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Jazz/Big band singer 

There is much debate whether Doris Day is a jazz singer or not. For some people this is an important debate since Jazz is very much in and anything that is associated with pop music is considered of lower quality. Jazz is now something you study since it is part of the curricula in many music faculties. To get an answer to the above question lets go to the origins of jazz.

Jazz developed in the latter part of the 19th cent. from black work songs, field shouts, sorrow songs, hymns, and spirituals whose harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic elements were predominantly African. Because of its spontaneous, emotional, and improvisational character, and because it is basically of black origin and association, jazz has to some extent not been accorded the degree of recognition it deserves. European audiences have often been more receptive to jazz, and thus many American jazz musicians have become expatriates.
At the outset, jazz was slow to win acceptance by the general public, not only because of its cultural origin, but also because it tended to suggest loose morals and low social status. However, jazz gained a wide audience when white orchestras adapted or imitated it, and became legitimate entertainment in the late 1930s when Benny Goodman led racially mixed groups in concerts at Carnegie Hall. Show tunes became common vehicles for performance, and, while the results were exquisite, rhythmic and harmonic developments were impeded until the mid-1940s.
Jazz is generally thought to have begun in New Orleans, spreading to Chicago, Kansas City, New York City, and the West Coast. The blues, vocal and instrumental, was and is a vital component of jazz, which includes, roughly in order of appearance: ragtime; New Orleans or Dixieland jazz; swing; bop, or bebop; progressive, or cool, jazz; neo-bop, or hard-bop; third stream; mainstream modern; Latin-jazz; jazz-rock; and avant-garde or free jazz.
 Improvisation–The spontaneous creation of music in the course of extempore performance. There is, however, always a model or framework that determines the scope within which a musician may create. In the case of jazz, the model may be a series of harmonies that determine pitches to be selected for a melody; or a melody that is subjected to variation; or a set of motives from which selection is made
 Rhythmic Polyphony–The simultaneous use of two or more contrasting rhythms. It is a common element in African and African-American music
An eclectic, expanding collection of 20th-century styles of American origin, owing much to both black and white American musical cultures. It is more dependent on group improvisation and spontaneity than classical music, which is fixed in a written score. Instrumental ensembles tend to emphasize winds more than strings, and many pieces take the form of a series of variations a chord progression derived from a popular song.
www.music.princeton.edu/~jeffery/Ellingtonvocab.html

A simple definition of Jazz :

A polyphonic and syncopated style marked by improvisation and solo virtuosos( riff). There have been and still are many styles of jazz such as: trad, swing, the big band sound and bebop.
www.fisicx.com/quickreference/art/music_glossary.htmBlues

Looking at the above definitions of what constitutes jazz we see that swing and big band is a style of jazz . In that case when Doris Day was singing with the Les Brown orchestra she was a big band singer or the girl singer as they were referred to at the time. Listening to her records from that period she could swing, and she did some blues songs, but she didn’t improvise or scat.
 Billy Holliday, considered the greatest blues singer didn’t scat either(check references).  Since the Blues are part of jazz she is also a jazz singer.

Ella Fitzgerald is universally considered the quintessential jazz singer who in later years improvised and did scat. Ella also sang with a big band, sang the pop standards but she didn’t do the blues, at least not in the way Billie Holiday did. She was also a role model for the early Doris Day singing.
In Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music  author Arthur Kempton states:

From the other side of the distorting mirror, starry-eyed blacks bent on success straightened their hair, took lessons in deportment and dreamed of being Frank Sinatra or Doris Day. Although the white appropriation of black style paid off commercially, the primary motivation behind it was artistic. Conversely, the drive to “whiten” black musical manners was driven by a desire to tap into the mainstream, as well as by a deep and understandable insecurity that stemmed from being considered fundamentally inferior

Sixty years later things have changed dramatically in the way Jazz is perceived and a certain reverse snobbishness is evoked by ‘jazz purists’. Today everybody wants to be considered a jazz singer. White singers,such as Diana Krall ,consider themselves  jazz singers, although some jazz purists dismiss them.  It is ironic that in the fifties blacks had to sound white, to be successful and today to be considered a jazz singer you have to be black or sound black.

