When I talked with Kurt Elling at the 2009 Monterey Jazz Festival and asked him about the "risk" involved in attempting to couple, or marry, music and poetry, he said, "It didn't seem risky to me." He moved quickly to the host of options — "the number of avenues" — a singer has when it comes to interpreting "the language of a standard": "You can sing a standard, you can swing a standard, you can rearrange a standard, you can juxtapose a standard with another standard, you can scat — that's just the baseline." The host of options seems nearly endless.

In a recent JazzTimes column, writer Nate Chinen states that, because of Elling, "the state of jazz singing will be different in the coming decade than it was when [Elling] arrived, and I dare say it will be better." As evidence, he quotes David Thorne Scott, an associate professor in the voice department at Berklee College of Music, who claims, "Among my jazz students, [Elling] is the contemporary singer that I have cited the most as an influence. I always expect it from my guys, but it's the women, too." And Dominique Eide, "an accomplished jazz singer and revered faculty member at the New England Conservatory," adds, "Technically he's so impressive, and I think students feel the weight of musicianship behind what he does, in his transcription and his writing of lyrics to other people's solos."

In the four sections of this blog posted so far (which include the extensive Monterey Jazz Festival interview), I have tried to cover some of the roots of Elling's music in Beat Generation poetry and prose, and in jazz culture in general. We discussed the "ritual environment" of church music he was exposed to, his sense of "mission" or "calling," and multi-disciplinary art events or collaboration projects. I would like to round things off with one final aspect of his art: the options or "number of avenues" he brings to ballads. After lots of listening, I came up with five major trends:

The first is a relatively "straight" or straightforward, respectful (in terms of tradition or what has gone before) approach, but one to which he brings or lends his own unique — personal, original — sense of tempo and phrasing. He not only enhances, but transforms and transcends what we have become accustomed to hear, or are familiar with, within the standard ballad repertoire. A Russian literary theory called ostranenie, or "defamiliarization," was based on an incident in which Leo Tolstoy once spent twenty minutes dusting his room without having a single thought in his head. For Tolstoy, that was a crime. He was embarrassed: caught with the trousers of his consciousness down, so to speak, and equated the state to not existing, being dead. Critic Viktor Shklovsky picked up on this incident and described ostranenie as destroying the habitual logic of associations, a deliberate cultivation of the unexpected — the world of everyday reality becoming more perceptible in the process, objects restored from mere "recognition" to actual "seeing." Or hearing. Of all the musical artists I know, Elling may come closest to practicing "defamiliarization" in his own art.

On his "Flirting with Twilight" CD (and again on "Dedicated to You"), Kurt severely alters the customary tempo of "Say It (Over and Over Again)." He slows it down to a near halt (talk about "risk"!). There's ritardando in music (holding back, gradually diminishing the speed), but when I tried to sing "Say It" at Kurt's tempo, I just sounded mentally retarded, or aphasic. Kurt handles the tempo beautifully, as if he were swimming (a la Esther Williams?), and singing, underwater. His slow-motion phrasing gives you the eerie impression that time may well have swung to a halt, but the effect matches the special pleading ("never stop saying you're mine") perfectly — and not just pleading but praying this might be so.

The slow-motion approach, taking the tempo down to a near standstill, also occurs in "Every Time We Say Goodbye" (on his "This Time It's Love" CD), and — as with "Say It" — it fits the song's content just right. The existential dilemma — "Why the gods above me, who must be in the know, think so little of me... They'd allow you to go" — gets lodged in the mind and heart forever. Some languages, such as Russian, have two forms for the word "goodbye": one that implies that parting is not forever (do svidaniya); another that suggests it probably is (proshchay). As a lover, Kurt doesn't just say goodbye and "die a little" (or "cry a little"), but suffers a wound that never heals. He dies a lot — or outright.

Another device, aside from pacifying the tempo, is taking a single word and dwelling on it or repeating it, as if that word were so thoroughly ensconced, embedded in his mind and heart that he can't drive it out, an obsession for him and the listener as well. He does this often, even taking a single syllable word and, by way of melisma, endowing it with so many more syllables that, its elasticity tested to the limit, it threatens to snap. In "The Very Thought of You" (from "This Time It's Love" again), simple pronouns such as "me" and "you" take on epic proportions, the word "ordinary" becomes everything but ordinary, the word "idea" ("the idea of you") is broken up lovingly, and the final words "my love" are grindingly cruel by way of being heartfelt and earnest. The approach is straightforward, respectful, but again, Kurt takes the song at his own pace. The rhythmic pauses, hesitations, accents, extensions, and emphasis are all his own.

A second Kurt Elling approach to ballads is to take a song that is relatively well known — such as "She's Funny That Way" (on "This Time It's Love") — and bury it or alter it so significantly at the start that the melody is not yet recognized. He does this by way of adopting a classic solo — Lester Young's on this tune — and filling it with a host of personal verbal details, related here to Kurt's wife Jennifer. She's a woman who once, apparently, dressed in "tweeds and drapes" and owned a "Rolls Royce car," then became a "fallen star," converted to a non-materialistic love that's "just too good to be true."

