Love and Jazz
In the 1930s, after several decades as some of America's bawdiest, most raucous music, jazz met the love song, and they took flight together, in part thanks to the singing of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Here's a cursory survey of the love song in jazz, first as seen through the prism of jazz vocalists from the 1930s to the late 1990s, and then as seen through the instruments of great jazz musicians from the 1950s to the late 1990s.
Talking Love with Words
"Love Songs"
Billie Holiday
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This collection of Holiday's best-known paeans to love--both
lost and realized--comprises her recorded work for Columbia
during the mid-1930s. It was the beginning of an uneasy
career for Holiday, who died two decades later after
extended bouts with drug addiction. But on these songs, she
cuts an incomparable figure. Holiday's voice--chirpy,
cooing, and innocent--belies her inner turmoil. Her
performance exemplifies one of jazz's great paradoxes: many
of its most poetic interpreters of love wrestled with major
emotional barricades throughout their lives. But "Love
Songs" reveals only Holiday's charm, her inner beauty and
outward, expressive attractiveness.
"Love Songs: The Best of the Verve Songbooks"
Ella Fitzgerald
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By the time Ella Fitzgerald recorded her "Songbooks" series
for Verve Records in the 1950s, she was one of jazz's elite
vocalists. And where Holiday sang with a complex,
interlocking fabric of love, loss, and heartache in her
voice, Fitzgerald sounded utterly lovable and lovely. Her
own "Love Songs" grabs tunes by Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen,
Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and others from the
"Songbooks" series. The result is a sometimes lighthearted,
sometimes heated, display of love. It's poppier than the
early Holiday tunes but shows the growth of the love-song
genre, from a bluesy tangle to a more blushing fullness of
emotion.
"After Midnight Sessions"
Nat "King" Cole
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If Nat "King" Cole has done nothing more than make the love
song a fertile territory for male singers, he's done jazz a
great service. His own contributions to the love song
tradition, while immeasurable, display unique touches. His
"After Midnight Sessions" speaks eloquently to the heart
even when it's partaking of his trio's genius for
instrumental jamming. But in the ballads, Cole woos
listeners so quickly he doesn't even need to smolder. He
merely lights your heart and sweeps you up.
"My Funny Valentine"
Chet Baker
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It was in part thanks to Cole that a young transplanted
Oklahoman by the name of Chesney Henry Baker would make a
big splash on the West Coast jazz scene of the 1950s. Chet
Baker had not only the golden-boy looks that Hollywood
capitalized on with umpteen beach movies, but also had a
sublime way with ballads and with his midrange, slow-sway
trumpet playing. "My Funny Valentine" is a peak for Baker, a
display of his tender expertise winning over crowds and
hearts even while he, like Holiday, was busy nursing
emotional demons of vast proportion. But he took jazz to
new places, extending the hip stamp of warm-hearted love
that Cole initiated.
"Love Scenes"
Diana Krall
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If there were any doubts about Cole's extended influence
over jazz and pop, the stunning advance of Diana Krall's
here-bouncy, there-sultry singing in the 1990s has laid them
to rest. Krall returns to Ella Fitzgerald's light-hearted
takes on the heart while spicing them with small-group
arrangements reminiscent of Cole. "Love Scenes" catapulted
Krall into the spotlight as an expert heart monitor, capable
of musical finesse and fire as well as lyrical and vocal
romance. "When I Look in Your Eyes" furthered Krall's
dominance over the love song in jazz, pushing her to the top
of the charts for months and teaching listeners new things
about the intersection of limber, non-big-band swing and
winking charm.
"My Romance"
Kevin Mahogany
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In the same way that Krall wove together pre-bebop,
small-group swing, and songs about love, so too has 1990s
vocalist Kevin Mahogany integrated R&B with jazz balladry on
"My Romance." In this regard, Mahogany, too, shares in
Cole's legacy, even though he sings in a voice so low it
wraps itself around you like a steamy night. Mahogany is
interested in the later-night activities, the time after the
hearts have played footsie with hopping swing and cheery
brightness. And in this he shows how much Marvin Gaye, for
one, can add to the familiar love tune in jazz.
