In scat, it’s Ella Fitzgerald.
In swing, it’s Frank Sinatra.
And in vocalese, the sublime and treacherously difficult art of singing intricate instrumental solos-with newly added lyrics-it’s the irrepressible Jon Hendricks.
Though Hendricks was not the first artist to write words for high-flying horn solos and sing them elegantly (Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure preceded him by a few years), no one has taken the art of vocalese on equal flights of poetry or virtuosity.
Born and raised 72 years ago in Ohio, Hendricks came of age during the dawning of be-bop in the late ’30s and early ’40s, when Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, among others, were beginning to play melody lines of unprecedented rhythmic complexity and harmonic sophistication. It didn’t take long before Hendricks was proving that the human voice could match these lightning-quick instrumental passages and give them added weight and meaning with lyrics.
As singer with Gillespie’s band (in the ’50s), as founder of the ground-breaking vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (late ’50s and early ’60s), Hendricks redefined vocal jazz.
Though most of his colleagues in early be-bop are long gone, Hendricks, who performs at 8 p.m. Friday at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, epitomizes the music and the flavor of the era. In conversation, as in music, he remains ever the hipster. Just listen:
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“My father was a minister-Rev. Alexander Brooks Hendricks of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. They would have called it the African Methodist Episcopal Seventh Day Adventist Buddhist Roman Catholic Church, but they couldn’t get it on the marquee.
“The music I heard in church was the basis for everything I’ve done since. The church is the matrix. Like the sun is the source of all light and heat in the universe, it’s the same with this music-everything can be traced back to the church.
“So I would get up and sing in church, and the whole congregation would just be transfixed.
“Art Tatum (the great jazz pianist who died in 1956) lived five houses from us up the street, and I started to work with him in a Toledo club when I was in junior high school. This was during the Depression, and there were 17 of us: 12 boys, 3 girls and 2 parents. Many times the money I made fed the whole family.
“But my father wasn’t cool to jazz. Hey, my father won a car in 1937, and you had to go into the movie theater with the (raffle) ticket to get the car. He wouldn’t go into the movie theater. He turned down the car!
“Art Tatum’s mother scrubbed floors at the First National Bank to help him get a second-hand baby grand. And he sat down to that, and he hasn’t gotten up yet.
“Because of my association with Tatum, I had the roots of be-bop firmly implanted in my psyche. I was scatting be-bop when I was 15 and 16.
“I met Bird when he came to the Civic Auditorium (in Toledo), which is a big, barnlike hall. They were doing “The Song Is You,” and after he started playing I came on stage and I scatted I don’t know how many choruses, because my knees were shaking.
“And then I wanted to get the hell out of there, so I started off the bandstand, and Bird grabbed my coattails. He motioned for me to come over, and this is in the middle of all the music going on.
“I looked at the band, and they all had these mad eyes, because everybody was shooting stuff, and everybody looked very, very wild to me-I was still a conservative law student at the time.
“So I went over and sat down and we had this lightning bandstand talk. Bird says: `Hey man, what do you do?’
“And I say: `I’m a law student.’
“He says, `A what? You ain’t no lawyer.’
” `What am I then?’
” `You’re a jazz singer. You gotta come to New York.’
“So I say, `Well, I don’t know anybody in New York.’
“And he says, `You know me.’
” `But where will I find you?’
” `Just ask anybody.’
“So I got off of there quickly as I could, because I thought this cat was stark starin’ mad.
“Two years and fours months later I suddenly find myself on my way out of Toledo, to take my wife and my son and settle in Toronto, because at that time I was involved in what they call an interracial marriage, though that whole thing is stupid because there’s only one race.
“So we packed up, and we were going to go to Toronto, but, at the border, they wouldn’t let us in because we didn’t have enough money.
“So we went to New York, to the Claremont Hotel, on 110th Street, where a lot of the cats stayed. And I said to one of them, `Where can I find Bird?’
“And he said, `He’s at the Apollo Bar, 125th Street.’ So Bird was right. Ask anybody.
“My wife and I went over to this bar, and I walk in the door, and on the bandstand is Gerry Mulligan, with a pair of faded jeans and a pair of sneakers on his feet, and no socks, and scraggly blood-red beard and a big shock of blood-red hair.
“Bird is playing, and he stops in the middle of the solo and says, `Hey, Jon, how you doing, you gonna sing something?’
“I almost fainted. That was the beginning. That started me off in New York.
“Now, there was no money, no work, there was only the music. The music was sustaining everybody. Everybody was getting together and jamming and playing the music. Everybody was in on the creation.
“It was like a big cake, made up of art, you know? Everybody was trying to get a slice of this cake-just get a few crumbs. Like if you could hear Bird play, you would have enough to play for three months. The ideas were so potent, so rich, and they came from everybody.
“See, Bird was like a meteor. Just like Mark Twain was deposited here by Halley’s comet, and he was taken away the next time Halley’s comet came back.
“So I think it was the same with Bird. It was a different kind of planet that came and left him, but I think it was something like that, because it was too rich a life for it to be less than anything like that. The man just inspired every living jazz musician.
“At about that time, I heard King Pleasure’s vocalese version of `Moody Mood for Love,’ and I said, `Wow, doggone, you can actually do that.’ So I immediately lyricized my favorite instrumental, which, at that time, was Woody Herman’s “Four Brothers.”
“And then I got a date to record it.
“And the recording guy says, `Who do you want to sing with you?’
“So I said Dave Lambert, because this cat was scattin’ be-bop, which was what I was doing.
“I had separated from my wife, so I moved in with him, and we were together 12 years. We just wanted to do something to show that we had been on this earth as artists.
“We both liked Basie’s band, so Dave says, `You write these words, and I’ll make the arrangements.’
“And I said, `Do you realize how many words you need for a Basie song? Millions!’
“And Dave says, `Well, have you got anything else to do?’
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t, so we did it.
“I wasn’t surprised that Lambert, Hendricks and Ross became such a hit because I knew it was going to be something. We just shook the country up.
“Eventually, I got tired of traveling all the time, and my (new) wife and I wanted to get our kids away from dope and promiscuity in the United States, so we moved to London.
“That’s when rock became big, and, strangely enough, all of the seminal rock artists-the Beatles, the Rolling Stones-were all jazz fans. So they had great respect for me, they gave me everything.
“I think they realized that jazz is the basis of the whole musical structure of the United States. It’s too bad that record companies have no sense of culture. Their sense of culture is the one that was held by Hermann Goering, who said, `When I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol.’
“But vocalese will go on forever. There’s a lot of new singers out there who can sing. Look at Al Jarreau and George Benson and (Bobby) McFerrin.
“And you know what? They’re very respectful of me. That’s sweet.”
