{"id":1410,"date":"2008-07-24T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-24T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=1410"},"modified":"2008-07-24T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-24T08:05:00","slug":"sylvia_syms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2008\/07\/sylvia_syms\/","title":{"rendered":"Sylvia Syms"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a 1995 Jazz Times<\/em> review of a Sylvia Syms CD, I wrote: <\/p>\n

\n

Sylvia Syms had a vibrato like a telephone wire in a breeze. She sometimes slid around both sides of a note before she settled on it. She often added the syllable “uh” to the end of a word (“ridin’ on the moon-uh”). She could pounce on a consonant and ignore the vowel next door. Some of her power notes were pure brass and there were moments when she sounded alarmingly like Carol Channing. <\/p>\n

Hey, nobody’s perfect, but to many discerning listeners, musicians and singers, Sylvia Syms was. This live recording <\/a>has all the reasons: passion, drama, phrasing, interpretation of lyrics, a solid but flexible time sense and the ability to keep an audience in the palm of her hand.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Frank Sinatra admired Syms so much that he conducted an album for her. It has never made it to CD, but the LP is available<\/a>. Syms was not the British film star of the same name, but in her treatment of songs and in the way she related to her audiences, she was a vocal actress. This 1991 appearance in England gives an idea why Sinatra called her “the world’s greatest saloon singer.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/embed>The year following that performance, Syms died of a heart attack on the bandstand of the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel in New York. She was seventy-four. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a 1995 Jazz Times review of a Sylvia Syms CD, I wrote: Sylvia Syms had a vibrato like a telephone wire in a breeze. She sometimes slid around both sides of a note before she settled on it. She often added the syllable “uh” to the end of a word (“ridin’ on the moon-uh”). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}