Something Cool, but Something Missing

** 1/2

CHRIS CONNOR

“Warm Cool:The Atlantic Years”

32 Jazz

** 1/2

JUNE CHRISTY

“Big Band Specials”

Capitol

** 1/2

DOMINIQUE EADE

“The Long Way Home”

RCA Victor

*

Big-band singers in the halcyon days of the Swing Era had a fairly proscribed role: Serve as attractive stage decoration during the instrumental passages, get up to sing a chorus or two, then retreat once again into the scenery. Performers such as Connor and Christy had somewhat more musical leeway, working with big jazz bands--both served stints with Stan Kenton (Christy in the late ‘40s, Connor in the early ‘50s).

But the skills learned with big bands didn’t always translate into wider, more expressive styles. Even Frank Sinatra, the ultimate product of big-band singing, had to spend years working to find the expressive qualities of his artistic maturity.

Christy and Connor--highly regarded as jazz singers in the ‘50s and ‘60s--were clearly affected by the singing of Anita O’Day, who preceded them in the Kenton band. The most immediate similarity was in vocal timbre, with all three possessing immediately identifiable, throaty sounds. Another, less appealing resemblance was the occasional tendency of each to be plagued by uncertain pitch. The compensation was a generally effective sense of brisk swing, more so in O’Day and Christy, less so in Connor. But each had difficulty making the transition from the declamatory, upfront style required for big-band singing to the more thoughtful exposition of story and mood essential to solo performance. (Christy’s classic rendering of “Something Cool” was a notable exception.)

As a result, both Christy and Connor were generally more effective when they performed in big-band or larger ensemble settings. The two-CD Connor collection, which includes nearly 40 tracks selected from the 12 Atlantic albums she made between 1955 and 1963, reveals the characteristically uneven quality of her performances. Almost without exception, she is more effective with the groups that provide a solid foundation of swing--the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra, a small ensemble featuring Phil Woods and Oliver Nelson and another ensemble featuring Al Cohn and Joe Wilder.

Other tracks, often far more grandiose, place her minimal interpretive abilities in lush orchestral frameworks that simply underscore her quavery vibrato and limited range. Connor fans will undoubtedly be pleased by this far-ranging collection of performances from one of her best periods. But it’s hard not to wonder how her career might have unfolded had her producers placed her in surroundings that enhanced her skills, rather than attempt to transform her into an over-orchestrated, pre-rock pop star.

Recorded in 1962, Christy’s romp through such big-band classics as “Skyliner,” “Frenesi,” “Stompin’ at the Savoy” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing” is more effective precisely because it offers a solid, supportive framework for her to do what she does best. The arrangements, mostly by Bill Holman, are crisp and swinging, and the band includes such West Coast stalwarts as Bud Shank, Jimmy Rowles, Bob Cooper and others. Although most of the numbers break out into faster tempos, she is equally effective in the few ballads. But Capitol’s reissue team has done a shabby job, packaging the CD with original liner notes only, confusing data about personnel and virtually no identification of the soloists. (And could the original sound have been this badly mixed?)

Eade’s first RCA recording, “When the Wind Was Cool,” released in 1997, surveyed tunes associated with Connor and Christy. This time out, despite the presence of such attractive material as Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse’s “Two for the Road” and Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Francis Webster’s witty “Baltimore Oriole,” Eade once again sounds very much like a ‘90s derivative of the Connor-Christy-O’Day formula.

Almost everything is sung with the same intensity, with little feeling for tonal variation or lyric interpretation. Like her mentors, she generates rhythmic swing despite a tendency to hold notes for no apparent reason, their impact diminished by her monochromatic sound. Unlike them, she moves into the treacherous realm of scat singing. And like other scat wannabes, she mistakes riffing for improvising, her soloing devoid of the flowing relationship with a song’s chords that is the essence of effective jazz improvising (at least in a harmonic setting).

Eade needs to do the hard work--as Sinatra did--of finding the essential qualities of mood, atmosphere and storytelling in her singing.

*

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).