Ethel Waters JL 12.ii.11

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

[Ian Thumwood]

Still mid-way through listening to this on I-player and thought the thread merited a response.

My initial impression was that this was a very technically gifted singer but the music really seemed of it's age even if the early ,1925 recordings were pretty startling. I find pre-1926 jazz records to be very curious for the reason that "swing" is often considered such a fundemental element of jazz that you imagine this was something that was present from the very start. As some of the recordings demonstrate, this was not really the case. The "history" element of this programme is what hugely interests me and I do understand that her contemporary audience wouldn't really have worried or considered whether she was or wasn't a jazz artist. All told, a fascinating insight into black, popular music.

My problem with Ethel Waters is that the music sounds like someone who was "in jazz" but was not really a jazz musician. You can hear from tracks like "Stormy Weather" that her prefromance still had a bearing when the likes of Charlie Mingus recorded the music later in the mid-fifties. Compared to some of the truly awful white singers of the 20's, 30's and 40's, Waters was obviously head and shoulders above them with regard to her talent and the tracks I've listened to would suggest that she definately was not what used to be referred to as a "canary." However, the cloud of whether she was performing jazz does add more than a hint of suspicion that she was a "pop" singer and not really a jazz musician although I would agree she has more credibility than a previous subject like Bing Crosby who I think was truly dreadful. I am convinced that there are artists (mainly singers) who seem to be in the epicentre of what jazz is about during their heyday but over time seem to drift further away from what me now might define as jazz.

As I have stated before, with a number of obvious exceptions, old singers tend to make me cringe. I'm afraid that Ethel Waters doesn't transcend her era to my ears in a way that Ella or Billie might do. That said, I would like to set hares running to see just how encompassing the defination of "jazz" or "jazz-influenced" singers might be on this board. If we can have Ethel Waters featured on "Jazz Library", would it also not be possible to include someone like Randy Crawford whose music would more readily fit "Jazz Library" remit than last week's subject? Having recently looked through Cook & Morton's Penguin Guide, I still can't find any reviews of Dianne Reeve's records - someone I would consider not only 100% jazz but one of the top 5 female jazz singers of any era. To my mind, this is a shameful omission.

Having read the frequent and emotive posts on this and the old board about what isn't "jazz", it would be fascinating to read if anyone is more tolerant of modern singers. As the defination of jazz and the range of influences the music absorbs becomes ever wider with each passing generation, might it even be possible in a 2024 edition of "Jazz Library" for a programme to be dedicated to the music of Chaka Khan, Queen Latifah or Mary J Blige as they become more divorced from where popular music is as their career's progress? Setting aside the obvious reservations where their work is swamped in the goo of pop production values, the overlap between Black, American musical culture and jazz always seems to be ambiguous within the more "commercial" elements of this music.