Below is an essay by Joan Merrill:

Jazz Or Ersatz? The Criteria of Authentic Jazz Singing by Joan Merrill

INTRODUCTION.
One of the most debated issues in jazz today is how vocalists are labeled. A disparate group of performers is being called jazz singers. Artists who more accurately belong in the cabaret, pop, soul, folk, country or blues genres, for example, are being classed by reviewers and critics with vocalists who sing in the classic jazz style, singers such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, and Ernestine Anderson. Though reviewers and historians frequently pose the question, What is jazz singing? no consensus exists on how this sophisticated art form should be defined. Some people, andthis group would include many singers, would decry the impetus to categorize. Their argument, that labels have no bearing either on the creation or the appreciation of the art, is valid. However, since categories exist, they might as well be accurate. But, more important than accuracy is preserving the significance of the very demanding, complex art of jazz singing by maintaining the criteria established by the classic jazz singers, those women who evolved their art in tandem with the development of jazz itself.

        Today, jazz, which matured during the first half of the twentieth century, is enjoying a renaissance. Like the proverbial prostitute, jazz has lived long enough to become respectable. Nurtured in the brothels of New Orleans and once called “the music of the savage, intellectual and spiritual debauchery, utter degradation,” jazz has moved uptown to the symphony hall and the university. The prestigious Lincoln Center in New York City has a jazz orchestra led by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Hundreds of jazz studies programs exist at public and private high schools and colleges. In recent years, a plethora of reference and critical works on jazz have been published, such as the comprehensive and scholarly Visions of Jazz by Gary Giddins and The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia, both published by Oxford University Press. There is even a Jazz for Dummies, part of the ubiquitous “Dummies” series. Clearly, jazz has been embraced by mainstream, white America and is no longer the exclusive province of African-Americans, the founders and innovators of the form. There is even a jazz singers’ handbook, providing tips to wannabe vocalists.

        As jazz has become accepted and redefined by the mainstream culture, it has lost its meaning as music characterized by creative improvisation and driven by an exhilarating, 4/4 beat, swing rhythm. The unfortunate result of an indeterminate way of defining jazz is that a large portion of the American public thinks an “easy listening” music called contemporary jazz, which is devoid of the characteristics that originally characterized jazz, is authentic.

        As the definition and criteria for what constitutes jazz music have become fuzzy, so has the criteria for defining jazz singing. Today, a stylistically wide variety of singers is being labeled “jazz singers.”

Why are there so many “jazz singers” and so few real jazz singers? One answer is that jazz has become part of the current pre-1960s nostalgia craze and that to be a “jazz singer” is considered by many people to be a glamorous occupation. Vocal classes are brimming with women of all ages who want to be latter-day Billie Holidays. Since the production of CDs has become affordable and self-distribution a viable alternative to the reliance on the traditional record companies to record and market music, the jazz-singing hopeful can produce a CD fairly easily. Furthermore, vocalists of other genres are being marketed as jazz singers by press agents who want to take advantage of the current romance surrounding the term, “jazz singer.”

        In addition to singers and marketing executives misusing the label “jazz singer” because of its romantic aura, some people are simply confused about what actually constitutes jazz singing. Some believe it is a matter of repertory rather than of style. Part of the current nostalgia for the culture of the 1940s and 50s is a renewed interest in the American songbook. Sometimes called “standards,” the songs that comprise the American songbook were written by such composers as Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Harold Arlen. These songs, written for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films, were the popular music of the 1940s and 50s and were sung by, among others, the classic jazz singers.

        As evidence of the current interest in jazz standards, collections by such diverse singers as R&B star Etta James, rock singers Rod Stewart and Linda Rondstadt,  hip hop artist Queen Latifah (under the name Dana Owens, her real name) and opera diva Kiri Te Kanawa have been recorded within the past few years. In fact, Etta James won a Grammy in the Jazz Vocal category for her first CD of standards, Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday, issued in 1994, and her most recent CD, The Heart of a Woman, was nominated in the same category in 1999. Both Rod Stewart and Queen Latifah were nominated for Grammies for their albums of standards, Queen Latifah in the jazz category
        Confusion exists because jazz critics and historians do not have a consensus about the definition of jazz singing. In his recent five-disc Smithsonian collection, The Jazz Singers, jazz historian Robert O’Meally demonstrates the difficulty in drawing precise lines about who is and who is not a jazz singer by including non- jazz singers Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, and Marvin Gaye. He gives a caveat for each:

“Though he [Sinatra] may seem out of place in this company of jazz singers,” “Aretha Franklin is not usually classified as a jazz singer,” and “Marvin Gaye may strike purists as a most unlikely member of the jazz lineup.”
        If these singers are not true jazz singers, then why does O’Meally include them in the collection? He explains: Sinatra, “for his swinging, nuanced sense of time and his tasteful impulse to improvise on a song’s melody;” and Franklin, because “she uses jazz techniques in  shaping virtually all her songs;” and Gaye, “not just as a representative figure but as an outstanding contributor to the jazz tradition.” Sinatra swings, Franklin improvises, and Gaye has soul; each is a great singer, the best example of his or her genres (traditional pop, R&B, and soul); O’Meally couldn’t draw the purist’s line and exclude them.
        The confusion over who is and who is not a bona fide jazz singer reflects the difficulty in defining this art form. Even the most serious of jazz critics and historians have problems coming up with a coherent definition. Critic and songwriter Gene Lees commented:

