Aretha Franklin can sing anything. Thank God she got so many performances on tape singing other than pure soul. Her scatting improved over the years and she became quite an accomplished jazz singer. I liked her "Perdido" better than Sarah Vaughan's and Ella's!!!
I think it's pretty clear that Aretha is at her best shouting the blues or gospel. It is true that she has sung many other types of songs, but her gospel roots always shine through. I did like her scat on this one, but the rest of it is just an R&B version of the song. She even messes up the lyric -- you can't look for your heart IN perdido, because perdido means LOST. try some more of Sarah's versions... The 60s performance on Roulette records is great
I will say this, Aretha Franklin can make any song her own! There are allot of purist out there who believe you should only sing certain songs a particular way, but that is why she is the Queen of Soul. Not because she has gospel roots or even the fact that she sings "soul" music, it is because she puts her soul into her songs!
This accusation of being a purist makes me tired. I was responding to the person who said they prefer Aretha's Perdido to Sarah Vaughan's and Ella Fitzgerald's. I LOVE Aretha to death, but I think she usually sings jazz like a gospel singer instead of like a jazz singer. Not always, but too many times. So I prefer it when she sings in the proper style or just takes a song over entirely. This Perdido goes halfway, which is why I don't like it.
Murky1177 -- Surely the interesting thing whenever Aretha sings a "jazzy" standard is how her gospel derived melodic improvisation compares with what you call the "proper" way to do it. Perhaps Aretha is singing jazz with an unmatchable melismatic fluency and emotional rhapsody. Perhaps she ADDS to jazz what is lacking in most jazz singers. And that's before we consider the unique 24 carat gold sound of her voice.
Are you suggesting, drwinkle, that there are not distinct styles of music? Perdido, by the way, is not "jazzy" in quotes but straight-up jazz -- a Juan Tizol classic from the Ellington book. My preference, stated with great reverence to the Queen, is for songs in which she makes stylistic choices that fit the music. Her "Moody's Mood," for example, changes the tempo and style to fit her blue-shaded choices.
Thanks for the erudite reply. But I don't see why you ask if I'm suggesting that there are no distinct styles of music. A tone-deaf, or deaf, person might think so; not me. Rather, I was suggesting that Aretha's early standards performances offer a tantalising transition point, as a new kind of singer, a secular, post-gospel pop singer (if you will), emerges before her style does and excels in an established and very difficult style before moving on.
I'm not sure what post-gospel is supposed to mean. I'm tempted to throw it in the dustbin with post-racial. Gospel never went anywhere. (Neither has race). Her tribute album to Dinah Washington on Columbia (decades before this Perdido) shows Ree followed Dinah's lead, blending and moving btw blues, jazz, r&b. Ree then got aboard the train Sam Cooke and Ray Charles were on. Now, she rode that train to heaven! I don't see how you're telling her history.
I think Aretha has what shrinks call emotional intelligence in buckets. I repeat: her rhapsodising approach to melody is unmatched, to my ears. You can dryly source and locate her all you want -- and no doubt I could do it too after a quick WIkipedia -- but I know what I "feel" in her voice, and in no other voice. And crucially, she can do it in standards too.
drwinkle: Thank you for clarifying. I agree that Ree does have great emotional intelligence. I don't think some of her note choices are appropriate to jazz. End of.
I admire what you have to say about her emotional intelligence; I think it's quite astute. But I'm disappointed that rather than acknowledging that your claims about her background skip whole chunks of black musical history that you instead belittle that knowledge.
I'd also like to ask you a question. Are you suggesting that Aretha offers emotional intelligence *without* that harmonic intelligence? And do you think such an interpretation or designation has anything to do with expectations of a kind of black rawness?
As for me, I think Ree has both kinds and shows them in many settings. Sometimes in jazz. Most often in gospel and soul. The few lapses I can recall don't take away from her royal status.
A couple of people have seemed irritated by "post-gospel". I meant that Aretha herself, in the early 60s, is reasonably thought of as post-gospel (not just performing in church), and also pre-soul.
Murky: your speculation on my dubious attribution to Ree of "black rawness" is astute, but unfounded. She is anything but raw!
