Jazz
The real thing
Martin Gayford hat is a jazz singer?' is one of those questions — like 'What is art?' and `What is this thing called love?' that eter- nally perplex. Most of the vocalists who generally pass as 'jazz' can be reclassified on closer examination into blues singers, pop singers, supper club singers etc. etc. Really rigorous analysts of the subject have sometimes reduced true exponents of this art to an extremely short list: Billie Holi- day, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan. And so I would feel more confident about announcing that Cassandra Wilson is the greatest jazz singer to emerge in 20 years if it were clearer that what she is performing is jazz.
What was made entirely obvious, howev- er, first by her most recent recording 'Blue Light 'til Dawn' (Blue Note 0777 7 81357 2) — then by her appearances in London last week, is that she is a sensation- ally impressive singer of something. Her very first song at the Jazz Café, Camden Town on Friday — the Robert Johnson blues, 'Come On In My Kitchen' — was thrilling enough to send shivers down the spine. And that, I submit, is a good ad hoc test of emotional power. Just the same, in fact, as A. E. Housman's test of a good poem: does it raise enough gooseflesh to make shaving difficult? Billie Holiday could, and so can Cassandra Wilson.
`Come On In My Kitchen' was taken at ultra-slow tempo, accompanied by a spec- tral plinking from guitar and mandolin, and half way through a magnificently low-down, dirty violin solo from the mandolin-player, Charles Burnham. It is an eerie piece, com- posed by the haunted, tormented Johnson — a country blues singer who wandered the Deep South for a few years before being poisoned by a jealous woman outside Greenwood, Mississippi in 1938. (His sinis- ter masterpiece, 'Hellhound on my Trail' is also in Cassandra Wilson's repertoire.) Johnson's own singing was an unnerving, introspective affair, in which he seemed to be moaning and muttering as much to him- self as to the listener. Cassandra Wilson's had as much of the same dark, brooding quality — if not more — combined with the vocal sophistication of up-to-the- minute jazz. One was reminded that she too comes from Mississippi — Jackson, to he precise — deep in blues territory. She is definitely the real thing. But what kind of real thing?
But it would be premature to conclude that she is an updated blues singer. Within a number or two she was singing Hoagy Carmichael's 'Skylark' — a standard inspired by the not very bluesy melodic style of the cornettist Bix Beiderbecke. `Blue Light 'til Dawn' contains — apart from the Robert Johnson blues — pieces by Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell. Like a lot of jazz musicians who appeared in the 1980s — she was born in 1963 — Cassan- dra Wilson has taken a pic'n'mix approach to music. A few years ago she recorded an album of standards in a conventional jazz idiom, but also has dipped into rock, folk, R & B and hip-hop.
Her present band is a most successful bit of eclecticism — being a sort of blues-jazz- latin blend. It consists of bass, drums, a gui- tarist performing a tiny square designer instrument with a strange lever protruding from it, a percussionist assailing a wide variety of gourds, hand-drums, chimes and cymbals, and the wonderful Mr Burnham playing harmonica, violin and mandolin. The result was like nothing I have ever heard, and charming — as was the dandi- fied appearance of the band, with the gui- tarist sporting a waistcoat and elaborate coiffeur resembling a full-bottomed wig cira 1710, and the bassist a single two-foot pigtail springing from the front of his head.
Cassandra Wilson's own eclecticsm is a little more moot — which is why the ques- tion of whether or not she is singing jazz is not entirely a pedantic one. Her style, with its swoops, sighs, and adventurous rear- rangements of melody, is wonderfully refreshing. A great deal of hyphenated music — jazz-rock, latin-jazz — merely achieves the worst of both styles. But here is eclecticism that works. Where she falls down is not in how she sings, but some- times in what she sings. The bits of rock and folk — also her own compositions are slight and shapeless in comparison with pieces like 'Come On In My Kitchen', and `Skylark'. It does not much matter whether Casandra Wilson is a jazz singer a blues singer, or an unclassifiable original. But it matters a good deal whether she is singing classic jazz or blues material, because she is far, far better when she does. Sadly, it remains true — and remains a significant problem for contemporary performers that you can't beat the good old songs.
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