Word: vocalists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Jazz musicians are also beginning to grapple with the wealth of potential standards written after 1960, an off-and-on trend renewed in earnest a few years ago when vocalist Cassandra Wilson turned the Monkees' Last Train to Clarksville into a torchy, caramelized ballad nearly worthy of Billie Holiday. Herbie Hancock followed with The New Standard, an entire album of rock-era tunes in which he improvised on changes derived from the Beatles, Sade and Kurt Cobain, among others. Joshua Redman's forthcoming Timeless Tales (for Changing Times) (Warner Bros.) covers similar ground, with songs by Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder...
...This vocalist had the misfortune to come of age in the early '60s, just when male jazz singers were going out of style. Unrecorded for 22 years, Bey, now 58, issued a comeback CD, Ballads, Blues and Bey, in 1996. On this follow-up, he makes dramatic use of his four-octave range against spare but inventive arrangements of tunes from the further reaches of the great American songbook. On ballads, Bey's voice can have a humanizing tightness, a vulnerability that draws a listener in. But when the tempo quickens he can really belt it out: the New York...
...prominence of late, with ripened sex appeal and flawless lounge credentials. In all the fuss, though, what has been neglected is the mastery of his songwriting, full of curious melodies, startling chord changes and the catchiest hooks this side of Top 40s radio. With lyricist Hal David and vocalist Dionne Warwick, he produced some of the best pop songs of the '60s, at the moment when rock was sending the pure songwriting tradition to its final death throes...
...fact, the story of Catatonia since their conception in 1992 has been one of almost-embarrassing mediocrity. If I had passed lead vocalist Cerys Lewis on the streets busking covers of Jefferson Airplane songs (you know, if I was living in Cardiff and shopping at Debenhams in 1992), I might have thought that the girl had something going. But I wouldn't have given her my bus fare...
Guitarist and other vocalist Mark Roberts thought better, and so started a band with Lewis. Catatonia went on to take Owen Powell on guitar, Paul Jones on bass, an Aled Richards on drums, all of whom are Cardiff cads save the last, who is a Llanelli lad. Their first album Way Beyond Blue came out in 1996 to high praise from critics, but entered the charts as 40. And stayed there. The same year, they re-released their most renowned underground record Bleed, which did not even chart in the top 40. 1997 saw the single...