Thank you for answering my question about the raw and the cooked. I have no dispute with any of your preferences. But your pre- and post- settings seem just to be your own personal code. Aretha wasn't the first gospel singer to perform secular music (nor the first to go back and do gospel again after performing secular) and she wasn't before soul. She's just a great musician who took things to another level.
As a fan of jazz -- of Parker, Coltrane, & etc. -- I would need to be schizoid in order to think that black music is raw, somehow "primitive". Actually I'm interested in how much harmonic sophistication Aretha brings to standards. As I said, I haven't analysed her melodic lines, but I suspect it is quite a lot, and perhaps more tastefully, sparingly, deployed than by most jazz singers. And informed by the unmatched vocal timbre, and rhapsodic freedom.
Until you've done this analysis -- one that will show you that (I'd say until the 70s) her harmonic choices in jazz were only from the blues scale -- we should let this part rest. Surely, you can prefer whatever you like. I just like to hear more harmonic options in my jazz than Aretha usually brings to that genre. In other words, I want to hear jazz singers (Betty, Sarah, Nina, Jeanne Lee, Dianne Reeves, Andy Bey) who sound like they've listened to "Parker, Coltrane, & etc."
You have certainly listened to more jazz singers than me. I am well up for all kinds of exploration in solos, but I have to say I like songs to be not too far from their original form. Ella blowing like a bebop horn is great, but I've often found jazz vocal stylings somewhat arch and self-consciously clever. The Cleo Laine sophisticated smirk has been replicated many times by others, and never fails to annoy me. Cont...................
Nina, by the way, is a good example of a sometime jazz singer who keeps it relatively simple, and the songs are better for it. All personal preference, as you say, but its the nub of our debate.
I do think, as well, that time and place have an effect on vocal style. Sarah and Ella were trying to break the color barrier and earn respect and recognition for black music in supper clubs and high-end locations. They got their starts in the 40s. Aretha, coming along later, didn't have to fight for the "respectability" of black music in the same way. So, perhaps the archness you (and I, too) hear in some earlier jazz has to do with those pressures.
I respect your musico-cultural erudition, but it seems a bit regressive here. The elitist ("Aren't I just the height of sophisticated chic!?") smirk was, I believe, invented by Cleo Laine and she went international only in the 1970s. You see it on the younger female jazz singers, particularly white ones, who perhaps (and deploying culture from another angle) are flagging a triumph over gender suppression, Representing (in a hip-hop sense) a suppressed music...... cont'
As you said in an earlier post, you haven't listened to very many jazz singers. I don't even count many of the singers you refer to as jazz singers, in the sense of deriving from African-American musical style (tho of course not having to be black). Your hip-hop claim is, frankly, nonsensical. You've become a bit hard to follow. So I'll close my part by saying long live jazz and long live Aretha to do her best in all her endeavors. Best to you.
Thanks for informing me that our exchange is ended! Just allow me to deal with your idea that I'd become hard to follow, and specifically that my "hip-hop claim is ... nonsensical". I was talking not about any hip-hop musical style, and rather saying that modern women jazz singers' often smug performances might be clarified by thinking of how proud hip hop singers musically "represent" and overcome cultural marginaliation. Come to think, your cold superior tone suggests that you are gay.
As for archness in what we hear, I don't think Sarah etc, are annoyingly arch. They just do a bit too much, for me. I like melodies to be elaborated upon no more than in Frank's way. Keep the soloing in the solos, I say.
Musicologists no doubt have compared in detail soul singing with jazz singing. I can't; but Aretha's brief "fusion" fascinates me. It all sounds somehow fresher than Vaughan etc., indeed, than any other sung jazz I've heard. More uplifting, even spiritual, which is appropriate. And I'm a jazz player as well as a fan.
If it sounds fresher to you, then I must wonder how much of the Vaughan, Fitzgerald, Holiday discography you've listened to. Especially since Ree is coming straight out of Dian Washington, who was herself influenced by Billie Holiday, who emulated (with her thin voice) Bessie Smith -- who influenced Ree's other model, Mahalia Jackson. If Ree's jazz touches you, that's great. But it doesn't seem the claim that her jazz is new, or even jazz singing at all holds up.
