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LOVE TO SING BETTY BENNETT with the ANDRE PREVIN TRIO

My father, a man of otherwise broad awareness, was

for years unable to understand what I saw in jazz, or to

grant that there was anything artistically valid in it. Him-

self a musician, he has tastes that lean to Mozart and

Reginald Kell. I share his tastes, but he did not share

mine, and it was this imbalance that irked me. And so,

from the time I was 12, I kept up a running argumenta-

tive assault on the poor man, ramming down his throat

any and every recording that I thought might communi-

cate the spirit of jazz to him. I made negligible progress.

And then one day I knew I'd found the piece that

would get through to him: Bill Evans’ performance of

Young and Foolish. Because Evans in that piece used so

much of the Chopin E minor Prelude, 1 figured it would

speak to my father in a musical vocabularly similar to

his own. I was right. He liked it very much. “But,” he

added, “you can’t tell me that’s jazz...”

That tore it. “What do you mean, it isn’t jazz?” I

demanded. “What is you definition of jazz? Evidently,

if it’s bad and you don’t like it, you’re willing to call it jazz. But if it’s good and you do like it, you claim it as

‘classical’ music. Is that it?”

He chuckled, and I knew I'd made my point. We’ve

been straight ever since.

Now it happens that something similar to my father’s

now-abandoned attitude to jazz obtains among jazz fans

—and critics—where popular music is concerned, and

particularly when singers are the subject of discussion.

If the singer is bad or just so-so, the aficionados will

let the “popular music” world have him. But if he’s good,

and they like him, they will claim him as their own,

and as a “jazz singer.” Look at the case of Frank Sinatra. A few years ago,

he was a pop singer. Today he’s being called a jazz singer. When did this curious metamorphosis take place?

I suggest that it occurred precisely at that point when

jazz fans and critics could no longer bear to admit that

and artist who so gassed them as a mere practitioner of

the looked-down-upon art of popular singing. They pro-

moted him to “jazz singer’ and thus made it possible to

enjoy his work without having their feeling of special

and superior perception threatened by it.

How do they define a jazz singer? Well, there’s a lot

of talk about musicality and “getting the feeling out of

the words.” But that is a requisite of all good singing,

and by that definition, Maria Callas is a jazz singer.

That standard proving unsatisfactory, they'll talk about

earthiness and rawness of emotion. But by that definition,

Sinatra is more a jazz singer than Ella Fitzgerald, and

the jazz fans won't sit still for that. So finally, it descends

still more imprecise talk about “the jazz feeling.”

The trouble with almost all this theorizing is that it’s

hooey. I submit that there is no such thing as a jazz

singer; that the- term is as fundamentally anomalous as

“chamber music singer” would be; that when words and

voice are added to music, you have another art form;

