JAZZ : The Jazz Singers : A diverse new wave of young and veteran vocalists has emerged to satisy audiences hungry for back-to-basics musicality

Vanessa Rubin looks like a jazz singer. She sounds like a jazz singer. And, wonder of wonders--in this era in which the art is generally believed to have started with Louis Armstrong and ended with Ella Fitzgerald--she doesn’t even mind being called a jazz singer.

But wait a minute. Here’s Harry Connick Jr. He likes to call his singing “swing music.” And then there’s Nnenna Freelon, whom Columbia Records executive George Butler identifies as “a young Sarah Vaughan.”

And how about John Pizzarelli, who works with a Nat (King) Cole-styled trio? And Dee Dee Bridgewater and Flora Purim and Billy Stritch and Cassandra Wilson. More singers with a healthy seasoning of jazz in their styles.

Says Rubin, who opens a weeklong run at Hollywood’s Cinegrill on Tuesday: “It’s not just about jazz. It’s about roots. And it’s not just in music--it’s in society, period. Everything’s been stretched out and gone to the extreme, and now people are coming back to basics.”

Something’s going on. Consider:

- The last few months have brought new recordings by dozens of jazz or jazz-oriented singers. They range, in addition to those named above, from such established names as Shirley Horn, Bobby McFerrin and Diane Schuur to the less-familiar Patricia Barber, Sue Raney, Carol Sloane, Sally Mayes and Barbara Carroll.

- Billboard’s top jazz album chart has been consistently listing vocal recordings in its Top 10.

- Most of the major labels (and many of the smaller companies as well) are pushing singers who, if not directly perceived as jazz vocalists, clearly owe more to the long history of pop-associated jazz than they do to more recent developments in rock music.

RCA/BMG has Rubin and Pizzarelli; Columbia has Connick, Freelon, Cheryl Bentyne and Mary Cleere Haran; Warner/Elektra has Natalie Cole and Al Jarreau (not always acknowledged as such but a fine jazz performer); Blue Note/Capitol has McFerrin, Dianne Reeves, Lou Rawls and Holly Cole; Verve has Bridgewater and Abbey Lincoln; GRP has Schuur; Concord has Susannah McCorkle and Carol Sloane.

Waiting in the wings at Blue Note/Capitol is Rachelle Ferrell, whose first U.S. recording will be a pop outing but who is described by many industry insiders as the most impressive jazz discovery of the decade.

- The new wave of vocalists is exploring a surprisingly diverse number of styles, everything from swing to mainstream, pop and contemporary jazz. But the single factor that unites them all is a common separation from much of the rock-pop music flow of the last 30 years.

McFerrin, Connick, Horn, Natalie Cole, Lincoln, Purim and Schuur are known quantities, each with a different view of the jazz experience.

The more unfamiliar names are bringing even wider perspectives. Wilson incorporates elements of pop and rap into a strikingly personal idiom. On her debut album, Holly Cole sings songs by Tom Waits and Lyle Lovett (each of whom has occasionally verged close to jazz). Stritch has the elegance of a young Bobby Short but also has a contemporary jazz background as a pianist, arranger and singer with the Manhattan Transfer-modeled trio of Montgomery, Plant and Stritch (which once also included Mayes).

Bridgewater’s extended residence in Europe has deprived American audiences of a highly original post-Sarah Vaughan stylist. Raney, for years one of L.A.’s best-regarded jazz vocalists, nonetheless has never really broken through to the larger market; neither has Sloane, another veteran gifted artist. Pizzarelli is being marketed as a good-looking young guy singing standards with a jazz flavor; like Connick, he too is an effective instrumentalist--on guitar, in his case. Gary LeMel (better known as a film and recording industry executive) is doing his take on Frank Sinatra. Haran has found an innovative slant on cabaret and nightclub jazz in her work; Carroll provides a more mature perspective on the same territory.

There are numerous others, many in locations throughout the country, some on the edge of obscurity despite their substantial talents. To mention a select few of the best, L.A.’s own Don and Alicia Cunningham and New York City’s Marano & Monteiro are convincingly carrying on the tradition of Jackie Cain & Roy Kral. Oregon’s Nancy King & Glenn Moore have made a brilliant symbiotic connection between voice and string bass.

Chicago-based Patricia Barber is a powerful Bill Evans-influenced pianist as well as an eccentrically distinctive singer. In San Francisco, Weslia Whitfield brings a pristine Irene Kral-like clarity to her ballad singing, and Ann Hampton Callaway in New York and Linda Peterson in Minnesota balance their strong, rhythmic performances with expansive songwriting skills.

Lots of names, lots of styles, lots of action. And only a small amount of it from the generation of singers most visibly identified with jazz--the generation that produced Betty Carter, Sheila Jordan, Joe Williams, Jon Hendricks, Mel Torme and the now-too-rarely-heard Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae.

So with all this movement, can it be that we’re actually seeing a (gasp) jazz trend ?

The answers come in several forms, reflecting the rapidly changing currents of today’s entertainment business:

The Need for Roots. Rubin’s point about people “coming back to basics” is well worth considering. The increase in jazz vocal recordings may be as closely connected to the coming back to basics of such pop and country artists as Lovett, Garth Brooks, Bonnie Raitt, Rickie Lee Jones and Wynonna Judd as it is to any uniquely revivalist or retro tendencies.

In that context, the unexpected breakthroughs of Natalie Cole’s album “Unforgettable” last year and Connick’s almost nonstop presence on the pop charts for the last two years were the initial warnings of an audience hunger for a richer, more nutritiously varied pop music menu--one that is being satisfied by the re-emergence not only of jazz, but also of blues, country and classic American pop songs.