If you're a jazz musician as well as a fan, you *are* a musicologist of a kind. So I think it's a little bit of a cop out to claim you find Aretha fresher but decline to say how/why, claiming only eggheads would do that. I mean, it's ok, but if you want people to hear what you hear, you have to explain it to us.
Yes I should try to explain why I think I find Aretha fresher than Vaughan and so on. You speak as someone who's read up on Aretha's provenance. I am not as informed as you, and speak more intuitively as a musician. I think that Vaughan and "proper" jazz singers feel it incumbent to complicate melodies with altered notes. They are, as jazz singers, harmonically smart, showy.
cont.. It should also be noted that from Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk to Sarah Vaughan, many of the original jazz singers began playing music in the church and have fluency in both styles. I do think, however, that the styles (while overlapping) are not identical. On occasion, I think the Queen makes a bad choice. If one is just a fan of Aretha, one might like everything she does. I, however, am a fan of jazz *And a fan of Aretha's. I like to hear both at their best.
perido? hahaha in spanish it means LOST...she doesn't say that...worse pronunciation xD
Love Aretha!!
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Vilsautz 4 years ago
keeble I must write a song for her before she retires a MUST
KEEEBLE 5 years ago
era caliente y es caliente in su musica .
Tejano44 5 years ago
Thanks ! ! !
rgb56 5 years ago
this sounds great!
taytayangel 5 years ago
Did anyone know she can hit notes that no musical instrument can hit...amazing voice..luv her
peeteeclark 5 years ago
What are you talking about? There is no note that no musical instrument can hit.
Superphilipp 4 years ago
I love the tone and the flexability in her voice...wow! such vocal freedom and expression.
shonuff2good 5 years ago
Aretha Franklin can sing anything. Thank God she got so many performances on tape singing other than pure soul. Her scatting improved over the years and she became quite an accomplished jazz singer. I liked her "Perdido" better than Sarah Vaughan's and Ella's!!!
OliverPenn1 5 years ago
I think it's pretty clear that Aretha is at her best shouting the blues or gospel. It is true that she has sung many other types of songs, but her gospel roots always shine through. I did like her scat on this one, but the rest of it is just an R&B version of the song. She even messes up the lyric -- you can't look for your heart IN perdido, because perdido means LOST. try some more of Sarah's versions... The 60s performance on Roulette records is great
murky1177 4 years ago
I will say this, Aretha Franklin can make any song her own! There are allot of purist out there who believe you should only sing certain songs a particular way, but that is why she is the Queen of Soul. Not because she has gospel roots or even the fact that she sings "soul" music, it is because she puts her soul into her songs!
sibun7 4 years ago
This accusation of being a purist makes me tired. I was responding to the person who said they prefer Aretha's Perdido to Sarah Vaughan's and Ella Fitzgerald's. I LOVE Aretha to death, but I think she usually sings jazz like a gospel singer instead of like a jazz singer. Not always, but too many times. So I prefer it when she sings in the proper style or just takes a song over entirely. This Perdido goes halfway, which is why I don't like it.
murky1177 4 years ago
Murky1177, I never accused you of anything! I most certainly believe that you have the right to like whatever you like and just the way you like it!
I think Aretha sings jazz with her own intrepetation. I, for one, like the way she sings jazz!
sibun7 4 years ago
Know any singers who can do a cover of a hit song and make it her own? I know of one. Her name is Aretha Franklin, and she has done it many times!
sibun7 4 years ago
Murky1177 -- Surely the interesting thing whenever Aretha sings a "jazzy" standard is how her gospel derived melodic improvisation compares with what you call the "proper" way to do it. Perhaps Aretha is singing jazz with an unmatchable melismatic fluency and emotional rhapsody. Perhaps she ADDS to jazz what is lacking in most jazz singers. And that's before we consider the unique 24 carat gold sound of her voice.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
Are you suggesting, drwinkle, that there are not distinct styles of music? Perdido, by the way, is not "jazzy" in quotes but straight-up jazz -- a Juan Tizol classic from the Ellington book. My preference, stated with great reverence to the Queen, is for songs in which she makes stylistic choices that fit the music. Her "Moody's Mood," for example, changes the tempo and style to fit her blue-shaded choices.
