vocal jazz

Vocal jazz is a popular song style that emerged in the USA in the early 20th century. The primary focus and main "instrument" is the voice, with an emphasis on song-based forms and the intimacy and passion of the lead delivery rather than avant-garde structures and extended instrumental improvisation. The Jazz backing is generally intended to complement the singing and to set the mood to the singer's story.

The union of jazz music and singing has origins in Blues and Standards singers in the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s, such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Marion Harris. In the mid-1920s, Louis Armstrong's popularization of nonsense 'scat' vocalizations showcased the human voice as an art form within the field of jazz.

During the huge popularity of Big Band and Swing in the 1930s and 1940s, a wave of celebrated vocalists performing jazz standards and Traditional Pop emerged. Bandleaders such as Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey sought to employ singers, whilst Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan all defined an era which, by the 1950s, became the golden era of vocal jazz. The phrasing, intonation and overall expressiveness with which the lyrics are delivered have been hugely influential to the medium of singing as a whole ever since.

Vocal jazz has continued to exist and evolve, with The Manhattan Transfer and Bobby McFerrin finding success in the 1970s and ‘80s and older, prime-era singers such as Nina Simone, Helen Merrill, Maxine Sullivan and Abbey Lincoln still recording and performing during this time. In the 1990s and post-millennium, the genre still maintained a moderate degree of success, with solo singers such as Dianne Reeves, Norah Jones and Jamie Cullum demonstrating their influences and paying tribute to the great vocalists of the past. .