Word: jazze
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Lorenz Hart, Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer, the great composers of the great era of American popular music. Those songbooks became the foundation of a legacy, the single source for a musical standard that Fitzgerald, as much as anyone, helped make timeless. "Some kids in Italy call me 'Mama Jazz,'" she recalled. "I thought that was so cute. As long as they don't call me 'Grandma Jazz...
Senior-citizen status may have been her chronological due, but it never seemed to fit the refined beat of her music, which--young fans in Italy to the contrary--was less straight jazz than pop on an elegant upswing. There is no doubt that Billie Holiday had a darker genius. Lady Day's jazz was steeped in the magic and mystery and doom of the blues. Ella's art had a sunnier side, a more adaptive quality that let her be, if not an absolute original, a peerless interpreter, a superb vocal actress who could snuggle into Porter's playfulness...
...married and divorced twice. Her first husband was Benny Kornegay, a shipyard worker; her second, the jazz bassist Ray Brown. In the past decade, her many illnesses seemed incompatible with the bell-like clarity of her voice, one recognized by octogenarians and Generation Xers alike. She was performing as late as 1992, but the physical debilitation was crushing, aggravated mostly by diabetes that eventually led to the amputation of her legs below the knees in 1993. But Fitzgerald made no mythology of her personal life. Shy onstage, ill at ease in interviews, she let her songs do all the talking...
Roberts creates his very own classic with Time and Circumstance, a theme album with emotional echoes of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, another classic exploration of the nature and meaning of love. This new CD, without words, tells the story of two lovers who meet, suffer an unspecified loss--it could be a child, it could be some other tragedy--and use that pain to renew their relationship. The songs may be elegiac and romantic, but Roberts and his trio--Wynton's brother Jason Marsalis on drums and David Grossman on bass--never trade emotional complexity...
Roberts has explored both Gershwin and love in the past--notably on his previous CD, the politely sedate Gershwin for Lovers. But Time and Circumstance contains a message that goes beyond romance. This music "speaks to what jazz is all about," says Roberts. "It helps musicians to see an attitude of affirmation and acceptance, never losing the ability to fight toward a higher level of understanding and engagement in public life." On both of his smart new albums, Roberts takes listeners to that higher level. And always with soul...