murky1177 2 years ago
Thanks for the erudite reply. But I don't see why you ask if I'm suggesting that there are no distinct styles of music. A tone-deaf, or deaf, person might think so; not me. Rather, I was suggesting that Aretha's early standards performances offer a tantalising transition point, as a new kind of singer, a secular, post-gospel pop singer (if you will), emerges before her style does and excels in an established and very difficult style before moving on.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
Comment removed
MilesLikeDavis09 2 years ago
I'm not sure what post-gospel is supposed to mean. I'm tempted to throw it in the dustbin with post-racial. Gospel never went anywhere. (Neither has race). Her tribute album to Dinah Washington on Columbia (decades before this Perdido) shows Ree followed Dinah's lead, blending and moving btw blues, jazz, r&b. Ree then got aboard the train Sam Cooke and Ray Charles were on. Now, she rode that train to heaven! I don't see how you're telling her history.
murky1177 2 years ago
cont...
I think Aretha has what shrinks call emotional intelligence in buckets. I repeat: her rhapsodising approach to melody is unmatched, to my ears. You can dryly source and locate her all you want -- and no doubt I could do it too after a quick WIkipedia -- but I know what I "feel" in her voice, and in no other voice. And crucially, she can do it in standards too.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
drwinkle: Thank you for clarifying. I agree that Ree does have great emotional intelligence. I don't think some of her note choices are appropriate to jazz. End of.
I admire what you have to say about her emotional intelligence; I think it's quite astute. But I'm disappointed that rather than acknowledging that your claims about her background skip whole chunks of black musical history that you instead belittle that knowledge.
murky1177 2 years ago
I'd also like to ask you a question. Are you suggesting that Aretha offers emotional intelligence *without* that harmonic intelligence? And do you think such an interpretation or designation has anything to do with expectations of a kind of black rawness?
As for me, I think Ree has both kinds and shows them in many settings. Sometimes in jazz. Most often in gospel and soul. The few lapses I can recall don't take away from her royal status.
murky1177 2 years ago
A couple of people have seemed irritated by "post-gospel". I meant that Aretha herself, in the early 60s, is reasonably thought of as post-gospel (not just performing in church), and also pre-soul.
Murky: your speculation on my dubious attribution to Ree of "black rawness" is astute, but unfounded. She is anything but raw!
drwinkle101 2 years ago
Thank you for answering my question about the raw and the cooked. I have no dispute with any of your preferences. But your pre- and post- settings seem just to be your own personal code. Aretha wasn't the first gospel singer to perform secular music (nor the first to go back and do gospel again after performing secular) and she wasn't before soul. She's just a great musician who took things to another level.
murky1177 2 years ago
cont.........
As a fan of jazz -- of Parker, Coltrane, & etc. -- I would need to be schizoid in order to think that black music is raw, somehow "primitive". Actually I'm interested in how much harmonic sophistication Aretha brings to standards. As I said, I haven't analysed her melodic lines, but I suspect it is quite a lot, and perhaps more tastefully, sparingly, deployed than by most jazz singers. And informed by the unmatched vocal timbre, and rhapsodic freedom.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
Until you've done this analysis -- one that will show you that (I'd say until the 70s) her harmonic choices in jazz were only from the blues scale -- we should let this part rest. Surely, you can prefer whatever you like. I just like to hear more harmonic options in my jazz than Aretha usually brings to that genre. In other words, I want to hear jazz singers (Betty, Sarah, Nina, Jeanne Lee, Dianne Reeves, Andy Bey) who sound like they've listened to "Parker, Coltrane, & etc."
murky1177 2 years ago
You have certainly listened to more jazz singers than me. I am well up for all kinds of exploration in solos, but I have to say I like songs to be not too far from their original form. Ella blowing like a bebop horn is great, but I've often found jazz vocal stylings somewhat arch and self-consciously clever. The Cleo Laine sophisticated smirk has been replicated many times by others, and never fails to annoy me. Cont...................
drwinkle101 2 years ago
Well, perhaps we've reached the crux of the matter and an area where we can both agree. Cleo Laine?!?! Yuck.