that the singer’s art has at least as much in common

with the actor’s art as with the musician’s; that singing

is an important art by itself; and that Sinatra and Betty

Bennett and others in their trade are direct cultural

descendants of the French trouvéres and troubadours,

who were also in the business of telling emotional stories

through song; and that his art of presenting songs must

be understood in its own terms, not as a subdivision of

SIDE ONE

1. ILOVE TO SING 5:14

Arlen-Harburg

Remick Music Corp.—ASCAP

IT’S EASY TO REMEMBER 5:14

Rodgers-Hart

Famous Music Corp.—ASCAP

2. IT ISN'T SO GOOD 2°37

Landesman-Wolf

Buckeye Music, Inc.-—ASCAP

3. OVER THE RAINBOW 3:10

Arlen-Harburg |

Leo Feist, Inc.—ASCAP

4. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE 4:42

' Burke-Van Heusen

Burke & Van Heusen, Inc.—ASCAP

5. ALL AT ONCE 2:lt

Rodgers-Hart |

Chappell & Co., Inc.—ASCAP

SIDE TWO

1. WHO CARES eee I. Gershwin

New World Music Corp.—ASCAP

2. YOUNG AND FOOLISH J305

Horwitt-Hague

Chappell & Co., Inc-——ASCAP

3. LOVE ISN’T BORN (IT’S MADE) — 2:45

Loesser-Schwartz

M. Witmark & Sons—ASCAP

4. THEN LL BE TIRED OF YOU 3:3]

Schwartz-Harburg

Harms, Inc.—ASCAP

5. DOWN WITH LOVE 1:58

Arlen-Harburg

Chappell & Co., Inc.-—ASCAP

6. IT NEVER WAS YOU 3:46

Anderson-Weill

DeSylva, Brown &

Henderson, Inc.—ASCAP

Personnel: Easy To Remember, Young And Foolish, Then Ill Be Tired Of You — ANDRE PREVIN, piano; RED MITCHELL, Bass; Irv CoTT- LER, drums; CONTE CANDOLI, trumpet.

Personnel: All At Once, I Love To Sing, Down With Love — ANDRE PREVIN, piano; BUDDY CLARK, bass; STAN LEVEY, drums.

Personnel: It Isn’t So Good, Over The Rain- bow, Like Someone In Love, Who Cares, Love Isn’t Born It’s Made, It Never Was You — ANDRE PREVIN, piano; RED MITCHELL, bass; Irv COTTLER, drums.

All arrangements by ANDRE PREVIN. Produced and directed by Jack LEwIs. Cover photograph by STAN LEVEY. Cover design by STEPHEN HAAS STUDIO.

This is a High Fidelity Recording. Adjust your equipment to the R.1.A.A. curve for best results.

jazz. You can’t come to understand opera by equating

it with the symphony. For one thing, opera came before

the symphony; and the song came before jazz.

If this viewpoint is likely to prove an unpopular one,

I have the consolation of knowing that a number of per-

sons whom I respect agree with it. One of them is Betty

Bennett. Betty, who one prominent critic believes can be

in the top echelon of “jazz singers” if she wants to be,

put it this way: “I want people to say I’m a good singer.

If they also say that I sing with a jazz feeling, so much

the better....”

It is one of the misfortunes of recent pop and/or jazz

history that Betty hasn’t been singing during the last |

five years. In 1952, after singing with Woody Herman, ©

Claude Thornhill, Charlie Barnet and Charlie Ventura,

Betty married and became the mother of two, and re-

tired completely from music.

But a hunger, like murder, will out, and not long ago

she found she couldn’t torerate any longer to go on not

singing. And so, she made this album. Three days later,

she opened at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago, and I heard

her for the first time. I was soon wondering how Id

missed hearing her before.

The most striking thing was her phrasing. She had an

extremely well-developed breath-control, and it looked

as 1f she were using operatic breathing. Later, she con-

firmed that she was. Because of it, she was capable of

sustaining beautifully long phrases and retaining reserve

push even at the end of them—something very few of

the “jazz singers” can do, though, of course, technical

primitiveness is in such cases rationalized into a virtue.

I noticed, too, that she had a very facile voice and an

inventiveness that made me think of Sarah Vaughan, at

first. Later, when I was more familiar with her work, the

resemblance faded. I suppose that’s natural. We try to

relate all new experience to past experience and then

abandon the comparison when we have grasped it in

itself.

Then there was her clear enunciation and her han- -

dling of lyrics. The intelligence of the woman showed

immediately. Too many singers seem either to make

words subservient to music, or else sacrifice the music to

put the lyrics across. Betty was able to work on both

at once.

Finally, there was the intangible of personality. At

times she sounded like a little girl in braids whom you'd

like to pat on the head; at others like the adult and

beautiful woman-of-the-world that most men dream of

when they have grown up fully. Because of the breadth

of the image her singing conjured up, it struck me that

she should have a very wide appeal, now that she was

back in music.

Each side of the album is arranged to sound like a

set of Betty’s in a club.

I leave it to you whether you want to make the effort

of fitting Betty Bennett into a pops or jazz category. For

myself, I listen to her as a singer, and the only decision

I have to make is whether I should lay this album on

my father.

GENE LEES

Managing Editor

Down Beat Magazine

UNITED ARTISTS RECORDS / 729 SEVENTH AVENUE / NEW YORK 19, NEW YORK QUSPEETID +395 a © 1959 UNITED ARTISTS RECORDS, INC.

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