From this point on, Kurt provides a Beat Generation accent and emphasis ("angels never fall in love with men like me"). Just a few notes of the original melodic line emerge by way of Laurence Hobgood’s piano at the very end, after Kurt's main point has been well proved: she IS delightfully "funny that way" (in nearly every way). Along the way, there's been ample room for self-conscious musing (his own stake in the matter) and even some philosophical speculation on "love" in general. The same thing happens to "Moonlight Serenade" (on "Flirting with Twilight"), although the original melody is suggested and even briefly stated (in a nuance-filled way) on occasion, and Kurt actually states, or sings, the melodic line at the close.

A third approach is strict vocalese, or what Dominique Eide described as Kurt's "transcription and his writing of lyrics to other people's solos." On "A New Body and Soul" ("Nightmoves"), the content embodied in Dexter Gordon's improvisation, the original melody with its emphasis on a heart that's "sad and lonely," stuck fast in a supplicating state, is there at the start, but the emphasis is shifted to a head that's "inept," not a heart. Kurt's own lyrics are loaded with "free" Beat Generation talk, or his "rant" phase (generous, expansive, meandering, here, to the point, perhaps, of overkill). The talk includes everything from allusions to "fear," Orpheus, "the itsy-bitsy spider," and a "cosmic freak show" that consumes mind, body, soul, and heart.

My favorite "vacalese" piece is "Freddie's Yen for Jen" (on "This Time It's Love"), which starts out with succinct lyrics worthy of Kenneth Rexroth:

Love is wild in her;
I confuse her love with the sea.
She is a rare fantasy told to me...

The single syllable word "rare" somehow ends up sounding like "mir-a-cle" — but the subtle effects erupt, the slow tempo changing to one that's decidedly "up."

But her kisses.
I dig her kisses
while washing the dishes
or feeding the fishes...

The loud Bob Dylan-esque rhymes produce the effect of mockery or doggerel, and from that point on, it's anything goes — and it does. The "poetry" gets kinky, playing heavily on the "k" sound: "Kick-it, kig-it, kig-it kisses/kisses that will make you holler love/and that you're glad enough to be a man!" In a wild, hip middle "talk" section, his "chick" is flying all around him, with "a wiggle that will make a clock stop." They "tether together," the word play wide open, now, like the love, but not quite as indulgent as in "A New Body and Soul" (aside perhaps from those "chewy kisses"). It all converts to a grueling instrumental scat and ends on the word — guess what? — "kiss," of course. "The fundamental things apply... as time goes by" — those words not in this piece, although just about everything else imaginable is. And I love it!

A fourth approach is to be totally original, and consists of songs that Kurt (lyrics) and Laurence Hobgood, his arranger (also a fine composer) have prepared together. Two of my favorites are "Never Say Goodbye (for Jodi)" (on his first CD, "Close Your Eyes"), with its light touch of Latin licks and straightforward language ("Soft to touch, but hard to hold... I'm waiting for the girl who will never say goodbye") and the bossa nova-based "Where I Belong" (on "This Time It's Love"): "I hear the woman like a song dancing down a long corridor... rhythm at my window pane... a world of love-filled sound... reminding me I belong where I am."

I started out with Kurt Elling's relatively straightforward, respectful approach to a ballad, but one in which he brings or lends his own unique — personal, original — sense of tempo and phrasing, enhancing, transforming, transcending, defamiliarizing what we have become accustomed to hear. However, I would have to acknowledge even a fifth approach in which, while retaining some of these traits, he seems to set himself aside and pays homage (his own kind of homage, true) to a particular song in and of itself, its history in other hands (and mouths).

He certainly proved he can do this (if not long before) with his Grammy-winning CD "Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman," in which a host of tasty ballads are sung with full respect, even reverence: "All or Nothing at All," "It’s Easy to Remember," "Lush Life," "My One and Only Love," "Nancy With the Laughing Face," "You Are Too Beautiful." And he has done this before: with "My Foolish Heart" and "Too Young to Go Steady" (on "This Time It’s Love,"), "Prelude to a Kiss" (on "The Messenger"), "Blame It on My Youth" (in which "youth" is solidly incriminated, right down to the last sustained word!) (on "Flirting with Twilight").

Even when he transforms a familiar song, to the point of variety and surprise, as he did with "Nature Boy" (on "The Messenger" CD), paying homage at the start to Nat "King" Cole's kind, casual, elegant poise, this mood giving way to a dramatic change of pace that includes everything from falsetto flashes to up-tempo full orchestra backing and ecstatic scat, he returns to Nat's soft inflection at the close. Very "faithful," yet also very original! And then there's the pure joy of Kurt harmonizing with himself (or with a quartet of selves) on "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing" (from "This Time It's Love").

Next time, I'd like to close out this six part blog devoted to Kurt Elling with a brief history or overview of attempts to blend music and poetry — and end with some reflection on Kurt's own contribution to this legacy.