It’s a Jazzy Christmas Charlie Brown!
I figured it’s not too late to do a Christmas Advent calendar. Except instead of bad tasting chocolate for each day leading up to Christmas, I’m serving up some of my favorite holiday jazz recordings. I might be a little biased in my picks though, because I favor a lot of the recordings put out by musicians of the bebop era in the 1950s and ’60s.
Today I’m starting off with a trio known for their vocalese: Lambert, Hedricks, and Ross sing Deck Us All with Boston Charlie
Download it: Deck Us All With Boston Charlie [3:16]
I first learned of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks, and Annie Ross from my Jazz History course in college. There was a discussion in class about what differentiated vocalese from scat. Nonetheless I was more confused by the end of it so I can’t say anything about what makes vocalese different from scat singing. I just know that they are both forms of vocal improvisation.
Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross only stayed together for five years, beginning in 1957. Ross was later replaced by Yolande Bevan long enough for them to record three live albums before breaking up altogether in 1964.
I’m not familiar with the origin of this song, but a little Googling and searching on Wikipedia revealed that the lyrics come from a song written by Walt Kelly, an American animator and cartoonist, on the album Songs of the Pogo, which shows that he was also a poet. It’s funny that the lyrics are about as nonsensical as Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross’s vocalese. In this track they start by singing the song straight like the original melody of “Deck the Halls” then they take off with vocalese.
