Sampling Pre-Jazz Vocals

A previous post dealt with one stylistic element of jazz: vibrato. I said I would next concentrate on vibrato in jazz vocals, but before we get there, let's set the foundation by looking at some music that was recorded in the pre-jazz era.


Jazz qua jazz wasn't recorded until the late teens and blues until the early 20's, but beginning in the 1890's, some of the styles that were grist for the jazz mill did find their way onto cylinders and discs: string and brass band music, "parlor" songs, ragtime, ethnic, vaudeville, minstrel and concert hall music. It's a partial record, but we'll try to get a sense of where vibrato and other expressive elements used in vocal jazz came from by listening to some influential vocalists who recorded during the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. Yes, instrumentalists always influence vocalists and vice versa, but we'll leave that tangle for future posts. Also, although it's clear that recordings of music from places like the Caribbean and South/Central America had an influence on jazz, I won't go into music with vocals targeted for foreign-language groups.

Enrico enjoys a smoke

Whether or not classical music was a formative element for jazz is a dense enough subject for a separate posting, but "popular" it indisputably was. Operatic tenor Enrico Caruso was a superstar; the first artist to make a million copy-selling recording. Chances are that if you find a pile of 78's in your attic, a Caruso is among them. Given the population in 1904, one out of eighty people in the US owned this disc which, to my ears, is stylistically what we might expect from a twenty first century singer like Pavarotti.


Many early recordings fall under the light classical/parlor music/Stephen Foster umbrella. Practitioners often came from an operatic tradition, but used vibrato with a lighter touch. Soprano Nellie Melba is a good example, as you can hear here.

The inspiration for Peach Melba

A more direct line to a jazz style can be drawn from the vocal music that was derived from minstrelsy, vaudeville, ragtime, or some combination of those. Clarice Vance is credited as developing the naturalistic, almost vibrato-free style which influenced many other popular singers. She reminds me of Blossom Dearie. Here's "Goodbye to Johnny":



Bert Williams was probably the most well-known African-American stage/vaudeville performer and recording artist from the turn of the 20th century until about 1920. Stylistically, this recording is an archaic and modern amalgam, with comedic effects, stuttering and trombone smears, with a subtle undertone of emotionality. 

Last of the Red Hot Mamas

Sophie Tucker was influenced by Clarice Vance, but was more directly connected to the black musical community. She hired black singers as coaches and black composers to write for her act. Here's one of her early recordings, "Reuben Rag," which takes off from the venerable folksong "Reuben and Rachel" that some of us learned in grammar school. Sophie was hot. I would say that in 1910, this was as modern as it got.


As time took a toll on Tucker's voice, she increasingly laid on the vibrato, but she explored time in a very jazz-like way: