Just when it seemed that the jazz world was safe from Harry Connick Jr. — who mercifully has put aside his crooning career to concentrate on movie acting — along comes the new wave of musical lightweights.
Like Connick, they’re lovely to look at but not so interesting to hear, which may be precisely the idea.
The major record companies, in other words, have learned that a pretty face can sell a lot more CDs than a bold sound — even in the ostensibly uncommercial world of jazz. In this age of MTV, VH-1, BET and other music-saturated cable channels, the way an artist looks matters far more than the way he sounds, at least so far as sales are concerned.
That may help explain why an ordinary singer-pianist such as Diana Krall emerges as a major jazz star of the late ’90s.
Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with Krall’s music, if you don’t mind an unassuming keyboardist with a smallish voice and limited range. She’s a modest performer (with a great deal to be modest about), but you’d never know it from the prominence of her image in record stores and magazine ads.
Dorothy Donegan, Renee Rosnes, Marilyn Crispell and other jazz pianists who tower over Krall artistically never have ridden the Top 20 of the Billboard charts for months on end, as Krall recently has done with her “All for You” CD. Like her previous “Only Trust Your Heart,” the new recording suggests that the young Canadian performer is a decent performer but not a distinctive one.
Then again, Krall’s more talented counterparts don’t have the long blond hair and movie-star beauty that Krall’s label, Impulse, promotes heavily in the media, on her CD jackets and wherever else they can.
Or consider Kevin Mahogany, a burly Kansas City singer who just a few years ago was imploring the Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago to let him sit in on weekends — for free! After releasing a couple of mediocre recordings and appearing in Robert Altman’s film “Kansas City,” Mahogany found himself pursued by several major record labels.
Warner Bros. won the bidding war for a handsome singer-actor whose mediocre improvisational skills and distinctly uninspiring pipes have brought him fame and fortune. That Mahogany played the role of a genuinely great jazz-blues shouter, Big Joe Turner, in Altman’s “Kansas City” underscored the talent gap between yesterday’s jazz stars and today’s.
Mahogany and Krall, alas, are not the exceptions. The musically vacuous playing of guitarist Mark Whitfield, the pipsqueak vocals of Nnenna Freelon, the tiny sonic world of drummer Leon Parker and the nasal warblings of singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli all point to the blanding of mainstream jazz in the ’90s. These artists may not be virtuosos, but their youth and camera-friendly demeanor make them immensely marketable in the media-crazed ’90s.
Even formidable artists have been diminished by this homogenization of jazz in recent years. Piano giant McCoy Tyner, for instance, did not add luster to his remarkable resume with “What the World Needs Now” (Impulse), a bathed-in-strings Burt Bacharach tribute that makes Mantovani seem nearly experimental.
And even Bill Frisell, once the most daring of young guitar innovators, has taken the easy-listening route with “Nashville” (Nonesuch), an unctuous recording that virtually begs for commercial radio airplay.
Meanwhile, some of the boldest young artists in jazz wither in the CD bins.
Chicagoan Kurt Elling’s audacious vocals on “Close Your Eyes” (Blue Note) made his debut record a critical hit, a Grammy nominee and a sales disappointment. Don’t expect his exceptional follow-up CD, “The Messenger” (Blue Note), to fare much better.
And Atlantic, which in recent years began re-emerging as a major player in jazz, proved otherwise when it got rid of its two most compelling improvisers: alto saxophonist Wess Anderson and pianist Henry Butler. Instead, the label has been putting all its marketing might behind saxophonist James Carter, another devilishly handsome “Kansas City” star whose technical ostentation thus far has yielded hollow music.
Of course, there’s another side to the story, told by the achievements of artists such as trumpeter Nicholas Payton, pianist Marcus Roberts, saxophonist David Sanchez and bandleader Wynton Marsalis. Each has been able to reach large audiences without compromising his musical message. Essentially, that’s because these four musicians stand so far ahead of their peers in artistry, technique and commitment that not even the jazz doldrums of the late ’90s can stop them.
Yet they’re the glorious exceptions that prove the rule, triumphing on both artistic and commercial terms while other gifted artists languish. For every Payton or Sanchez there are dozens of recording artists who deserve comparable acclaim but never will get it.
So the next time you walk into a record store looking for something to hear, stroll past the posters for the likes of Krall and Mahogany and check out the Antonio Harts and Marlon Jordans and Paul Werticos.
They’re not exactly matinee idols, but they sure know how to swing.
