vocal jazz | Musicosity

vocal jazz

Leon Thomas

Amos Leon Thomas Jr (born 1937, died May 8, 1999) was an American avant garde jazz singer from East St. Louis, Illinois. He changed his name to Leone in 1974. Thomas is best known for his work with Pharoah Sanders, particularly the 1969 song "The Creator Has a Master Plan" from Sanders' Karma album. Thomas's most distinctive device was that he often broke out into yodeling in the middle of a vocal. This style has influenced singers James Moody and Tim Buckley,among others.

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Carol Kidd

Carol Kidd has been known in jazz circles throughout the UK since she was 15, and she became a full time professional singer after singing with Frank Sinatra at Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow in 1990. Sinatra later wrote in his fan magazine, 'Perfectly Frank', expressing that "Carol Kidd is the best kept secret of British Jazz". This endorsement from Old Blue Eyes gave Kidd the confidence to make singing her career.

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Diana Krall

Diana Krall was born into a musical family in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada (on November 16, 1964). She began learning the piano at the age of four. In high school, she started playing in a small jazz group. At the age of fifteen, she started playing regularly in several Nanaimo restaurants. She also spent some time in Toronto studying with Canadian Jazz great, Don Thompson (Bass/Piano) and with the support of the Canada Council she moved to the U.S to continue studies and develop her career.

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Elizabeth Shepherd

Elizabeth Shepherd pushes the boundaries of what is considered conventional jazz, all the while creating a sound completely her own. From London to Tokyo, Elizabeth has captivated audiences and critics on both sides of the pond. Her Juno nominated debut album, Start To Move continues to receive critical acclaim, and was voted the Top 3 Jazz Albums of the Year by the listeners of the Gilles Peterson show on BBC Radio 1 UK in 2006.

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Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson (born 4th December 1955) is a U.S. ist and two-time Grammy Award winner from Jackson, Mississippi. Two of her albums, Blue Skies (1988) and New Moon Daughter (1996), have topped the US jazz charts, and the latter also won her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1997. More recently, Wilson's latest album Loverly (2008) also won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009.

Read more about Cassandra Wilson on Last.fm.

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Barbara Tucker

Ms. Barbara Tucker was raised in full energy in good old Brooklyn, New York. Raised in the church and still attending is where Ms. Tucker found her love for singing, as well as having a little help from her entertainer Father Jayotis Washington of the well-known group The Persuasions. As an actress, Ms. Tucker has performed in various off-Broadway plays which allowed her to receive the "T.O.R." award through the American Theater for actors for most promising actress with distinguishing artiste. As a dancer, Ms.

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Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon, better known by her stage name Nina Simone (IPA: ˈniːnə sɨˈmoʊn) (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), was a fifteen-time Grammy Award-nominated american singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and civil rights activist. Although she disliked being categorized, Simone is generally classified as a jazz musician; She personally preferred the term "black classical music". Simone originally aspired to become a classical pianist, but her work covers an eclectic variety of musical styles besides her classical basis, such as jazz, soul, folk, rnb, gospel, and pop music.

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Al Jarreau

Alwin Lopez Jarreau (born March 12, 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), known popularly as Al Jarreau, is an American, Grammy Award–winning jazz singer. Versatile in his singing style, Jarreau is a twelve-time Grammy-nominated vocalist and the only vocalist in history to win a Grammy Award in three separate categories: jazz, pop, and R&B. As the son of a vicar, he had his first singing experiences in a church choir.

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Dee Dee Bridgewater

Dee Dee Bridgewater (b. May 27, 1950) is an American Jazz singer. She is a two-time Grammy Award Winner, Tony Award Winner and Host of NPR's Syndicated Radio show "JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater". She is a United Nations Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Born Denise Eileen Garrett in Memphis, Tennessee, she grew up in Flint, Michigan. Her father, Matthew Garrett, was a jazz trumpeter and teacher at Manassas High School, and through his playing, Denise was exposed to jazz early on.

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Lizz Wright

Lizz Wright is an American jazz singer and composer. In 2000 Wright joined the Atlanta-based vocal quartet In the Spirit, which soon achieved critical acclaim; in 2002 she signed a recording contact with Verve Records. Her first album, Salt was released in the Spring of 2003 (reaching number two on the Billboard Top Contemporary Jazz chart in 2004), followed by Dreaming Wide Awake in June 2005 (reaching number one on the Top Contemporary Jazz chart in 2005 and 2006).

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