Karrin Allyson (2)

Karrin's Got the Blues
(Continued)

"I think right now I can really relate to them because I'm traveling a lot and it seems like a lot of these songs have to do with traveling, and having the blues, getting tired and fed up but still keepin' on and all that kind of thing." Sure enough, there are several songs about life on the road, but there are also quite a few other topics that seem very au courante. "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy", for example, seems to cover many of the current realities of American life: "Everybody's cryin' justice/just as soon as there's business first"; "Everybody's cryin' peace on earth/just as soon as we win this war." "Long as You're Living", with its message to live fully speaks to today's audience as well. Joni Mitchell's "Blue Motel Room" offers this: "You and me, we're like America and Russia/We're always keeping score/We're always balancing the power/And that can get to be a cold cold war/We're going to have to hold ourselves a peace talk/In some neutral café."

I mention that I've always liked Mitchell's album Hejira, which contains "Blue Motel Room" and ask if it was a song she thought she might perform someday. "Yeah, it is" she replied. "I experimented with it before and then let it go for awhile. And then, when we were going to get down to doing this album, we experimented with it in rehearsal and then tried it live a couple of times, and people were liking it and I was really enjoying doing it. Joni's sound is so much her that it's difficult when somebody tried to do one of her songs, but it seemed like it was possible to not make people mad when they heard us do it. I like that tune very much and when we play it live, people dig it and I love her stuff so much that it's a pleasure to do it." I ask whether she is a Bonnie Raitt fan as well, since she's covered a couple of tunes associated with Raitt. "Yes I am. I got to meet her at the Grammys actually, and she was very sweet and gracious to me. Yeah, I love her natural sound, her very comfortable feel with the material , and I think she's a good person, you know? She has really made a good life in music, and she's been an inspiration in that way."

Lester Young used to say that he always learned the lyrics of any tune he was going to play, and that knowing them helped deepen his interpretation. Singers obviously have to know the words and melody of any song they plan to sing, but I wondered if Allyson felt there was an advantage to being able to being able to sit down at the piano and examine a song harmonically and melodically. "On almost every tune I learn, I spend some time at the piano with it" she says. "It definitely helps the creative process. On 'Naima', trying to figure out a way I wanted to do that song, I've sat down at the piano and wanted to do it in that style. It just came to me all of a sudden 'oh, this could be a cool thing', because we had tried words with it, and it just wasn't working for me. So, yeah, sitting down at the piano really helps. I really am part of the band." That's another key element of Karrin's successful approach to jazz singing—she is another musician in the band, not fronting it, but fully participating, listening to, and responding to the other instruments.

I ask what she feels makes a jazz singer and what differentiates that style of singing from others, like cabaret or pop. "Improvisation has a lot to do with it, if you stretch a little bit. Letting the music breathe, I think. I find cabaret singers, one of my favorites is, in this city, Weslia Whitfield; she has such an instrument that she will sustain a lot more than Carmen McRae would. And the older I get, the more I like space in the music, and Shirley Horn's a great example of that. But then again, there's Johnny Hartman, a great jazz singer, who sustains all over the place. So I guess it's just what the listener gets out of it. Also, it's the players you surround yourself with. If you're playing with a show pianist, a pianist who's always accompanied Broadway singers, it's gonna be harder to sing 'My Foolish Heart' in a jazz context than if you would be playing with Tommy Flanagan or Marian McPartland."

I suggest that one contextual difference would be the level of interaction between a vocalist and jazz musicians vs. musicians more used to playing a piece pretty much the same way each time. "Right. And that's another good aspect, interaction. Because it is a chamber music. You know, you're reacting to what the other people are doing, it's not by rote, every time the same thing. So how you're feeling that day or that night…if you're more tired or, where you are mentally or emotionally, you can let that come across in a performance."

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