I don’t want to become the resident poster of obituaries but we can’t let Abbey Lincoln go without a word.
Abbey Lincoln, at 80, died Saturday as most jazz fans know by now. And most of Abbey’s fans know the details of her vivacious life. Her lounge singing start in the 1950s, her supreme acting in important roles in the 1960s films Nothing But a Man (1964) and For Love of Ivy (1968), both of which came after her 1962 marriage to jazz drummer and bandleader Max Roach.
Her personal and musical relationship with Roach would play an important part in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s as well as in Lincoln’s own musical career. She branched out from supper-club singer to jazz singer and songwriter, collaborating with a multitude of jazz giants over the course of her long career, including pairings with Archie Shepp, Eric Dolphy and Sonny Rollins, and, of course, Roach.
In the past two decades, Lincoln’s songwriting really hit its stride, with a string of fantastic, critically acclaimed albums starting with 1991’s The World Is Falling Down, 1993’s The Devil Got Your Tongue, 1994’s perfect A Turtle’s Dream and 2007’s ambitious Abbey Sings Abbey. There are a bunch of great albums in between too. No-one sings like her, she’s so clean and loud and honest, here’s two cuts from her 1959 LP ‘Abbey is Blue’, Kenny Dorham on tpt.Wynton Kelly on pft. Les Spann on gtr. Sam Jones on bs. and Philly Joe on dms.
Come Sunday by Duke
Lost in the Stars – by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/531886/come%20sunday%20-%20abbey%20lincoln.mp3
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/531886/Lost%20in%20the%20Stars%20-%20Abbey%20Lincoln.mp3
Goneforeign – David came home from work with the sad news, and said he’d heard an interview with her from about a decade ago. He didn’t say clean and loud and honest, but it was close (I think he said “precise in the way she speaks” and then a bunch of sentences that implied she wouldn’t just agree to what the interviewer was expecting her to say.
Thanks for posting.
I had heard of her, but not heard any of the music. So thanks for the links, she has a fabulous voice.
GF – thanks for posting these two songs – hadn’t heard her before but knew the name. Really liked them both. It’s a strange rule of life that kudos comes in death. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be at the end.
Thanks GF – very sad. Beautiful voice when delivering a lyric, and an extraordinary vocal improviser – I think of her wordless flights on her husband (making them my favourite jazz couple) Max Roach’s Freedom Now! Suite and on a song I recently got into an RR Top 10, Caged Bird. One of the most treasured records in my possession is her Painted Lady with Archie Shepp, which features Caged Bird as well as versions of Duke’s Sophisticated Lady, Stevie’s Golden Lady (turned into a mellow torch song – incredible) and What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?