roots

For listeners, jazz singers are the most admired instrumentalists even though their place in jazz history has been largely overlooked in the literature on jazz.  Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Michael Bublé are amongst the hundred greatest jazz vocalists; however, their role in jazz production and the music industry has been regarded as entertainers rather than as artists.  Although singer’s function has been increased before bebop in big bands, developing new styles as hard bop, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz-rock decreased their performance and popularity among jazz musicians and scholars.
David Ake examines the jazz pianists prior to bebop who often served a dual function both as pianists and singers. Recently, another scholar, Yvetta Kajanová explored Diana Krall, the “Frank Sinatra in a skirt”, and her versatility. Krall demonstrates not only a white female multi-instrumentalist’s control, but also represents a new artistic direction for developing conservative, traditional jazz styles in an elegant manner.
In this paper I compare Diana Krall’s interpretation of Fly Me to the Moon (written by Bart Howard in 1954), the standard popular song originally titled In Other Words, with Nat King Cole’s and Frank Sinatra’s interpretations. I also examine Krall’s inspirational sources such as Sinatra’s “white swing” and his vocal interpretation, and Cole’s piano and vocal combination with attention to such musical aspects as rhythmic phrasing, harmony and piano stylization. In addition, the paper discusses and evaluates multi-ethnic aspects, such as the influence of race and social background as with Sinatra’s Sicilian roots and his political involvement, Cole’s African – American roots and his experience with segregation,  and Krall’s Slovakian roots linked to her great grandparents’ emigration from Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century. These are three clear examples of musicians whose different social and cultural origins have resolved into different musical arrangements. I argue that Diana Krall is not just “a commercial entertainer” in the music industry, as it seems to many critics, but she is an eminent jazz artist with a significant feminine role in jazz history. This paper is contributes to the discourse on the evolution of vocal jazz illustrating the contradictions between music and politics, and evaluates the role of  a prominent female vocalist in jazz history.