JAZZ : A Thriving Vocal Presence : Commercially, the latest generation of jazz singers may not get the record sales or the publicity of a Wynton Marsalis, but creatively, the legacy of Billie, Louis, Ella and Sarah is in fine hands.

The jazz singer: Billie Holiday, trademark gardenia in her hair, dark eyes exchanging musical mysteries with her musicians as she sings a song of sad regrets. A spirited Ella Fitzgerald, scatting effervescently through a swinging string of choruses of “Lady Be Good.” Bold and handsome Billy Eckstine, golden voice soaring magnificently over his hard-driving big band.

Holiday, Fitzgerald and Eckstine. Add Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughan to the list and you have golden memories of a past, right?

Golden, for sure, but not all in the past. The gardenias may be gone, as are, with a few exceptions, the big bands. The venues have changed from the spacious dance halls, brassy nightclubs and cellar dives of the ‘40s and ‘50s to the smaller jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses of the ‘90s. But the jazz singers are still very much with us, and one of the most surprising trends of the decade has been the continuing arrival of so many talented young artists.

The first six or eight months of this year will see albums from such relatively established younger performers as Bobby McFerrin, Cassandra Wilson, Vanessa Rubin, Dianne Reeves, Janis Siegel, John Pizzarelli and Patti Cathcart (of Tuck & Patti). Newer names with fresh CDs include Carla White, Kevin Mahogany, Carmen Bradford, Eden Atwood, Rachelle Ferrell, Kurt Elling, Carmen Lundy, Kevyn Lettau, Karrin Allyson and Dennis Rowland.

Many of the names may be unfamiliar, but their dedication to jazz is beyond question. Even former pop star Gino Vannelli is returning with a strongly jazz-oriented album, and Anita Baker and Sade have always worked the fringe between jazz and pop.

But can they compare with Holiday, Fitzgerald and the rest of the Golden Age singers?

“Hey, man, those are the giants,” says Mahogany, 36, whose second album, “Songs and Moments” (Enja), has just been released. “Nothing can compare with them. And you can add Mel Torme, Tony Bennett and Joe Williams to that list too. All us younger cats can do is try to find our own ways to follow in their footsteps.” (Williams returns the compliment in the current Down Beat magazine, in which he says that Mahogany’s first album warrants a four-star rating.)

Mahogany is probably right. Giants in any area of the arts are usually irreplaceable. But they can be succeeded, and the process of succession has begun to move more rapidly in the ‘90s. Bennett’s breakthrough appearances on MTV opened some younger ears to the appeal of jazz-oriented singing. But the renewed interest in jazz vocals also owes a major debt to the long-term, often frustrating efforts by such established second-generation artists as Williams, Torme, Bennett, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Sheila Jordan, Shirley Horn, Mark Murphy, Ernestine Anderson and Nina Simone to keep jazz singing alive throughout the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

Wilson, whose “Blue Light ‘Til Dawn” (Blue Note) was nominated for a Grammy Award last year, is not surprised by the growing interest.

“This is music that attracts listeners in all colors, all shapes, all sizes and all sexes,” she says. “I see children, I see older people--people from all walks of life--who come to jazz with no preconceived notions, who just want to sit down and listen to an evening of music that is pared down, simple, straightforward and honest.”

But is this new phase in jazz singing--despite its obvious attractions--a trend that’s going anywhere, either commercially or creatively?

The answer is more complex than a simple yes or no.

From a commercial point of view, the answer is maybe, with several qualifications.

At least one important record company executive is distinctly upbeat about the commercial potential.

“We’ve done very well with most of our vocal acts,” says Bruce Lundvall, president of Blue Note Records, whose roster includes the established (McFerrin, Wilson, Reeves, Lena Horne and Lou Rawls) and the up-and-coming (Rachelle Ferrell, Denise Jannah and Kurt Elling).

“Diane usually does over 100,000 worldwide; so does Cassandra. And McFerrin normally sells a few hundred thousand. With a new artist, of course, it’s never easy, and if we do sales of 50,000 units for a first-time act, we’re not going to complain.”

Fifty thousand units is not a number that will attract much attention in the gold and platinum stratosphere of successful pop acts. But it is high enough to sustain jazz performers focused on the creative as well as the commercial aspects of their careers. Many singers sell considerably less. Those who are signed to smaller labels that lack the marketing and distribution capabilities of the majors are lucky to retail 20,000 units. For them, the situation can be bleak to the point of requiring supplemental non-performing jobs.

