It was considered Pop music back in the day. Jazz and Big Band music was the popular music of the 1940’s and 1950’s. As evidenced by my second musical project, “Back 2 Classic”, in 2011, I have a strong affinity to the music and songstresses of this era. Even as I had grown up grooving to the likes of The Jackson 5, Earth Wind and Fire and Stevie Wonder, performers like Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, Nancy Wilson and the one of the best vocalists of all time, Miss Ella Fitzgerald, were always my “go to” models for my personal stage styling and presence as I began to cultivate my singing craft. I gravitated towards that period because it was an era that featured just the voice on a microphone and the instruments that were supporting it. That’s all. There were no dancers or flashy lights, no stage sets outside of perhaps a pedestal with a lovely floral arrangement or a small, elegant table to hold some tea and water, and most times there weren’t even background singers. Overall the main attraction was the vocalese of great songs. The songs… another reason I love that era of music so much. The songs were phenomenal. They were clean and classic with simple, relatable lyrics. You didn’t really have to worry about your 5 year old hearing something they weren’t supposed to when these songs were played. And how do we know these were good songs? Because they are continuously being re-recorded over and over and over again to this day, known as “Jazz Standards.” Songs like “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” by Duke Ellington and Bob Russell, recorded 33 times between 1943 and 2015, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Cole Porter, recorded 57 times between 1936 and 2014, and “The Man I Love” by Gershwin, recorded 49 times between 1927 to present, by varying genres of artists ranging from Ella to Cher to Ledisi to Rod Stewart to Gloria Gaynor to Carli Simon to Michael Buble to Nat King Cole to Etta James and B.B. King.
The music was live and lush with strings and horns. The musicians were all well-suited and seemed to be masters of their craft. Being the Girlie-girl that I am, what absolutely sealed the deal for me on this era of music is the elegance and glamour of it all; a girl singer walking out on stage, dressed to the nines in a fabulous formal gown or cocktail dress, accessorized well, hair and make-up done to perfection, to stand at a microphone before an audience and sing her heart out. These female singers, many times known for singing “torch songs”… emotional, sentimental love songs, songs of unrequited or lost love. Torch songs, as in the common phrase “to carry a torch for.” They were actresses acting out a scene with their voices. I imagined being a “Torch Singer” at an early age yet still falling in love with the likes of Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Barbra Striesand, Karen Carpenter and Phyllis Hyman. While I’m sure many of these women I idolized from back in the day quite possibly had drama-filled and sometimes gut-bucket personal lives, there was a certain class they seemed to have in performance and in interviews. There was no social media and paparazzi that caught them off guard, not being a lady. I think some of our later generation girls could take a que from the women of this time period but I’ll save that for another blog post, lol! Everything seems to come back in style if you live long enough. Who knows maybe this will too. For now I will carry the torch.
