At 03:31 pm -0700 05.06.2002, Chuck Israels wrote: >This seems usually true to me, but there's a remarkable exception - >Jon Hendricks' enormous output of brilliant lyrics written to >existing jazz tunes, and even more remarkably, to scores of >difficult jazz solos. They are often hard to understand at speed, >but they are nonetheless brilliant, and wonderfully suited to the >music onto which they are grafted. The guy has created (nearly >single handedly, though there are a few good examples that precede >Jon's work) a new genre of vocal music. If you get a chance to hear >any of this, it is intelligent, witty, philosophically interesting >an rhythmically connected to the way Americans speak. Lots of fun.
In the late 60s there was a TV show in the UK called That Was The Week That Was -- a satirical review of the week's news. The programme always began with Millicent Martin (sometimes plus Cleo Lane) doing just that: witty lyrics about current events sung at breakneck speed, set to improvised solos that someone had painstakingly taken down from recordings. The MD on the show was the pianist Dave Lee and although I don't know for sure I suspect the jazz solos were by members of John Dankworth's orchestra. The Ross in Lambert Hendrick & Ross was the Scottish-born Annie Ross who was of course known to Dankworth and Lee. I'm sure they didn't consider that they were stealing Hendricks' technique -- they were just being very very hip. John _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
