I was telling someone only the other day that jazz is a language. And, just as if you listen to Linguaphone tapes day in, day out, you will absorb an awful lot about a language, so it is that if you listen to jazz music day in, day out, you will absorb the structures and nuances of this language, without even realising it. You will, in short, develop what’s known in jazz as ‘big ears’ (although not literally. Fortunately).

I once had a strange - but wonderful - experience of this last year, when I sat down to play the keyboard after not having been anywhere near a keyboard for months. What I had been doing over those months, however, was listening to more jazz music than ever before.

And I swear something affected me. As I picked out tunes on the keyboard, my fingers somehow magically found the right notes. Not all the time, granted - but an awful lot more times than they had ever done in my thirtysomething years of playing piano up to that point. I didn’t have perfect pitch; but the connection between the notes I heard in my head - the notes I was searching for - and the finding of these notes on the keyboard was so much closer, so much tighter, that it was almost like looking down at someone else’s hands.

In the words of Dusty Springfield: Spooky.

But tonight on the gig, something happened that was even spookier. A correlation between listening and performing which happened much, much quicker than the one I just described (which as I said, was the result of weeks, if not months, of listening).

Earlier this afternoon, I listened to this album as I worked:

It’s a 1959 live recording of Sarah Vaughan performing at a jazz club in Chicago with a trio (Ronnell Bright, Richard Davis and Roy Haynes) and horn players (including Thad Jones). It opens with a swinging version of ‘Like Someone In Love’ and ends with Sarah messing up the lyrics several times on ‘Thanks For The Memory’. And it’s just about as great as jazz singing gets.

Other than warming up by singing along to Diana Krall or Julie London, and falling in love with Kurt Elling, I haven’t actually been listening to much vocal jazz while I’ve been out here. And this afternoon was the first time I’d listened to this Sarah Vaughan album.

And then tonight I got up on stage to sing, and…

Well, I won’t exactly say that I was ‘filled with the spirit of Sarah Vaughan’. But something strange happened.

We kicked off with a swinging version of ‘Summertime’ (it’s a good warm up, and recognisable to even the most non-jazz-loving audience member) and… I don’t know. Suddenly I felt as confident a singer as Sassy herself; and found my voice jumping around the melody and timing with the utmost of ease (and, it seemed, musicality. And hopefully taste). There was suddenly a true jazz easiness to my singing - and while of course there is no way I could sound like Sarah Vaughan, there was definitely an approach of hers in what I was doing.

Now, I could put this partly down to the fact that my cold has gone. Or I could put it down to the fact that I whipped the guys into shape again few nights ago, after some flaky gigs, and am going through the set list with them, song by song, before we start. And so as a result, they’re tighter and slicker once again; and I feel freed up once more to sing with ease and un-self-consicously.

Or I could put it down to the fact that I’d listened to Sarah Vaughan singing live just a few hours earlier.

Maybe it’s not about musical absorption, but more about a sudden and obvious confirmation that what you’re doing has a tradition, and is important and valid somehow.

Either way: I really must market this as a pre-gig warm-up idea for jazz singers…

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 3.23am and is filed under The actual music stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.