Jazz with Wordless Vocals - Choruses or Single Voice

[JSngry]

On that Basie side, check out the modulations on "Girl Talk"...on an instrument, I got modulations, you just read the new key and finger the right notes, different fingerings.

I suppose the muscle memory thing is the same for a singer, but as somebody whose sight-singing skill were not...particularly developed, to hear a chart like this and knowing pretty much full well that the singers can do this shit all day long, just READ whatever as it comes, and do it RIGHT, in not a whole lot of takes (maybe just one), that's a level of skill/professionalism to be able to do that, just show up to the gig, read those charts ad don't sweat too much, if any.

[Teasing the Korean]

I think I may hear Laura Leslie in the Basie group, but I can't say for sure.

[JSngry]

I wish that Dinah Shore clip was up on you Tube, it's like, full Basie instrumentation, only voices. And they nail it, if not exactly in pocket, in every other way. She credits the MD with the arrangement, next time I catch the episode, I'll take not...Earl Brown, IIRC (not Earle Brown LOL)

[JSngry]

Oh, fuck, brain fart. It wasn't "Everyday I have The Blues", it was "All Right, Ok, You Win".

[Teasing the Korean]

20 hours ago, JSngry said:

A better quality air:

 

This is fantastic.  It kind of has that post-Jesus Christ Superstar/Hair-era aesthetic of Jesus freaks, the ecology, and back to nature.  The 1959 swingin' young couple in the city were probably too old to have embraced this sort of thing, while being too young to have a kid old enough to move onto a commune. 

[JSngry]

And Dinah Shore had yet to return to the airwaves. That was still in the future.

[Teasing the Korean]

3 minutes ago, JSngry said:

And Dinah Shore had yet to return to the airwaves. That was still in the future.

Her vibrato had gotten much worse in the interim. 

[JSngry]

It was all that noise that Burt Reynolds made her have.

[Teasing the Korean]

Back when I used to DJ, this album was perpetually in the crate, because of this one track.

 

[sgcim]

7 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Forget?  I just posted it the other day in the Euro Modernism thread in misc. music.  But yeah, let's add it here!

This one doesn't have that swingin'-young-couple-in-the-city jazz sound, as it dates from a few year's later, but it is a nice example of the Now Sound with wordless vocals.

 

Yes, and that album cover!

Which Gabor Szabo track are you referring to?  The video you linked is an entire two-album set.

Sorry, I thought I cued it up to the track, which is Yearning, written and vocalised by GS himself. GS and Gary McFarland appealed to swingin' couples of the 60s so much, that they included a track of GS' in a swingin' couples party scene in "The Queen's Gambit", which incidentally was written by the same novelist who wrote "The Hustler", and "The Man Who Fell To Earth"!

Despite the album cover, that Bert Kaempfert music sounds like it should appeal to swingin' couples on Geritol!

[Teasing the Korean]

8 minutes ago, sgcim said:

Sorry, I thought I cued it up to the track, which is Yearning, written and vocalised by GS himself. GS and Gary McFarland appealed to swingin' couples of the 60s so much, that they included a track of GS' in a swingin' couples party scene in "The Queen's Gambit", which incidentally was written by the same novelist who wrote "The Hustler", and "The Man Who Fell To Earth"!

Thanks for clarifying.  Was "Yearning" on the Simpatico album?  That one has eluded me. 

[sgcim]

Just now, Teasing the Korean said:

Thanks for clarifying.  Was "Yearning" on the Simpatico album?  That one has eluded me. 

I think it was from Spellbound. Thanks for the Fifth Dimension (and all of the other tracks!) track! I've always liked them and the great Bones Howe production- now I love them!

[Teasing the Korean]

22 minutes ago, sgcim said:

I think it was from Spellbound. Thanks for the Fifth Dimension (and all of the other tracks!) track! I've always liked them and the great Bones Howe production- now I love them!

Yes, Spellbinder.  I have that one, just checked.

Here is a fantastic track by Barbara Moore from a DeWolfe Library album.

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, sgcim said:

Despite the album cover, that Bert Kaempfert music sounds like it should appeal to swingin' couples on Geritol!

 

but, it's the hip 50s Miles Davis sound reimagined for a whole new demographic! Two beat head, 4/4 for the solo, drummer dropping bombs, Red's comp passed among the sections, how is that not anything but JAZZ?!?!?!?!??!?! Oh, look, it's even got a Harmon solo!

See, were did all the jazz audience go? They went to Germany and bought Bert Kaemfert records and sent them back to their left-behind illegetimate offspring, of whom there were more than the census showed on their books.