Experts have debated the definition of a jazz singer for years. Some have even argued that the term has no meaning. Improvisation in itself doesn’t make a singer into a jazz singer - even the squarest vocalists will depart now and then from written melody to add intensity to a performance. It really doesn’t matter much whether there’s such a thing as a jazz singer. It’s a semantic point anyway. (liner notes: Carmen McRae: Portrait of Carmen (1968)
       

It may be a semantic point to Mr. Lees, but it is not to many scholars, reviewers, and others in the world of jazz. They continue to try to find a defining set of criteria.
        Whitney Balliett, who has been the jazz critic for The New Yorker since 1957, presents a concise definition of jazz singing in the introduction to his collection of essays, American Singers, Twenty-Seven Portraits in Song (Oxford University Press, New York, 1988):
                      The most popular definition of a jazz singer is that there is no
                      definition. But there is. A jazz singer simply makes whatever he
                      or she sings swing. Ethel Merman was not a jazz singer; Doris
                      Day is.

According to Balliett, to be a jazz singer, a person must have just one qualification - to sing in swinging style. Although he does not define “swing,” his meaning is implied: to sing with a jazz beat. However, since Doris Day is not generally considered a jazz singer, Balliet’s definition lacks credibility, The New Yorker notwithstanding
      In the introductory chapter to their 1997 book Singing Jazz, The Singers and Their Styles (Miller Freeman Books, San Francisco), Bruce Crowther and Mike Pinfold devote twenty-five pages to trying to answer the question, “What is a jazz singer?” 

Customarily, the criteria by which singers are judged in the jazz world often are either harshly restrictive or absurdly undiscriminating. Taken to extremes, the former makes it almost impossible for anyone other than Billie Holiday and a handful of lesser mortals to qualify. The latter allows just about anyone who ever approximated “Basin St. Blues” in a Karaoke bar to wear the label. Of course, reality lies somewhere in between these extremes. Exactly where the boundary falls is profoundly subjective. (Crowther 15)

        Because of the diversity of singing styles of vocalists labeled “jazz singers,” these authors avoid coming up with a precise set of criteria for jazz singing, calling it a “subjective” view. Is an objective, concrete definition of this art form possible? If so, what are the elements that define it? How can we determine the standards by which to measure what is being called jazz singing today?
       The best sources for arriving at a definition of jazz singing are the classic jazz singers themselves:

Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, and Ernestine Anderson, who were born between the years 1915 and 1928 and whose lives paralleled the history of jazz. These women developed their art within the evolving jazz form, which can be said to have been “born” in 1917 and to have reached maturity in the mid-1960s, and, like the reciprocal nature of the music itself, were both inspired by and inspirational to the musicians with whom they worked. To listen to their singing is to hear jazz singing in its authenticform. The techniques and characteristics of their singing define the art.

        Though it has undergone many permutations since its inception, jazz - instrumental or vocal - isbasically characterized by two elements: improvisation and swing. Improvisation is when a musician –instrumentalist or singer – expresses his or her musical interpretation of a given melody, creating newmelody lines, rhythms, and sometimes harmonies based on the underlying form of the song, such as whatsaxophonist Coleman Hawkins does in his classic interpretation of “Body and Soul”.

Swing is a rhythm that can be described technically as 4/4 time – four beats to a measure – with accents on the second and fourth beats. However, using this beat does not necessarily produce swing. It must be played or sung with a kind of driving force that is both intense and relaxed, as is demonstrated in Coleman Hawkins’ version of “The Man I Love.”

In short, it takes both technique and art to create swing, with the art component being difficult, if not impossible, to define.

        However, the complex art of singing jazz cannot be defined by these elements alone. The classic jazz singers do more than simply improvise and swing. The most basic requirement is a beautiful vocal instrument. Though there have been great jazz singers whose voices were not particularly beautiful - Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday are obvious examples - most of the classic singers have exceptionally lovely voices. Sarah Vaughan, for example, had a multi-octave range and could have had an operatic career if she had had theopportunity and motivation. More often than not, however, the voices of the great jazz singers are from the lower register, that range being most pleasing to the ear.
         The second attribute is a highly developed sense of time. Elemental to jazz is a complex, driving rhythm, produced most often by the bass, drums, and piano - the standard rhythm section of a jazz group.

