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Why do jazz singers sing so many covers?

This is a question I get asked often when people first find out that I am a jazz singer: "So you sing mostly covers?"

At this point I can tell them that in jazz, we do standards, not covers, but explaining the difference always makes me feel like Lisa Simpson.

OK, so standards, covers, whatever you want to call them... why do jazz singers sing so many of them?

In theory, we should be able to sing whatever we want. After all, as Louis Armstrong explained, it is not the song, it is how you play it that makes it jazz. However in practice, jazz singers tend to be put in a box that forces us to sing standards. These forces are partially economic. For example, while it is acceptable for Cassandra Wilson to do a jazz rendition of "Last Train to Clarksville" or for Diana Krall to record a CD of all originals, most jazz vocal consumers are more partial to standards. I can't count how many times people have hemmed and hawed over which Kim Nalley CD to buy, only to decide based on which standards on the disc they liked.

Besides economic forces, there are also genre labeling forces. It seems more acceptable for instrumentalists to record fusion, originals or Joni Mitchell and still have the product be labelled as jazz. If a singer does the same thing, it is almost certain that her product will be categorized as an R&B, singer-songwriter or cover album. It is my belief that there are several great singers such as Anita Baker who could be categorized as jazz singers... except that they didn't sing enough jazz standards!

(I would love to get my hands on Baker's first CD, which was all jazz and virtually disappeared once she got signed to a major label.)

At times I feel as if the only reason that some people are enamoured with jazz is because they can't figure out what the artist did to the tune. I, however, can — and do — sing along to many of the tunes that people label as difficult. Lay people can hang their hat on lyrics in a way that they can't with instrumental tunes, and when I sing Miles Davis' version of "My Funny Valentine" note for note, the lay listener can follow me. And with the loss of mystery, it seems we lose some of that jazz. Maybe this is why people say that true jazz can only be instrumental.

But really, who cares? It is not as if labelling something jazz is going to make it a hot seller! And vocal jazz seems to hold its own, fan-wise, compared to insturmental jazz. So what's the problem?

The problem is that jazz singers like myself who really know how to take a tune and make it our own, how to fashion arrangements in a moment's notice, how to add rythmic density and to spin new melody lines that are more haunting than the original, get a little miffed when singers that simply sing standards are called jazz singers.

It is completely understandable. The reason why standards are so pervasive in jazz is because they were the popular tunes during the golden age of jazz. These are the tunes that our ancestor first pushed through a horn till it was born into a new note called jazz. There are also many older jazz fans who only listen to jazz singers because we sing the songs of their youth. They aren't concerned with how hip the arrangement is, or whether the the singer is a jazz singer or a cabaret singer or a pop singer; they just like the old tunes. They don't write tunes like that anymore.

What the younger generation often forgets is that many of the tunes that we call "standards" were brand-spanking new when jazz musicians started playing them. Older musicians can remember when standards like "It's Alright With Me" first came out. In the bars along Times Square, jazz musicians would play their rendition of tunes current on and off Broadway, enticing musical theatre patrons to stop for a drink or bite before or after the show. In musical theatre, there is a huge gap between the original version and the jazz version. The jazz lexicon has become so ingrained in our ears that we forget there is a world of difference between "Summertime" in musical theater vs. jazz, between Peter Cooke and Warne Marsh. Trust me, I flubbed several theatre auditions in my youth by not realizing this fact. But I'm afraid the difference is lost on many today.

In the end, I sing standards because I like them. I try to throw in a few curve balls just to keep people on their toes. I also will come out with a CD of mostly originals later this year. But I sing mostly standards because I identify with the jazz era. Even in my twenties, I felt out of place at hip-hop concerts. I'm the only one that knows the set list that the old carousel is playing, "My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle Isle" followed by "Do You remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?" I don't know why. I guess I just have an old soul.

I once saw an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in which Patrick Stewart attended a New Year's Eve party, while the tuxedo-ed band behind played Duke Ellington. For better or for worse, these tunes are a chromosome in the American DNA, and I do believe that many decades after the last person that heard Duke is long dead, somewhere a jazz singer will still be singing "Take the A-Train."