{"id":34,"date":"2007-10-14T14:05:50","date_gmt":"2007-10-14T18:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/2007\/10\/singers_of_the_songs\/"},"modified":"2011-04-28T16:35:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T20:35:05","slug":"singers_of_the_songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2007\/10\/singers_of_the_songs.html","title":{"rendered":"Singers of the songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corrine Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza and Leonard Cohen are not voices necessarily dear to fans of serious jazz, but Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter don’t alone make River: The Joni Letters<\/i><\/a> a must-hear.<\/p>\n


\nIn yesterday’s post I didn’t do justice to the singers who deliver Joni Mitchell’s art songs<\/a> — the deep yet on-the-surface satisfying lyrics which are, after all, more her main metier than the crafting of thrilling melodies for strict performance or inspired improvisation, which is what pianist Hancock and his musicians give her here.
\nMitchell’s career<\/a> as a pop artist is surely grounded in the integration of her persona as singer-songwriter-performer-icon-composer (in the sense of working up indelible music with gifted collaborators the studio, rather than alone at a sheaf of scoring paper or with Finale<\/a>). She’s like Bob Dylan<\/a> that way, and similarly, her works may be covered by others, but seldom then have the idiosyncratic power they do when their auteur delivers the goods, him\/herself.
\nNow, I’m fascinated by instrumental music, and most intrigued by it here. Hancock, with arranger-producer Larry Klein (Mitchell’s husband 1982-’93), succeeds in framing, recontextualizing, expanding and weaving completing around Mitchell’s material from albums 1970 – 1980, and “Tea Leaf Prophecy” (1988) with the Artist Herself singing. The ensemble sound — Herbie working soul vamps as well a harmonically rich, suspensefully ambiguous ambient fields, crosshatched by Lionel Loueke’s plucked guitar, with Shorter’s keening, sweet & sour saxes here and there (sometimes in the fore), Dave Holland’s unobtrusive bass and Vinnie Colaiuta’s touch-sensitive percussion — bravo! This music en toto is far more acoustically organic than any previously Mitchell musical<\/i> renditions. And remember: she’s worked closely with Tom Scott, Jaco Pastorius and Charles Mingus (she, Hancock and Shorter first performed together shortly after Mingus’ death in ’79), with plenty of quirky, ambitious musical ideas of her own.
\nI’m not by default a sucker for singers, nor have I ever been an ardent fan of Mitchell, though I’ve developed more admiration and affection for her concepts and sound(s) as I’ve matured. (A guy’s gotta be able to project and empathize, I argue, even perhaps learn to do that, to embrace and enjoy the essence of her perspective. I mean, she stands so firmly as woman<\/i> — I used to give her as openminded a listen as my female friends could muster for Captain Beefheart<\/A> if I insisted). However, Rivers<\/i> deserves appreciation and praise for singers’ star turns that contribute to the greater good — a fully embodied tribute to and advance of Joni Mitchell’s oeuvre.
\nOpening with “Court and Spark,” title song from Mitchell’s 1974 album: shy angel Norah Jones<\/a> sighs with her characteristically inviting bohemian winsomeness. In liner notes Hancock and Klein thank her for “courageous honesty and humility” — she certainly plays all utterances as intimate conversation. Whereas Tina Turner<\/a>, following with “Edith and The Kingpin,” (from Hissing<\/i>, and performed live on Shadows and Light<\/i>, 1980) adds a soupcon more street cynicism and backbeat than Joni’s been treated to before, giving the song’s story — like one of Patricia Highsmith’s<\/a> Little Tales of Misogyny<\/i> — cinematic existence, as if adapted by Tarantino a la Jackie Brown<\/i><\/a>).
\nCorrine Bailey Rae<\/a>, who I’d never previously heard or heard of but reputedly had an immediate British breakthrough with her eponymous debut album in 2006, blythely commands the center of “River” itself, overcoming the lyric’s bluesy rue with delight and fantasy. Next up: Joni Mitchell gives “Tea Leaf Prophecy” a Billie Holiday twist of gravitas. Her voice is grainy but graceful, her phrasing devastating, supported by the jazzmen at their most attentive.
\nAfter that performance (and an instrumental version of Ellington’s “Solitude”) “Amelia” (from Hejiera<\/i> of ’76) seems somewhat anticlimactic, though Luciana Souza<\/a> — like Jones, Turner and Rae — selects and amplifies an aspect of Mitchell’s own approach, in this case being slightly darker yet lighter than her model (Jones more coy, Turner tougher, Rae more giddy), rather than trying to counter the influence. Leonard Cohen<\/a>‘s grisley suede intonation of “The Jungle Line,” another of Mitchell’s densely imagistic episodes, concludes River<\/i> in pitch black. “Through savage progress cuts the jungle line” is the punch line of her poem about nature’s implacable dominion, which begins “Rousseau walks on trumpet paths\/Safaris to the heart of all that jazz . . .” Joni Mitchell, painter as well as singer-songwriter-performer-icon-composer is writing about the heart of darkness, and I don’t get it all, but the words are important (that’s Henri<\/a>, not Jean-Jacques<\/a>, Rousseau<\/a>), as is their articulation and delivery. Each vocalist (Cohen, a singer<\/i>?) on River<\/i> is hyper-aware of all that, imprints the self through the song, serves as featured soloist not showstopper, adds to the fine balance of this recording, distinctive and distinguished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corrine Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza and Leonard Cohen are not voices necessarily dear to fans of serious jazz, but Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter don’t alone make River: The Joni Letters a must-hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":62,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2007\/12\/2007_favoritesgift_ideas.html","url_meta":{"origin":34,"position":0},"title":"2007 favorites\/gift ideas","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"December 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Gifts for the listener who's heard everything... for your jazz-beyond-jazz companeros . . . for yourself . . . I won't say these are all the year's \"best\" recordings, but they're the one's I've listened to the most for inspiration, surprise and pleasure. Click on the title to buy online-\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2007\/10\/herbie_enriches_joni.html","url_meta":{"origin":34,"position":1},"title":"Herbie enriches Joni","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"October 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A decade ago, pianist Herbie Hancock established his \"New Standards\" initiative, aiming to wed sophisticated improvisation to a contemporary American pop songbook (post-Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, et al). At last, after several disastrous attempts, he's justified such a project with River: The Joni Letters -- infusing well-known high art pop songs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":426,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2011\/07\/unesco-names-pianist-herbie-hancock-goodwill-ambassador.html","url_meta":{"origin":34,"position":2},"title":"UNESCO names pianist Herbie Hancock “goodwill ambassador”","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"July 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Pianist Herbie Hancock has been appointed a \"goodwill ambassador\" by UNESCO. The 71-year-old multiple Grammy winner, Chicago-born child prodigy, Miles Davis' keyboards man ushering open-form improvisation, electronic instruments and studio procedures into the past half-century of jazz-based music and talent scout with global interests joins an international coterie that currently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":819,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2012\/03\/which-herbie-hancock-comes-to-jazz-at-lincoln-center.html","url_meta":{"origin":34,"position":3},"title":"Which Herbie Hancock comes to Jazz at Lincoln Center","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Pianist Herbie Hancock is a chameleon -- as I say in my newest column in\u00c2\u00a0CityArts-New York. 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