Abbey Lincoln at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater 4/5/01

by Alan Greenblatt

I don't remember ever having heard a jazz artist take on a Dylan song, but Abbey Lincoln's style was surprisingly well-suited to "Mr. Tambourine Man" last Friday at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Many of her own lyrics are full of poetic-sounding phrases and she gave good heft to "Tambourine Man." Someone in the audience said, "She took a Dylan song and she OWNED it."

Naturally, I wouldn't say anything quite like that myself. But I did think of her delivery a few days later, reading this description in Penelope Fitzgerald's novel "Human Voices": "... her voice, the scrupulously fair intonation of Selly Oak, neither rising nor falling, giving each syllable its equal weight, as though considering its feelings before leaving it behind..."

Lincoln is still a dangerous singer. She wears black clothes and a black hat and grey hair. She has a completely distinctive throaty-nasal voice and gives suggestive emphasis to each individual lyric, seeming to just about go flat, then giving that syllable a little extra push to get it back in pitch. She has this way of singing a song that completely puts across its emotions while seeming to stand at a slight ironic distance to them.

Lincoln was one of several jazz singers who enjoyed their greatest success relatively late in life, during the 1990s. She's 71 this year, and the combined age of her backing trio was just 78. (They were solid but not there to be remarkable; perhaps the most notable thing about them was the enormous nimbus of Afro that San Francisco drummer Jaz Sawyer wore.) Like another of the late-blooming singers of the nineties, Shirley Horn, appearing on the same stage a month ago, Lincoln forgot some lyrics. Like Etta Jones, appearing on the same stage two months ago, Lincoln needed to sit down for part of the show.

It's a seemingly simple art, singing songs of love and occasionally other matters in a convincing, moving, musical manner. But will we be able to experience it live much longer? There are some fine regional singers going such as Daryl Sherman and Madeline Eastman (a personal favorite), but no one has broken through to claim the "leading jazz singer" mantle for decades. That explains the late resurgence of Horn, Lincoln, Carol Sloane and Jimmy Scott and also the popularity of a pleasant but unoriginal talent like Diana Krall.

Not to go on too long today, but I do want to note quickly the performance Monday, also at the Terrace Theater, of the great tenor sax player Houston Person. He can play those mean old gutbucket blues and on ballads he has a tone so thick and airy you almost believe you could slice it. He proved a wonderful foil for Billy Taylor, who asked his usual fatuous interview questions and got back for his trouble polite but dismissive quick jokes from Person. Person has never made a great name but he has made plenty of records of consistent quality and I've never heard him play a note that wasn't warm, certain and well-selected.