Ever since the beginnings of the “album,” some of the finest and most enduring jazz vocal albums have been those that unite the voice with just a single instrument, normally piano or guitar.
Perhaps the first really notable LP of this type was a 10-inch album that paired Ella Fitzgerald with pianist Ellis Larkins for eight songs by George Gershwin. 1950’s Ella sings Gershwin stands out among her late Decca output not just because it’s an exquisite disc of quality material at a time when she was often lumbered with poor songs, but also because it foreshadows the songbook albums that she would begin work on in 1956. Not only that, but Ella would return to the vocal and single instrument format time and again throughout her career. There was a second album with Larkins in 1954, and a reunion with him on stage in 1973 at the Newport Jazz Festival. In 1960, she would team up with the under-rated Paul Smith for a series of ballads that were heard in the film Let No Man Write My Epitaph (the disc is also known as The Intimate Ella). She would also record an album with Oscar Peterson in the mid-1970s, and, perhaps most importantly, she would work with guitarist Joe Pass on a series of four studio albums between 1973 and 1986, as well as numerous live shows together. Ella is perhaps best-known today for the songbook albums (although the first two of which are surprisingly unexciting) and her virtuosic scat-singing, most often heard in concert rather than in the studio. And yet many of her best studio performances are during the quiet, intimate albums I have just mentioned, in which she sings perhaps more purely than elsewhere, but also with much more depth and emotion than she is generally credited with.
Ella wasn’t the only singer to have embarked on these projects, and sometimes those involved seem rather unlikely. Sammy Davis Jr, known these days for his showmanship more than the quality of his singing (and this is such a shame, for he was a brilliant singer) paired up with a guitarist on two occasions for albums of reflective ballads, first with Mundell Lowe in the late 1950s, and then with Laurindo Almeida in the mid-1960s for what may well be Davis’s masterpiece. Davis is accused so often of simply trying to be Frank Sinatra, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. Sinatra never recorded duet albums. The nearest he got was both sides of a single with pianist Bill Miller in 1976, and the beautiful It’s Sunday with guitarist Tony Mottola, although he did duets in concerts in the 1970s and 1980s on a regular basis.
Elsewhere, there’s Doris Day’s wonderful album with Andre Previn, without doubt her finest work. And there are the duet albums by Tony Bennett and Bill Evans – albums which have become classics but which, I confess, I don’t actually like all that much. But what is important to point out in all of these albums I have mentioned (and many more besides) is that the format isn’t that of singer and accompanist, but of two musicians collaborating together as equals.
That brings me to Songwriter, a new album by Alex Bird (vocals) and Ewen Farncombe (piano). Alex has mentioned in comments about the album that it is in the spirit of the Bennett and Evans LPs, but Bird and Farncombe actually do something more than those vocal/piano duets of the past in that all of the songs here are originals. There’s also a great deal of variety, from the dramatic to the intimate, and from ballads through to salsa. These two men have worked together for several years now, having composed two previous albums together, on which Farncombe has also acted as arranger and pianist, and Bird as vocalist.
Songwriter opens with The Song is Ours, a song which demonstrates so well how Bird and Farncombe operate, with the entire four minutes or so performed rubato, and yet there is no false move here, with neither men thrown by the timing of the other. Bird’s vocal has become richer and slightly darker since Whisky Kisses, two years ago, and Farncombe’s touch is truly beautiful – and I should add here that the entire album sounds great. The mix and production really is very good indeed.
I’ve Seen the Sun follows, with its salsa rhythms that shouldn’t work in this kind of arrangement, but does. Perhaps my favourite song of the new disc is The Soul I Left Behind, a solemn, brooding ballad, which has echoes of Where the Blackbird Sings from the album You Are the Light and the Way. Meanwhile there is some wonderful work on Raindrops (Falling Down), particular from Ewen Farncombe, who has a ball creating pianistic raindrops, and demonstrates the range of his playing in doing so. If You’re Not Laughin’ (You’re Crying) changes the mood to something bluesier in a song with a Fats Waller vibe, and there is something of a more traditional blues on the title track, Songwriter.
This might be the third album of originals from these two songwriters in three years, but there is no sign that the well is drying up with regards to material – and it’s refreshing that each of the three albums so far are distinctive from the others. Despite my mentioning all of those great duet albums of the past, the albums that this effort most reminds me of aren’t duet albums at all, but the solo albums 20, 25, and 30 by Harry Connick Jr. These, too, are vocal and piano discs, but Connick carries out both duties. Perhaps these albums come to mind as a comparison because the chemistry and interaction between Alex and Ewen feels like they are just one performer. Without prior knowledge, you would assume that there is one person here, playing the piano and singing into the microphone in front of him. There is no battle of wills going on, no fighting for the spotlight, just some really excellent, utterly selfless, music that shows that, in a world of gimmicks and big production, there is still room for an intimate disc such as this.
Beyond Boundaries 