Rabshakeh

Yma Sumac – Mambo!

A.C. Reed – I'm In The Wrong Business!

I would have just worn a hat.

Zbigniew Namysłowski Quintet – Kujaviak Goes Funky

Joanne Grauer Introducing Lorraine Feather

Naná – Amazonas Milosc and Lester Bowie - Not Two

Record industry decided it was offensive and started using "country and western" is my understanding. I don't know. The discount bin?

Don't think so. It's not 'Hillbilly' either.

Really? That's funny. Anyway. He does a good job on that record. Master craftsmen can work even when anything but excited, it appears. I'd just call this Country? By Hillbilly I understand pre-war fiddle, blues and folk tunes by Southern white performers. George Jones is surely right dead centre at the heart of country music at its finest. Regardless, I like a record shop that files all that stuff together with blues and folk and the rest, ideally with lots of long out of print 60s reissues of the pre-war people, and a couple of off the beaten track records from the 90s by blues guys from random cities I have never visited.

Will the music be on bandcamp? I would happily buy but I am post-CD. Book, for sure.

Ronstadt had Nelson Riddle I think? That album is okay as a result. He was clearly excited to be involved. Not sure the record is okay enough that I would want to listen to it again, though, but I didn't hate it. Strange that the Stewart albums seemingly made no effort whatsoever. Those arrangements are nothing. You'd think that after the first album became such a mega hit they'd have tried bothering with the others. But no.

You're losing me there. I like a separate folk and blues section.

No hate for Mr. Stewart here. Love the Faces and love the solo stuff, at least where he's singing blues. I have an ongoing joke with my wife about how much she loves Rod Stewart. But those Great American Songbook records are truly truly hideous. It's amazing that a singer with such a feel for soul and blues can fail so badly at jazz. So badly. It does show that there is a gap.

Bonus points if it includes Latin stuff.

This might be a key distinction. If it is phrasing, then Frank Sinatra should certainly be a jazz singer through most of his career. If it is improvisation, then maybe no. But query where that leaves someone like Joe Turner. I think if you take it too far, then only the Sarah Vaughans, Betty Carters and Carmen McRaes would be jazz singers. Neither improvisation nor phrasing is going to squeak Rod Stewart through the door though, sadly. Yes. That's a fair point. Despite how core he is to the genre, Charlie Parker is quite esoteric!

Interesting. I agree, but I do like shops that have a single "Jazz, Soul and Funk" section. That feels quite natural.

There are also very varied approaches. Jazz vocals are sometimes regarded as an acquired taste, but I am pretty sure I could play that Nancy Wilson / Cannonball record to anyone and they'd bond with it immediately, perhaps perceiving it to be a soul record (which it is too). I'm less confident I could win someone over with a Betty Carter or June Christy record.

Otherwise it will just become the Maggie Nichols thread.

I am interested in forum members' views on this question. What brings Sarah Vaughan, Jimmy Rushing, Karin Krog, Nancy Wilson and Blossom Dearie together? There's a wide range of vocal styles there, from what would conventionally be seen as jazz vocals, to blues shouter to hipster singer songwriter to pure soul. Why are Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra sometimes in this category and sometimes not, even when singing standards? Not interested in drawing sharp genre lines here, and more in your gut level responses to these artists and their music, and the question of what a jazz vocalist *is*. For the present, it is probably sensible to leave the avant jazz vocalists out of this.

Miroslav Vitous Group – Miroslav Vitous Group

Jazz Group Arkhangelsk – Portrait. Very impressed by this one.

How’s this one? Never seen it.

Stanley Turrentine - ZT's Blues Hard to understand how this one could have sat in the vaults so long.

A good weekend's listening.