The recent talk about singing has got me thinking a bit. What do people
think the market is for men singing jazz standards, if you want to think
of
yourself as a jazz musician rather than a razzamatazzy showman if you know
I
mean?
It seems to be accepted that jazz singers are women and i've played with a
few and if it's not too presumptuous some that basically ain't as good as
me
which is really frustrating. Although obviously there have been some
great
male jazz singers, Parker, Davis and Gil Evans et al evidently thought so
on
Birth of the Cool, and i've just been listening to Earl Coleman singing on
an album called Bebop Revisited vol 1 original 1947-48 but was it just the
case that it was an age when crooners were fashionable, so male singers
worked back then?
I like Chet Baker's style of singing, cool and understated and a jazz
instrumentalist who sang, which as a harmonica player is what I think I'd
feel more comfortable with - apparantly he ran into trouble with the jazz
police for it though.
What do we think?