“After you run through everything,” the Cleveland-born Rubin says, “after you try out this and that, the only thing that’s left is that which is qualitative, which is good and which has lasted the test of time. And that’s why people are reaching back to grasp something with some substance. Something that’s real, like jazz.”

Doing It My Way. Holly Cole takes a somewhat different approach. For her, as for many others, the classic song repertoire and the lush harmonies and subtle emotional rhythms of jazz are passageways rather than road maps--open portals to more imaginative forms of expression. Her reading of “On the Street Where You Live” as a dark anthem to obsession, for example, is typical of the Canadian-born singer’s use of unusual jazz techniques--avant-garde sound effects, in this case--to follow her own path.

“An acoustic jazz approach--which is the way my trio works--allows me to find a more expansive approach to songs,” she explains, “even though we don’t do them in a traditional style. For me, that’s on purpose. I love the traditional ways of approaching classic songs, but I just don’t see the point in doing them that way all over again. If I don’t feel I bring something new to a standard, then there’s no point in my doing it.”

And, like a number of other younger performers, she is wary of over-categorization.

“I’m suspicious of all labels,” Cole says. “Because no matter what they are, they have certain connotations. Some may be negative, some may be positive, but they all limit you. People tend to see you as this thing or that thing: Is it heavy metal? Is it pop? Is it Dixieland jazz? I’m delighted if people hear me as a jazz singer--just so long as they don’t limit me to that perspective. Because I just don’t like being pigeonholed.

Boomer Angst. “I think there’s another factor,” says Ricky Schultz, Warner Bros. Records’ vice president and general manager for jazz and progressive music. “I think it’s a response to this big bump in the population--the graying of the boomers. When Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Toni Tennille came out with their mainstream albums, it helped pave the way and lend additional credibility--in terms of its generational acceptability--to a kind of jazz-oriented, classic American pop song style.”

Schultz sees the interest in jazz-related singers as part of what he describes as “the cyclical nature of things.” Urged on by a combination of the potent buying power and gradual maturing of the baby boom generation, the process has accelerated.

“Music recycles itself,” he says, “just like any other art form. Harry Connick, with his whole retro-Sinatra thing, has been the most visible aspect of the trend. And Natalie Cole’s album has fanned the flames too.

“Obviously, there is something in this music that is emotionally charging people. And the positive aspect of what’s happening is that a lot of talented people who have inclinations and artistic leanings in similar directions, but who might not otherwise be inclined to go against present commercial trends, are beginning to come out of the closet.”

Blue Note’s president, Bruce Lundvall, agrees, viewing the current scene as the opening up of a phenomenon that began in the late ‘70s.

“Everyone said Willie Nelson was insane when he did ‘Stardust,’ and it turned out to be the biggest album of his career,” says Lundvall, who was president of Columbia Records at the time the label released Nelson’s record.

“And Linda Ronstadt sold at least 3 million units with her first standards album. So it’s obvious that there has always been a kind of passion out there for something more than the industry seems willing to hand out. And every time it surfaces, everybody is surprised.”

Like Schultz of Warner Bros., Lundvall believes there are growing numbers of listeners looking for, as he describes it, “more sophistication and greater musicality.”

“I think that we’re being assaulted with rap music and dance music to the point where people are turning away from it,” Lundvall says. “It may be fine for some young people, but it’s obvious from Harry Connick’s sales, as well as from Garth Brooks’ popularity, that people are in search of something else, and it’s not just older people. There’s an audience that has just been sitting out there without the industry paying very much attention to it.”

Selling the Sizzle. Connick’s success in reaching that audience, however, attracted attention (and envy) around the industry. The effectiveness of the Connick packaging, with its careful interfacing between record company, management and booking, has triggered more structured merchandising campaigns in support of many new performers.

“A well-conceived marketing campaign is going to be vital to the major music business success of any of these new artists,” Schultz says.

“In today’s environment, you’ve got to have the whole package,” says D. J. McLachlan, senior vice president of the Agency for the Performing Arts’ New York office and one of the important links in the Connick strategy.

“And doing standards is not enough,” he says. “We’ve gotten hundreds of performers coming to us, all singing mainstream songs. In today’s atmosphere, you look for artists who have a look, a sound, an attitude--who can play the whole wide scope. You can’t sign an artist who just has one direction anymore.”

McLachlan identifies the post-Connick performers as “long-term artists” who require “an extensive commitment from a record company and continuing support from management.”

“These are not Top 40 flash-in-the-pan performers,” he says. “These are artists with a great potential for long-term careers.”

So what’s the bottom line? Are we talking serious music business dollars here?

Probably not yet. At best, it’s too soon to tell. What may be more significant is a feeling around the industry that something is in the wind, and, as Schultz has noted, it’s not just limited to young jazz performers.

While many acts are firmly within the jazz tradition, others have staked out their own personal set of variations or have been content to use as their models such pre-rock, jazz-oriented pop stars as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Nat Cole.

From most of the vocalists’ points of view, the changes have less to do with styles and merchandising and packaging than with an opportunity to move past what they perceive as the restrictive musical attitudes that have dominated the record business in recent decades.

“The truth is that I don’t think jazz ever really left, and I don’t think quality ever left,” says Vanessa Rubin. “I just think the industry had to go off and try something else. Sometimes you’ve got to get away from something before you can appreciate it.”

“The good thing about this music,” she concludes, “whether you call it jazz or whatever, is that it lets a lot of singers find their own ways. Because when you get right down to it, it’s not about scat singing and it’s not about having a pretty voice. It’s about being true to what you are as a person and an artist. It’s just singing about life.”