The Voice of Johnny Hartman, 1963

As wonderful as the 1963 album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman is (undoubtedly one of the all-time classic jazz vocal albums) my introduction to the unique sound of Johnny Hartman's voice came via another record, one he cut for Impulse two years later, in 1965—The Voice That Is! As soon as I heard it, I was hooked, and I only discovered Hartman's timeless collaboration with Trane a little later and was similarly awestruck. Hartman was essentially a jazz-inflected pop singer, a stylistic heir to Billy Eckstine by way of Frank Sinatra, to whom the title of The Voice That Is unequivocally alludes. The smooth, deep voice reminds us of Mr. B., while his way with a ballad is clearly influenced by the young Mr. S. Indeed, until he cut his celebrated LP with John Coltrane, Hartman had been trying to make it primarily as a balladeer, straddling the fence between jazz and pop, as we can hear on his excellent (and quite underrated) debut album, Songs from the Heart (Bethlehem, 1955), with Ralph Sharon on piano and Howard McGhee on trumpet. Before that, he had worked with Earl Hines and Dizzy Gillespie, and up until signing with Impulse in the early 1960s, he had made records with strings and with the likes of Erroll Garner and Perez Prado. But then he co-led that famous session with Coltrane, and everything changed for him: all of a sudden, Hartman's star began to rise, but he was seen primarily as a jazzman now, not a pop singer, which opened many doors for him, but at the same time closed some others. There were many venues that began booking him as a jazz vocalist, but that left him out of other venues that wouldn't get anywhere near a singer associated with jazz.

Fortunately, the success of John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman prompted Impulse to record Hartman more extensively, and The Voice That Is, cut at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in September 1964, is actually his third outing for the label. The LP was the product of two different sessions, both produced by Bob Thiele. The first one took place on September 22 and finds Hartman accompanied by Hank Jones on piano, Barry Galbraith on guitar, Richard Davis on bass, and Osie Johnson on drums. The setting here is rather similar to what we can hear on his previous album, I Just Dropped By to Say Hello, and the songs are mostly intimate ballads ("My Ship," "These Foolish Things," "It Never Entered My Mind") that Hartman handles with ease and elegance. There's a mid-tempo number, "The More I See You," that proves Hartman can swing when he wants to, and a lovely version of Bill Evans's "Waltz for Debby" (Gene Lees's beautiful lyrics sound tailor-made for Hartman) that is one of the highlights of the album and makes me wish that the vocalist had done an LP with Evans, like Tony Bennett and Monica Zetterlund did. The same quartet appears again on the second session, held on September 24, except for the fact that Bob Hammer, who handles the arrangements as well, replaces Hank Jones on piano. Also, the lineup is augmented with Dick Hafer on reeds, Phil Kraus on marimba, Howard Collins on guitar, and Willie Rodriguez on percussion, and so the rhythms become more unusually exotic, as on the catchy "The Day the World Stopped Turning," which features a beautiful flute solo by Hafer, and Henry Mancini's lesser-known "A Slow Hot Wind," whose very charming melody is subtly punctuated by Kraus's marimba. On this session Hartman took a stab at more contemporary songs, such as Ennio Morricone's "Funny World," Bart Howard's "Let Me Love You," and "Sunrise, Sunset," from Fiddler on the Roof, which closes the album. Frank Loesser's "Joey. Joey, Joey" is another good example of a tune that doesn't usually turn up on vocal jazz albums (Sammy Davis, Jr. did it as a duet with Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida, for instance) but then The Voice That Is simply isn't a typical vocal jazz record. Hartman made a few more recordings in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, before his passing in 1983, including some excellent Coltrane-inspired sessions in Japan, yet he sadly never achieved the kind of recognition that his talent should have warranted. Luckily, we still have his albums, and The Voice That Is remains one of his freshest and most satisfying efforts.

Recommended Reading

The only book-length biography of Johnny Hartman currently available is Gregg Akkerman's excellent The Last Balladeer: The Johnny Hartman Story (Scarecrow Press, 2012). You may find it here.

Johnny Hartman Online Discography

Mr. Akkerman and my friend Noal Cohen collaborated on a very thorough Johnny Hartman discography, which you may find here.

Jazz Flash News: Sarah Vaughan Stamp

The United States Postal Service has recently announced that a stamp honoring the artistic legacy of vocalist Sarah Vaughan will be put into circulation in 2016. A part of the ongoing Music Icons series, the stamp features an oil painting by Bart Forbes based on a photograph of Vaughan in concert taken by Hugh Bell in 1955. According to the USPS news release, Vaughan stands out as "one of America's greatest singers, successful in both jazz and pop, with a talent for improvisation and skillful phrasing and a voice that ranged over several octaves." The back cover of the 16-stamp sheet will feature a list of Vaughan's most successful recordings, including "Misty," "Body and Soul," and "Autumn in New York." The stamp will be issued at the end of March, and a ceremony will be held at Newark's Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall on the 29th of that month. This is certainly great news for all stamp-collecting jazz lovers like me! More information about this and other forthcoming stamps issued by the USPS is available here.

The description made by the USPS news release of Vaughan's vocal abilities is accurate—she was popular both as a jazz and a pop singer, although most of her pop records are decidedly steeped in jazz. Her vocal range and her sense of rhythm and timing, as well as her incredible breath control, earned her a rightful place among the greatest jazz singers in history, alongside legends like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Her approach to the vocal art was always adventurous and surprising, and she was just as good in a warm, intimate small-group setting as in a recording session backed by a large string orchestra. As a result, she left us a vast discography full of gems in a variety of styles, from jazz to pop to Brazilian music to R&B-inflected numbers. A good selection of her pop output for Mercury can be found in Sarah Vaughan Sings Broadway, a two-CD set containing songs from Broadway shows that she recorded between 1954 and 1956. Here she is mostly accompanied by a studio orchestra conducted by Hal Mooney, and the lush arrangements are absolutely perfect for her divine voice. For anyone preferring to sample her jazzier side (which has always been my first choice) there are a wealth of albums, from the sides she cut with Clifford Brown in the '50s to her collaborations with Count Basie in the '60s to her recordings with Oscar Peterson in the '70s. Yet one of the best examples of Sassy in her jazzy prime is her 1957 live album At Mister Kelly's, cut at the famed Chicago jazz club in a trio setting featuring pianist Jimmy Jones, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Roy Haynes. There's an undeniable connection between Vaughan and the audience, both in the intimate ballads ("Willow Weep for Me," "Stairway to the Stars") and on uptempo numbers ("Thou Swell," "Honeysuckle Rose," "How High the Moon") where she cuts loose, aided by a trio that supports her very effectively without ever getting in her way. These two CDs allow us glimpses into two fascinating sides of a multifaceted performer whose recorded legacy remains a true treasure of 20th-century music.