There are jazz singers who go in for pyrotechnics, the fireworks of scat and speed and big loud sound. And then there's Shirley Horn.
Shirley Horn takes it slooow. Always has. And she's had audiences in her thrall for 50 years now. She came of age during the era of the great jazz vocalists: Billie, Ella, Betty Carter, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan. All of them - gone. And then there's Shirley Horn.
At 68, still singing, still playing the piano in her own distinctive way, and embracing...caressing...loving the lyrics. Miles Davis discovered her when she was still a teenager, singing at a bar in Washington DC. He told the Village Vanguard, the famous jazz venue in New York, that he wouldn't go on if she didn't open for him.
The lanquid, lovely, utterly distinctive Shirley Horn.