Them sexy young people on the cover knew what time it was, and they didn't need to wind their stems about it!

And even if some or none of that is true...I can say with totaly honest (and sincerity!) that I either learned or got familiarity reinforced) by listening to the Easy Listening stations that programmed this stuff. LOTS of tunes available, and if you were a kid who totally shut down on Top 40 (pretty much cold turkey, with a few months of Zappa as musical methadone) to go all in on "jazz"...for post-Coltrane, underground FM was there (until it wasn't), but for the standards (not even sure they were called that then?), the MOR stations were there until the record collection and fake books caught up.

Just saying...Bert Kaemfert, yeah, I get what a shitshow it is once it gets outside of its own bubble, but inside that bubble...I appreciate it and in the way that only a survivor of that particular abuse can, like it. And even more funnily, it was YEARS before I noticed the voices everywhere in those charts! Whoever mixed that shit definitely had a total plan.

And ojh, BTW, fwiw, Herb Geller took and kept that gig for a good long time.

 

 

[Teasing the Korean]

2 hours ago, sgcim said:

Despite the album cover, that Bert Kaempfert music sounds like it should appeal to swingin' couples on Geritol!

Never cared for him.

[JSngry]

But he turned down the Beatles!

[mhatta]

I love Jazz with wordless vocal choruses in 70's -- well, I love 50/60's stuff too, but 70's ones sounds to me more sophisticated and adventurous.

One example that comes to my mind is Communications '72 by Stan Getz & Michel Legrand.

Another example is Love Songs by Mike Westbrook Concert Band.

And the Singers Unlimited is, of course, very good...

 

[Teasing the Korean]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

But he turned down the Beatles!

He produced the early Beatles records while he was at Polydor.  Kaempfert had nothing to do with the Fabs' Decca audition. 

[JSngry]

Another myth shattered.

Wait, it wasn't him whose tie that Ringo tried to cut, only Ringo had bad aim and since it was a bow tie, Ringo ended up giving BK a botched tracheotomy? That's not why BK spoke with a rasp and modeled his Hit Record Sound on the Miles group?

I see right now that these DVDs of Behind The Music that I got at the DAV store must be bootlegs...

Either that or there's a coverup going on.

[Tom in RI]

I generally don’t care for wordless vocals but on this cd:

https://www.discogs.com/El-Eco-Featuring-Guillermo-Nojechowicz-Two-Worlds/release/16343925
 

I find the wordless contributions quite apropos. YMMV.

Tom

[Teasing the Korean]

10 hours ago, Tom in RI said:

I generally don’t care for wordless vocals but on this cd:

https://www.discogs.com/El-Eco-Featuring-Guillermo-Nojechowicz-Two-Worlds/release/16343925
 

I find the wordless contributions quite apropos. YMMV.

Tom

This track is nice:

 

If we are getting into wordless vocals in Latin Jazz, then we open up into Shorty Rogers, Perez Prado, and Thee Great Les Baxter...

 

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[Teasing the Korean]

...and this amazing track by Cal Tjader:

 

A must for your noir playlist:

 

Stan Kenton and June Christy on a track titled..."June Christy."

 

18 hours ago, mhatta said:

I love Jazz with wordless vocal choruses in 70's -- well, I love 50/60's stuff too, but 70's ones sounds to me more sophisticated and adventurous.

The 70s examples sound to me more decadent, suggesting the jet set and fondue parties.  Of the ones you mentioned:

Communications '72 by Stan Getz & Michel Legrand - Love this, and it is overdue for a spin!

Another example is Love Songs by Mike Westbrook Concert Band - Never heard of this, but I like the track you posted.

And the Singers Unlimited is, of course, very good... the track you posted is on the essential MPS compilation titled Snowflakes.  It perfectly encapsulates 70s international decadence.  

Did you like that Vocal Shades and Tones track that I posted earlier?  That is very much in the bag you are describing.

Edited July 27, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[Teasing the Korean]

Shifting gears, The Hi-Los and All That Jazz includes some wordless vocals, including on this track.

 

Les Baxter fan Sun Ra employs some wordless female vocals on "Circe," from one of my fave Sun Ra albums, When Sun Comes Out.

 

[Teasing the Korean]

More Bob Thompson:

 

And...

 

[Teasing the Korean]

On 7/25/2021 at 6:31 PM, mikeweil said:

There are two tracks with a choir on Milt Jackson's Vibrations LP:

Listening now!