I have often heard comments akin to "I like opera, except for the voices", and not only from Jazz lovers. But I also have the impression that many Jazz instrumentalists have an ambiguous relationship to /Jazz/ vocal music: not so much actively disliking it, but rather giving the obligatory nod of appreciation to some great singers from the past and then just not cultivating any relationship with contemporary jazz vocal musicians. This is only an impression from a musicians who has virtually nothing to do with Jazz, so I'd love to be corrected, but I suspect that I am tracing a general pattern here that has something more to do with American music culture in general than with a division between opera and Jazz partisans.
For me, it's too many years of having poor (or worse) wannabe "singers" think they're as good as the people in the band who have put in decades of work perfercting their art after the singer has spent a couple of hours thinking about maybe learning a song or two. There are SO many bad singers that it tends to put many of us off anybody who sings.
That said, I've worked with some fine singers, not only in jazz, but in rock, musicals, and other genres (have any of you ever heard Lydia Pense? GREAT voice, and very musical). It's just that Sturgeon's Law [1] definitely applies here.
cd
[1] "90% of everything (applied to creative ventures) is crud."
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