murky1177 2 years ago
Nina, by the way, is a good example of a sometime jazz singer who keeps it relatively simple, and the songs are better for it. All personal preference, as you say, but its the nub of our debate.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
I do think, as well, that time and place have an effect on vocal style. Sarah and Ella were trying to break the color barrier and earn respect and recognition for black music in supper clubs and high-end locations. They got their starts in the 40s. Aretha, coming along later, didn't have to fight for the "respectability" of black music in the same way. So, perhaps the archness you (and I, too) hear in some earlier jazz has to do with those pressures.
murky1177 2 years ago
I respect your musico-cultural erudition, but it seems a bit regressive here. The elitist ("Aren't I just the height of sophisticated chic!?") smirk was, I believe, invented by Cleo Laine and she went international only in the 1970s. You see it on the younger female jazz singers, particularly white ones, who perhaps (and deploying culture from another angle) are flagging a triumph over gender suppression, Representing (in a hip-hop sense) a suppressed music...... cont'
drwinkle101 2 years ago
As you said in an earlier post, you haven't listened to very many jazz singers. I don't even count many of the singers you refer to as jazz singers, in the sense of deriving from African-American musical style (tho of course not having to be black). Your hip-hop claim is, frankly, nonsensical. You've become a bit hard to follow. So I'll close my part by saying long live jazz and long live Aretha to do her best in all her endeavors. Best to you.
murky1177 2 years ago
Thanks for informing me that our exchange is ended! Just allow me to deal with your idea that I'd become hard to follow, and specifically that my "hip-hop claim is ... nonsensical". I was talking not about any hip-hop musical style, and rather saying that modern women jazz singers' often smug performances might be clarified by thinking of how proud hip hop singers musically "represent" and overcome cultural marginaliation. Come to think, your cold superior tone suggests that you are gay.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
Considering the Queen of Soul's many gay male fans, this was not the wisest post.
murky1177 2 years ago
cont'.....
and wishing to emulate the success of arch-Dame Cleo. Aretha, of course, looks knowing because she knows how how to sing.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
As for archness in what we hear, I don't think Sarah etc, are annoyingly arch. They just do a bit too much, for me. I like melodies to be elaborated upon no more than in Frank's way. Keep the soloing in the solos, I say.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
cont...
Musicologists no doubt have compared in detail soul singing with jazz singing. I can't; but Aretha's brief "fusion" fascinates me. It all sounds somehow fresher than Vaughan etc., indeed, than any other sung jazz I've heard. More uplifting, even spiritual, which is appropriate. And I'm a jazz player as well as a fan.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
Comment removed
MilesLikeDavis09 2 years ago
If it sounds fresher to you, then I must wonder how much of the Vaughan, Fitzgerald, Holiday discography you've listened to. Especially since Ree is coming straight out of Dian Washington, who was herself influenced by Billie Holiday, who emulated (with her thin voice) Bessie Smith -- who influenced Ree's other model, Mahalia Jackson. If Ree's jazz touches you, that's great. But it doesn't seem the claim that her jazz is new, or even jazz singing at all holds up.
murky1177 2 years ago
* Dian Washington should read Dinah Washington
murky1177 2 years ago
If you're a jazz musician as well as a fan, you *are* a musicologist of a kind. So I think it's a little bit of a cop out to claim you find Aretha fresher but decline to say how/why, claiming only eggheads would do that. I mean, it's ok, but if you want people to hear what you hear, you have to explain it to us.
murky1177 2 years ago
Yes I should try to explain why I think I find Aretha fresher than Vaughan and so on. You speak as someone who's read up on Aretha's provenance. I am not as informed as you, and speak more intuitively as a musician. I think that Vaughan and "proper" jazz singers feel it incumbent to complicate melodies with altered notes. They are, as jazz singers, harmonically smart, showy.
drwinkle101 2 years ago
cont.. It should also be noted that from Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk to Sarah Vaughan, many of the original jazz singers began playing music in the church and have fluency in both styles. I do think, however, that the styles (while overlapping) are not identical. On occasion, I think the Queen makes a bad choice. If one is just a fan of Aretha, one might like everything she does. I, however, am a fan of jazz *And a fan of Aretha's. I like to hear both at their best.
murky1177 2 years ago
i love the way she scats at the end...voice is so diverse till it aint funny..go Queen!
jigganikkanj 5 years ago