Though her back-up group produces the beat, the singer sets the tempo. The accompanying musicians correlate with her tempo, which may not synchronize exactly with the beats they play. Some singers intentionally sing behind or ahead (less frequently) of the beat, as part of their interpretation of the song. That is not tosay that they are not keeping good time; they are merely not hitting the beats at the same time as the rhythmsection.

Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae, both famous for their lyric interpretation, sang behind the beat in order to achieve an emotional suspense. As part of having a good sense of time, a jazz singer is able to singin various tempos, from fast bebop tunes to languid ballads. Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Carmen McRaecould deliver very fast up-tempo tunes as well as slow ballads with equal excellence.
       Not only does she have an unerring sense of time, but the classic jazz singer also improvises. She approaches a song creatively, expressing her own musicality and personality by embellishing and embroidering the song in various ways. She may reconstruct the melody, singing notes different from how they are written.

However, these notes cannot be just any notes; they must make musical sense. An example of simple improvising is to sing a note an octave above or below what’s written. Or, she may completely reconstruct the melody,recomposing it spontaneously. Needless to say, the improvised notes will need to have a musical logic of their own, or the effect will be jarring.
         Some singers improvise a great deal, and others to a more subtle degree. Sarah Vaughan could completely deconstruct a melody, yet she never lost touch with the written notes. Her improvisations were highly elaborate, yet always logical. Though Carmen McRae improvised consistently, in nearly every line, her improvisations were understated rather than obvious.

        However, improvising the melody is not the only way a jazz singer may reinterpret a song. She may play with the time, altering the tempo or singing ahead or behind the beat, for example. Like her contemporary, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O’Day was a master at improvising time, as can be heard in her tour de force rendition of  “Tea for Two.” In addition to playing with time, a jazz singer may phrase (group) the lyrics her own way, either to express her interpretation of the song’s meaning or simply to enhance the rhythm. Also, a jazz singer may employ any of an actor’s vocal devices: changing dynamics, pitch, tone, or emphasis. She may also, as Carmen McRae was apt to do, add an aside or comment as part of her interpretation of the song’s story.

     While a jazz singer is improvising, keeping or setting the tempo, she is also interacting with her back-up group. Though she may have a leader among the trio or quartet – usually the piano player – she must communicate with him what she wants the group to do: lay out (cease playing), take solos, add a chorus, speed up the tempo, end the song, or whatever. He then will pass on her wishes to the rest of the group. This communication will usually occur through subtle facial expressions, hand gestures, or musical cues not obvious to the audience.
        Unless a singer is scatting - using sounds instead of words, a technique Ella Fitzgerald took to a fine art - she is also concerned with expressing the meaning and emotional content of a song’s lyrics. More than anything else, singing is communicating. The singer is the messenger, the means by which the meaning of the song is conveyed to the audience. She must phrase the lyrics – grouping words in meaningful clusters - to convey the literal and emotional meaning of the lyrics. Her improvisational and tempo decisions are, of course, subject to her interpretation of the song’s message. Phrasing, improvisation, and tempo contribute not only to her lyric interpretation, but also to her melodic expression. Some singers place more emphasis on lyric interpretation - Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae, especially; and others on melodic improvisation -Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald were masters at using their voices as instruments.

        A beautiful voice, a superior sense of rhythm, a highly developed musicality, and a sensitivity to lyrics - these are the qualities of an authentic jazz singer. But there is another attribute that is much more difficult to describe. The term most often used for this indefinable quality is “soul.” A singer isoften said to possess “soul” or to have sung a song “soulfully.” A singer with soul puts a great deal of feeling into her singing, which is then transferred to the listener.
        The great jazz singers learned the language of jazz from direct experience - through performing and interacting with the innovators of the music, musical geniuses such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. The jazz language, which has as its elements improvisation and rhythm, but also involves reciprocity of communication - “call and response” - and emotional expressiveness, or to use the jazz term, “soul,” became as natural to these singers as speaking.

        Vocalists who today are being called jazz singers are using either a much more simple language or a different one. And those who are using the jazz language are unlikely ever to reach the artistic level of the women who developed the art. Because they learned to sing jazz by experiencing its evolution and development first-hand, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, and Ernestine Anderson are the measure of jazz singing.

Pop singer 
A pop singer is a singer of popular music which is defined as:

Music accessible to a wide audience, distributed through the mass media as a commercial product. It tends to be associated with urban rather than rural cultures, and is performed by professional musicians.

