What defines the jazz singer (or jazz vocalist) is a question that has always stirred the minds of fans and critics. It doesn't hurt to consult an old hand in the profession who, after experiencing the entire history of jazz's development and having had close personal contact with the greats of the music, still competently devoted himself to this subject at an advanced age: Nat Hentoff , grand seigneur among jazz writers

He names three key elements (and they apply just as much to instrumentalists): swing (implied and present like the heartbeat), feeling (which cannot be learned because it expresses how profoundly a person deals with himself and life) and the own, personal sound that results from the first two factors.

If this seems too abstract for you, you only have to experience the great artists of our CD box: twenty completely different individualists who, apart from vocal range and other rather technical factors, have found their personal voice and are able to draw their listeners into their cosmos and enchant them.

There's no missing an Aretha Franklin with her jazz beginnings that still set her apart today, as witnessed at the big jazz concert for Barack Obama at the White House in 2016, as well as the great goddesses of jazz heaven: Ella, Billie, Sarah and Dinah. But there is also plenty of room for musical variety and discoveries of talents who, for a variety of reasons, didn't make it to the big time, or are sadly forgotten today.

At second glance, it is worthwhile to look at how completely different and individual the approaches to interpretation are by comparing the songs in the various versions gathered here, be it on the basis of the now classic jazz standards from the Great American Song Book or else the then completely new songs by the head hipster Oscar Brown Jr. which are fantastically performed here by Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln and Sheila Jordan and which became the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA in the 1960s.

Great Singers Needed Equal Fellow Musicians, of course, and so it goes without saying that virtuosos like Cliff ord Brown (Sarah Vaughan), Milt Jackson and Max Roach (Dinah Washington), Stanley Turrentine and Wynton Kelly (Abbey Lincoln), Jay Jay Johnson and Herbie Mann (Chris Connor), Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer and Chet Baker (Annie Ross) and the outstanding orchestra leaders and arrangers Quincy Jones (Peggy Lee) and Sy Oliver (Della Reese) and many others participated and contributed to the musical success of these productions from a "Golden Jazz Age" that can only be admired from records from afar.

Album Title:

CD 1: Sarah Vaughan: With Clifford Brown / Dinah Washington: Sings The Blues / Bette Roche: Sings With Earl Hines
CD 2: Ella Fitzgerald & Billie Holiday: At Newport / Dinah Washington: At Newport '58
CD 3: Chris Connor: This Is Chris / Jeri Southern: Cofree, Cigarettes And Memories
CD 4: Aretha Franklin: Aretha With The Ray Bryant Combo / George Shearing With Nancy Wilson: The Swingin's Mutual!
CD 5: Betty St. Clair: What Is There To Say / Helen Merrill: American Country Songs
CD 6: Betty Carter: Meet Betty Carter And Ray Bryant / Nina Simone: Forbidden Fruit
CD 7: Della Reese: The Story Of The Blues / Lurlean Hunter: Blue & Sentimental
CD 8: Carmen McRae: After Glow / Anne Ross: Sings A Song With Mulligan!
CD 9: Peggy Lee: Blues Cross Country
CD10: Abbey Lincoln: Abbey Is Blue / Sheila Jordan: Portrait Of Sheila