Carmen McRae Sings Monk's "Ruby My Dear"

I suppose you can't blame Aretha Franklin for the decades of over-singing that followed in her wake any more than you can blame Jimi Hendrix for 80s Hair Metal, but .... but, as one listens to yet one more female singer indulge in melismatic hyper-embellishment as they ascend to those liquid-vibrating high notes, all in pursuit of emotion and soul, one can't help but feel a little a wistful about vocal paths not taken. Such as the path represented by the great jazz singers. Billie Holiday didn't over-embellish. She used brilliantly articulated and syncopated phrasing to increase the swing and imbued every melody with her singular, emotionally rich tone. Carmen McRae considers Billie her main inspiration, though they don't really sound alike. Carmen's tone and phrasing are her own. But it's the conscious attention to the contours of every phrase and note that keeps the lineage alive. Then there's the simple fact, which I keep returning to, that soul comes from the inside out, not the outside in. Aretha had that inside-out thing, which is why her maximal style succeeds. When I listen to Carmen I always think about all the years of hard and beautiful living that blossom within each note and bloom in the ear of the listener. 

"Ruby My Dear" is from Carmen's late 80s masterpiece, Carmen Sings Monk. As she observes in her intro, Monk composed some beautiful melodies, including the immortal "Round Midnight." Too often, casual listeners latch on to Monk's dissonance, minimalism, and general personal eccentricity and miss out on just how accessible his music is. In fact, when he set his mind to it, no one could match him in his ability to perform a gorgeous ballad. This is best heard on his solo recordings, such as Thelonious Alone in San Francisco, where his use of rubato and carefully-considered dissonance enhance the "sung" quality of the performance. In Carmen Sings Monk, she brings the melody and swing to the forefront, and dials back the dissonance. And it works. The performance posted here, like the album, features the journeyman jazz man Clifford Jordan on tenor sax. His relative lack of fame bears no relation to his mastery of the horn and the art of improvisation. Listening to him and all the musicians here, I am reminded that jazz performance represents a wholly unique and highly evolved way of merging thinking and feeling, one for which I am continually grateful.