Further Thoughts on Jazz Singers

Although I might contradict myself, I just had an idea about jazz singers that might help define them a little more. We were talking about how some jazz singers (and musicians, although we didn’t say it) convey the emotion and feeling of a song in their singing (and playing). But I feel that, more often than not, a jazz singer (and a musician) usually renders the subject matter of a song subservient to whatever the he or she wants to do with the song. This doesn’t necessarily preclude feeling, but it does sort imply that a jazz singer could sing an aria from an opera or a Beatles song or “All the Things You Are” and more often than not, it’s going to be a jazz song regardless of the background of the song itself.

If you asked a rock singer or a folk singer or an opera singer to do this, it probably wouldn’t be the same. I think that’s what sort of makes jazz jazz, and jazz musicians and singers special. Because they can work with material from far-ranging and disparate sources, and still make it what they want, make it naturally their own.