920-1950s.

Anita Baker would probably be R&B, which is probably a derivative of jazz.