Overseas sales--especially in Japan and Europe--can make a considerable difference. Wilson’s “Blue Light ‘Til Dawn,” for example, has passed the quarter-million mark, but it has done so by selling 50% of that total in foreign markets. The Japanese thirst for jazz, even for jazz vocals sung in English, is large enough to generate recordings that are produced initially for the domestic Japanese market with later release in the United States. Some singers--Helen Merrill is a good example--have become better known in Japan than in their native country.

Aside from Blue Note, few major labels have been willing to make large-scale commitments to jazz vocal recordings. Columbia has done well, in part, because of a roster that includes such star names as Bennett, Nancy Wilson and Harry Connick Jr. But Nnenna Freelon, a much-touted new singer, has been quietly released by the label. Much smaller, mainstream-oriented Concord Records has persistently maintained a roster of seven or eight jazz singers, including Torme and Rosemary Clooney.

Among other labels, RCA has Pizzarelli and Rubin, Verve has Dee Dee Bridgewater and Lincoln, GRP has Diana Krall and Diane Schuur, and JVC has Lundy and Lettau. Around the country, a number of fine singers have achieved some national visibility, despite the difficulties of recording for local labels and rarely appearing outside their own areas. Among the best: Kitty Margolis and Madeline Eastman (who have started their own record company) and Weslia Whitfield in San Francisco (she opens a five-night run Tuesday at the Cinegrill in Hollywood); Jan Clayton in Spokane; Nancy King in Portland, Ore.; Patricia Barber in Chicago; Linda Peterson in Minneapolis, and Ann Hampton Calloway in New York.

Most record companies appear to be taking a cautious pace, waiting to see how the market develops. But at least some of the responsibility for that market development will rest with the kind of support they provide for their acts. Jazz singers, as well as jazz instrumentalists, are vitally dependent upon record company publicity and promotion.

That support can take many forms: financial backing for nightclub and concert tours, including the purchase and distribution of blocks of tickets for live performances; the furnishing of in-store posters and other materials to retail outlets; aggressive encouragement of radio station music directors to push airplay; imaginative cross-marketing (as in the recent alliance between Blue Note Records and Starbucks Coffee).

“We try to provide the best support we can,” said a prominent record company official. “We’ll supply in-store retail materials, and, of course, we’ll make ticket buys.”

Sounds good in principle, but the down side is that the ticket buys are often small (“One company bought only 20 seats for their act,” says Ruth Price, the Jazz Bakery’s music director, of a recent booking), and the tickets are frequently undistributed, with the seats remaining empty.

Recent club appearances in Los Angeles by Freelon and Krall, for example, were greeted by minuscule opening-night audiences despite record company ticket buys.

In contrast, recent appearances by bassist Christian McBride and pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba at Catalina Bar & Grill were spotlighted by free in-person Saturday afternoon performances at the Virgin Megastore on the Sunset Strip.

And earlier this year, pianist Cyrus Chestnut was showcased for the press by his label, Atlantic, in a tour of several major cities in support of his latest album, “The Dark Before the Dawn.”

It’s almost impossible to recall a similar range of promotional support for jazz vocalists. And if the newly arriving performers are going to have a shot at anything more than fringe careers, if the jazz singing of the ‘90s really is going to represent some sort of trend, it is precisely the kind of encouragement and backing the singers will need. But let’s look at the other side of that trend question. Granted that jazz singing is still on shaky ground as a commercial proposition, how’s it doing creatively?

This time, the answer can be summed up in one word: excellent. From a creative point of view, there’s no doubt that the trend is real. But it hasn’t happened overnight. Jazz singing has taken awhile to emerge from the doldrums of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

In those years, rock, dance and urban R&B; not only captivated much of the listening audience but also became the arenas of choice for most performers. Few of the singers who opted for jazz careers after the mid-’60s managed to break through to large audiences with their prime jazz efforts.

Bobby McFerrin is far better known for the 1988 platinum mega-hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” than for his multiple explorations into jazz vocalizing. Harry Connick Jr.’s high-profile celebrity had a lot more to do with retro images of Frank Sinatra than with his own modest jazz talents. The enormously talented George Benson devoted himself largely to funk and R&B;, while Dee Dee Bridgewater had to go to Europe and the Far East to find audiences. And two of the most important later arrivals, Dianne Reeves and Cassandra Wilson, have not yet been honored with Grammys. (The 1994 jazz vocalist Grammy, in a field that included no male singers, went to Etta James for her album of Billie Holiday songs. Ironically, James is famous for her R&B; singing, not her work in the jazz field.)

“Let’s face it, the ‘70s and ‘80s were deadly for jazz,” says New York-based singer Carla White, who has been tilling the jazz soil for years (her new album is “Listen Here,” on Evidence). “But it’s getting a lot better now, maybe because we’re once again beginning to value the quality that is basic to jazz--individuality.”

