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Helen Merrill


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Yes, her singing sounds like pillow talk, yet on closer listening she's improvising, with mood, time, emotion, and is closely involved in the arrangements. From her first "hit" session with Clifford Brown, to the exciting unpredictable music recorded with Dick Katz, last night's Jazz From Blue Lake featured the music of Helen Merrill. If you missed it, here's another chance to listen. Helen Merrill : www.bluelake.org/ondemand (image by K. Abe).

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I love Helen Merrill and I have a theory of why, at least to me, she sounds better on her '50s sessions than later.

Given the timbre of her voice, she needs to be mic'd with a condenser microphone, which was most commonly used in the 1950s; my experience is that later engineers tend to always use ribbon mics; the effect, with a whispy voice like hers, is to deaden the sound of the voice (ribbons have a softening effect) and cause a loss of presence. Condensers, on the other hand, have high gain and just a generally fuller presence. This is why, to me, she sounds much better on the Clifford Brown sessions than, say, the Gil Evans re-do of Where Flamingos Fly.

just my opinion.

 

Edited by AllenLowe
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Much as I love her early sessions, I find myself returing more often to some of her later recordings.

Jelena Ana Milcetic, her "Croatian" record, is a particular favourite. Not a conventional vocal jazz album by any means and her singing voice may have lost all traces of "pillow talk" by that point, but it's hauntingly beautiful and very moving.

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21 hours ago, corto maltese said:

Much as I love her early sessions, I find myself returing more often to some of her later recordings.

Jelena Ana Milcetic, her "Croatian" record, is a particular favourite. Not a conventional vocal jazz album by any means and her singing voice may have lost all traces of "pillow talk" by that point, but it's hauntingly beautiful and very moving.

MI0000160632.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Not bad either ....

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