SINGERS: Edith Piaf And Others

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30528, 25 August 1964, Page 10

SINGERS: Edith Piaf And Others

Mea Culpa: Edith Piaf. With orch. directed by Robert Chauvigny. Columbia 33MSX 6048 (mono). The Second Barbra Streisand Album: Barbra Streisand. With orch. directed by Peter Matz. CBS BP 473056 (mono). These Are The Blues: Ella Fitzgerald. Verve V-4062 (mono). What'd I Say: Ray Charles. Arrangements by Ray Charles. Atlantic AL-31,081 (mono): The Wonderful World of Cene McDaniels: Gene McDaniels. With orch. directed by Marty Piach. Liberty LBY 1179 M (mono). Hit After Hit: Gene McDaniels. With the Johnny . Mann Singers. Liberty LBY 1105 (mono).

Edith Piaf • was born in a Paris slum, and practically everything she sang echoed the horror of slum life. Her voice often cracked and shivered when she strained for a high note. On the rare occasions when she sang happily, she spread her notes with a bold, nasal vibrato. At times her phrases trailed off into mumbling incoherence. Often she raced ahead of. the beat dr dragged behind it. Blit her weaknesses only dramatised her strength, which was that she touched emotional depths of almost terrifying intensity. ■ Her arrangers provided her with few, tinkling backgrounds, but she sang as though unaware of the meaning of banality.

She combined the immediacy of pop art with the sinewy directness of a good blues singer. The Columbia L.P. includes a couple of Piaf’s best recordings (“La Goualante de Pauvre Jean,” better known now as “The Poor People of Paris," and “Hymn to Love”), as well as the famous “La Vie en Rose” and “Padam, Padam.” But Piaf was consistent, and all 14 tracks are memorable.

Barbra Streisand's appearance on record in this country was preceded by a eulogistic cover article in “Time,” and lavish encomiums by such people as the song-writer Jule Styne, and John S. Wilson of the “New York Times.”

Miss Streisand is, however, unfortunate in that her first release here coincides with the Piaf L.P. and invites comparison. Mr Styne exposes Miss Streisand’s weakness when he remarks in his sleeve note that she is “the first girl I have ever heard who is a great actress in each song.” Piaf was not an actress; the sob at the end of “I’Accordeoniste” was real. Miss Streisand does have a remarkable voice, even if she is not fully in control of it (she has a maddening habit of swooping, with a heavy vibrato, on to notes that are slightly off pitch). As yet she has little emotional depth, but that may come later; she is only 21, and already has a certain hypnotic appeal. However painfully one is conscious of her deficiencies, once one has started listening to her it is difficult to stop. “These Are The Blues,” Ella Fitzgerald’s latest L.P., contains the impeccable singing one expects from Miss Fitzgerald, and superb accompaniment by Wild Bill Davis (organ), Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Ray Brown (bass), Herb Ellis (guitar) and Gus Johnson (drums). Listeners familiar with the classic blues singers are unlikely to enjoy it. The blues is an anonymous cry of oppression: Miss Fitzgerald is a sophisticated pop singer working for a comfortable, middle-class audience.

Ray Charles, remarked Francis Newton in the “New Statesman,”' is four different people: a rhythm-and-blues man, a modern jazz pianist, a pop star and a hipster saint. The last is ephemeral, but the other three sides of Ray Charles can be heard on “■What’d I Say.” Perhaps because of Charles’s commercial success, many reviewers have underrated his blues singing and overrated his piano playing. The latter, as heard on “Rockhouse,” is cramped and rather dull. Charles’s singing, on the title track and most of the others, is expressive and subtle of nuance. Nearly all the tracks have appeared previously on record, but the sound on the new release is much improved. Gene McDaniels, who recently visited this country, is a pop singer by reputation and a jazz singer by preference. He sings with very good pitch and smooth phrasing and sounds rather like a

stronger Mel Torme. "The Wonderful World of Gene McDaniels” contains some jazz singing of a very high order. Two jazz themes— Thelonious Monk's “Straight No Chaser,” for which McDaniels wrote words, and Nat Adderley’s “Work Song"— several “standards” and some superior pop tunes make up the material. The wistful “The Old Country,” sung with flawless intonation, is the best track. “Hit After Hit” is a collection of his pop hits. It is not a very interesting record, and McDaniels does not sound very interested. OUT! Jack Sheldon and hl* Quartet. Sheldon dpt., voc.), Howard Roberts, Herb Ellis, Jack Marshall (gtrs.). Shelly Manne idrs.). The Girl in the Muu Muu, Dandelion, Funky Jones. Hair Like Sunshine, eight other tracks. Capitol (mono) T. 1551. Jazz musicians, perhaps because of the ambiguous functions of their trade as simultaneously business and art. and the compromises which this forces on them, develop a peculiarly perceptive view of life and a low tolerance for fatuity. They also develop a resilient sense of humour; but in spite of this the amount of successful jazz humour on records is small (there is a lot of humour in many jazz records, but it is directed towards the "ingroup” and can slip unnoticed by the average fan). So jazz fans whose frowns are growing thick could do a lot worse than buy this new LP by Jack Sheldon, a trumpeter who first made his name playing with such top West Coast musicians as Art Pepper and Russ Freeman. Sheldon announced a couple of years ago that he was forming his own band, to feature his singing as well as his trumpet playing, and, for listeners in this country, this record is the first tangible result of his decision. Like the singing of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, Sheldon’s is more or less an extension of his trumpet playing. Also like Gillespie, he sings rather badly, but with elan, in a hard, nasal voice. Three of the four vocal tracks have rather callous words written by Sheldon. He plays the trumpet on the other tracks and, when not mocking the bossa nova (“Spanish Dance”) or delivering a crushing parody of “soul” jazz (“Funky Jones”), sounds like a wilting Miles Davis.