"Ballads, Blues, & Bey"
Andy Bey
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Andy Bey is one of a kind, showing with his sparse, pristine
work just how far you can take love songs in the jazz
idiom. He speaks low and keeps the music to a bare minimum
but is so entrancing that a room resplendent in light can
suddenly seem lit by a single candle when "Ballads, Blues, &
Bey" spins. For sheer emotion unencumbered by musical flash
and unamused by anything other than the wealth of soul in
the declaration of love, Bey's a gold medallist every time.
Talking Love with Music
"The Soul of Ben Webster"
Ben Webster
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Lots of jazz enthusiasts can pinpoint one or another key
moment in the development of different jazz traditions. In
the love canon, there are many places to start. But none is
any better than the great tenor-saxophone balladeer Ben
Webster, three of whose late-1950s LPs end up on the two-CD
"Soul of Ben Webster" package. This collection highlights
Webster's longstanding, breathy approach to his horn. You
can almost hear Webster's heart pounding on some of these
songs, and while many take off at a terrific swing-era clip,
the ballads ache with passion and wreak havoc on the
heart. It's no coincidence that Webster's horn shows up on
Billie Holiday's "Love Songs" and even helped Duke Ellington
perfect his own ballad writing in the early 1940s.
"Kind of Blue"
Miles Davis
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If one were forced to select a single CD that could ignite
the passions unto eternity, Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue"
would be an ideal selection. Having never left the
Amazon.com Top 100 in music, "Kind of Blue" is a jazz album
for everyone, an epic tale of the heart. Davis's introspective,
moody textures stir feelings that can turn to bellowing
outbursts in seconds. "Kind of Blue," almost entirely
improvised in its incarnation in 1959, is an album of such
sensitivity that it remains unforgettable after the first
listen. It might well be love translated into sound.
"Love Songs"
Miles Davis
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Of course Davis had plenty to say about love elsewhere, both
before and after "Kind of Blue." "Love Songs" collects music
he recorded through the 1960s for Columbia Records, all of
it exceptionally calm and enticing, all of it drawing on the
years of balladry that jazz had packed in collectively since
the 1930s.
"Ballads"
John Coltrane
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In the early 1960s, Miles Davis was easily considered the
most alluring jazz loverman. And John Coltrane was likely
the most soul-searching improviser, so much so that many
thought Coltrane too far out for conventional tastes. So he
recorded sessions like "Ballads," which won critics over and
produced some of the late saxophonist's most tender songs.
Like the best of these musicians, Coltrane shares an
uncompromising look at feeling and expression.
"A Love Supreme"
John Coltrane
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Coltrane also gets credit for spiritualizing love as a
question of the soul, rather than just the heart or the
body. "A Love Supreme" was composed and arranged to
musically reflect a long prayer, with every linguistic
nuance accounted for in the Coltrane quartet's rich
harmonies and in the sheer wonder of this whole-album suite.
"Idle Moments"
Grant Green
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The themes of love in jazz have often been physically
sultry, and almost none invoke a more palpable romantic
feeling than guitarist Grant Green's brilliant "Idle
Moments." Recorded as if the studio was a darkly lit love
shack, "Idle Moments" boasts one of the great jazz
performances of the 1960s, with Stanley Turrentine's
saxophone nudging the amorous tension and Green slinking
between the notes and beats, propelling the music to a state
of loving rapture to last the entire session.
"The Koln Concert"
Keith Jarrett
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As the 1970s kicked in, many who had played jazz in the tail
end of the 1960s, where they learned key lessons from
Coltrane (and others), sought a higher metaphysical and
spiritual plane in their music. Pianist Keith Jarrett
reached a plateau that was positively Coltranesque on the
"Köln Concert," a lengthy, live recording featuring an
entirely improvised performance of gripping intensity. It
hearkens back to "Love Supreme" in its vast grapple with
emotions of extraordinary power. Like "Idle Moments," it's
a mood-setting performance, perfect for contemplation of
singular or collective love--and in that sense, almost a
world away from the traditional love song.
"The Melody at Night, with You"
Keith Jarrett
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Jarrett returns to the song form in his intimate 1999 solo
recording, "The Melody at Night, with You." Based on its
title alone, this is an album full of romance and fondness.
But it's a romance between Jarrett and the tradition in song
as much as anything, and that brings the idea of the love
song full circle. Because Billie Holiday, with all the
raging torment she endured within, had an abiding love for
the song--and its talismanic powers that seemed to transmit
love as much as anything.
