Crooning on the Fault lines: Theorizing Jazz and Pop Vocal singing Discourse in the rock era, 1955–1978

By Vincent Stephens

I'm a popular singer, socially speaking, who sings jazz, musically speaking.
—Tony Bennett (1984)

Though [Andy] Williams never had anything close to a reputation as a jazz singer,
he does a decent job with jazzier material—thanks to the help of guest Dave Grusin
and producer Quincy Jones—on the recently reissued under Paris skies.
—Steve Knopper, review of Andy Williams's discography (1998)

I think Ella Fitzgerald is a jazz singer, I think Carmen McRae is and I think Susannah
McCorkle is. Me? I think I interpret things well, I sing in tune, I've got good
time, and I get the job done. There's got to be somebody in the band who says the
words to the songs, you know.
—Rosemary Clooney (1990)

People call me a jazz singer, but I hate that term.… Either one is a singer or one
isn't. I like doing all types of material—just as long as it's good.
—Sarah Vaughan (1967)

These epigraphs suggest how the term "jazz singer" endures as a signifier of aesthetic achievement and expressive confinement.1 but "jazz singer" is inadequate either as an identity or as shorthand for aesthetic technique. Permit me in what follows to reevaluate the term as well as the aesthetic and rhetorical assumptions underpinning perceptions of "pop" crooning. Jazz criticism has often made "pop singer" an epithet, despite the importance of accessibility, popularity, and lucre for generations of "jazz singers." Jazz critics use "jazz singer" in reviews, consumer guides, and histories as an elitist term and a marker of status that defines "jazz singers" against "pop singers." The latter—a broad "type" that includes rock, r&b, easy listening, and cabaret singers—supposedly are less convincing, authentic, and musical.