Reviewing the Doris Day album, Day Dreams from 1955, Lauren Micheewing has this to say about Doris Day:

Doris Day epitomizes both a big band era, white girl sweetness and a 50’s innocence. She and Rosemary Clooney purely and simply sounded lovely (Songbirds,2004)

Rosemary Clooney interviewed by Whitney Balliett for the The New Yorker 

Ethel Waters was an influence, and I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Doris Day and Helen O’Connell. You always felt the pulse in Doris’s singing; she has a rhythm section in her voice“ Profiles: The Heart, The Head, and The Pipes The New Yorker  August 3, 1992

Jeffrey Hammond from Jethro Tull in
REFLECTIONS ON THE START OF A JOURNEY:

This journey begins on July 30th,1946, in the holiday seaside town of Blackpool, England.
My first feelings are those of happiness and security: of uneventful and untroubled early years, remarkably unaffected by the fact that a world war had just ended.
Street games, beach games, setting up a puppet theatre for other children in the neighbourhood, writing a murder mystery play and recording it on an ancient, but then state of the art Grundig reel to reel tape recorder. Falling in love for the first time with beautiful, freckled, red-haired Karen. An awakening to beauty: the sensuous innocence of Doris Day’s voice, the power and expression of David Oistrakh playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, the cleavage of Jane Russell writ large on the cinema screen, the anarchic humour of Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, the phrasing of Frank Sinatra, the salt air and stormy seas of Blackpool’s promenade in winter and the endless, warm summer days during haymaking on a relative’s farm in county Durham.

Sarah Vaughn : “I dig Doris Day”, 1957

Diana Ross

Art Pepper’s favorite singer was Doris Day.

But Art loved playing behind singers. Unlike most musicians, he admired singers, envied their directness of expression. He liked Jack’s singing. He loved Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Steve Lawrence, Bill Withers, Roberta Flack. I’ve seen him blown away by Barbra Streisand (”Evergreen”) and by Kathleen Ferrier (Brahms’s “Alto Rhapsody”). He could hardly bear to listen to Ray Charles because he loved him so. Art Pepper/The Hollywood All-Star Sessions

3. Musical performer in the movies
When author, professor and playright, Thomas Hischak, was asked to name the five women he would rate as the greatest female musical performers in the movies?  His reply was:

“Such a subjective choice! I am sure Judy Garland would be on most people’s list because of her unique singing style and obvious vulnerability. Jeanette MacDonald would also be on most lists for very different reasons: the “iron butterfly” is so self-confident that she exudes optimism. Barbra Streisand came after the golden age of movie musicals, yet she managed in her few film musicals to dominate the screen and re-create what is meant by a musical star. Maybe not as commonly included, I’d say Helen Morgan for her heartbreaking performances in SHOW BOAT, APPLAUSE, and others. Underrated but one of the finest was Doris Day in the late ’40s and 1950s. LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME and CALAMITY JANE alone give you an idea of her versatility. There’s five already — I’m afraid to think of the many greats I have not included.“

All about Jazz  Natural Selection : Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books (Hardcover)
by Gary Giddins
Book Description

Long recognized as America’s most brilliant jazz writer, the winner of many major awards–including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award–and author of a highly popular biography of Bing Crosby, Gary Giddins has also produced a wide range of stimulating and original cultural
criticism in other fields. With Natural Selection, he brings together the best of these previously uncollected essays, including a few written expressly for this volume.
The range of topics is spellbinding. Writing with insight, humor, and a famously deft touch, he offers sharp-edged perspectives on such diverse subjects as Federico Fellini and Jean Renoir, Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison, Marlon Brando and Groucho Marx, Duke Ellington and Bob Dylan, horror
and noir, the cartoon version of Animal Farm and the comic book series Classics Illustrated. Giddins brings to criticism an uncommon ability, long demonstrated in his music writing, to address in very few words an entire career, so that we get an in-depth portrait of the artist beyond the film,
book, or recording under review. For instance, Giddins offers a stunning reappraisal of Doris Day, who he terms “the coolest and sexiest female singer of slow ballads in film history.” He argues eloquently for a reconsideration of the forgotten German-language novelist Soma Morgenstern. In a section
on comedy, he offers fresh perspectives on the three great silent film stars–Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd–while resurrecting the legendary Jack Benny and reevaluating the controversial Jerry Lewis. There’s also a memorable look at Bing Crosby’s film career (he calls Crosby’s blockbuster Going My Way
“a neglected masterpiece”) and a close examination of Marcel Carne’s beloved Children of Paradise. Of course, Giddins also supplies excellent commentary on jazz: major and underrated figures, and especially the uses of jazz in film.
A wonderful gathering of little-known treasures, Natural Selection will broaden the perception of Gary Giddins as one of our most important cultural critics.

White Queen
Vanilla pop