White is right on target. The times are changing, and jazz singing is once again finding a voice that is being listened to, often by younger listeners, and it is doing so via a creative re-examination of the singing art itself.

Definitions of jazz singing were fairly uncomplicated in the ‘40s and ‘50s: Sing with a strong sense of rhythmic drive, concentrate on tunes with colorful harmonies and attractive melodies, perhaps add some fleet, improvised scat lines, and, above all, have enough life experience to bring rich emotional resonances to your interpretations. (“You knew it when you heard it,” White says.)

All those elements are still necessary, to one degree or another, but the younger artists of the ‘90s are adding new elements: a receptivity to songs from pop, blues and beyond; envelope-stretching attitudes (enhanced by the pioneering work of Betty Carter) toward improvising with lyrics as well as melody and harmony; an openness to musical styles and influences from around the world, and a more penetrating evaluation of the traditional repertoire.

“Beautiful as some of the Gershwin, Porter and Rodgers & Hart songs are,” Reeves says, “a lot of them reflect times and attitudes that are different from the way I feel about myself as a woman. And some of those attitudes go against my spirit in a way that prevents me from singing the songs.”

“It’s true,” Wilson says. “Sometimes those lyrics just can’t do anything for you in terms of your own experience. So you try to find the music that does work.”

Says Mahogany: “I think what we have to do is begin to create new standards--meld different kinds of musics together. I grew up listening to dance music--the Delfonics, the Stylistics and all that, as well as Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and Sarah and Ella. What we need to do now is try to find a way to combine those things--do what jazz has always done, which is to pull the riches that are most provocative from other areas.”

Which is exactly what many singers are doing. Wilson’s “Blue Light ‘Til Dawn” was a groundbreaking look at the jazz potential in material ranging from Robert Johnson to Joni Mitchell. Holly Cole’s new album “Temptation” features a program of Tom Waits tunes. A new Sony Classical release, “Color and Light,” displays Cole, Nancy Wilson and Peabo Bryson in interpretations of Stephen Sondheim songs.

The changes seem to be generating especially positive reactions from audiences burned out by the synthesizer and drum machine mechanics of contemporary pop.

“There’s something about jazz singing that really appeals to people,” says Wilson, “especially in response to the musical world we’re living in right now. There’s so much production and manipulation in recording that we tend to lose sight of the actual music. And I think people enjoy, and want to hear, real voices singing real music.”

The response by younger listeners is one of the more startling aspects of the jazz vocal renaissance. Many Generation X-ers are now digging past their parents’ Crosby, Stills & Nash albums into their grandparents’ Fitzgerald and Holiday collections.

“It’s not surprising that younger people are turning to the more romantic kinds of music associated with jazz singing,” says Pacific Palisades clinical psychologist Caren Kaye. “The AIDS epidemic and the fracturing of the nuclear family are creating a growing desire for the intimacy and the security of old-fashioned pair coupling.”

Diana Krall, 26, agrees: “I think younger couples are becoming OK with listening to jazz because the emotional contact of jazz is better connected with the kind of intimacy that seems to be coming back. I’ve recommended Nat Cole and Frank Sinatra recordings to friends who are having a romantic evening, and they come back to me and say, ‘Wow, that was great.’ ”

But that trend question remains. There’s no doubt that jazz singers are drawing more attention than they have in decades. But what do you do with a trend that is creatively hot and commercially lukewarm? Reeves and Mahogany have their own answers.

“Either you can do what it takes to just make singing a business,” says Reeves, an accomplished R&B; and pop singer who honors her jazz skills above all else, “or you can try to split the difference, be an artist, and hope that people find you.”

Earlier this month, Reeves made precisely that distinction. Working with George Duke on a funk and fusion-oriented tour, she donned her R&B; and pop hat for a performance at the Pantages Theatre. The next week, she switched to her jazz repertoire for a gig at the Jazz Bakery. Both performances were sold out, and Reeves believes that the jazz booking was aided by the loyalty of an audience that she has carefully cultivated, regardless of musical style, through the years.

“I’ve never had a gold record or anything like that,” she adds. “But the things that I do have are very, very important to me. Things like respect, and the fact that I approach my music with dignity. It’s been a slower journey to get to where I am, but I don’t know any other way to approach jazz singing.”

“Look,” Mahogany says, “I’m doing this music because it’s music I love, and I can see myself doing it--like Mel and Joe and Tony--until I’m in my 70s. And I don’t think you’ll see M. C. Hammer out there at 60, or some of these young rappers doing their dance moves at 65 or 70.

“Sure, I’d like to sit back and count my money, but I love to sing jazz even more. It’s as simple as that.”