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BEAT STREET

Dinah Washington: Ballads

EMI/Virgin Records, Rs. 295

In her brief life (1924-63) cut short by an accidental overdose of sleeping pills combined with alcohol, Dinah Washington bid fair to grow into one of the legends of jazz and blues vocals, if not at the same level of popularity as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, then at least just below it.

Washington was blessed with a superb, mordant voice, full of the kind of bite that her contemporaries Carmen McRae and Betty Carter infused their singing with, and had many great sessions with jazz accompanists in the '50s.

But towards the end of her life she decided to switch to Roulette Records, owned by Frank Sinatra, and thus indicated a shift to more pop material with large orchestras backing her. Thus, the liner notes of this album, taken from that period, with refreshing candour rather than the kind of promotion that is the usual function of liner notes, tell us that these tracks have "cushy", "string-drenched" accompaniments (of the kind, one may add, that makes one doubt whether the music on the album can justifiably be called jazz).

Washington's voice is of course, superb; it always was, and never underwent the kind of degeneration that Holiday's did through alcohol and drug abuse. Also, she largely steers clear of the sentimental material that was the stock-in-trade of many pop singers of the time as well as of Holiday.

But this deficiency in sentimentality is largely made up for by the violins and violas. An occasional soft piano, guitar or trumpet standing out isn't enough to throw some jazz into the pot of this pop-boiler, since they don't take solo improvisations.

Django Reinhardt: Django

et Compagnie

Verve/Universal, Rs. 395

The legend of Django Reinhardt, the Belgian-born gypsy guitarist who put France and indeed Europe on the jazz map of the world in the late '30s, can most probably withstand the 17 tracks on this album recorded in 1935-37. But they do help to remind us that he too was fallible.

Six of the tracks have him playing under the leadership of Michel Warlop on the violin, not his long-time buddy Stéphane Grappelli. A few have him and Grappelli with a male or female singer. A couple have Grappelli and a singer with some other guitarist, and two have neither Reinhardt nor Grappelli but one Wal-Berg's orchestra consisting of trumpets, saxophones and a trombone with a guitarist, bassist and drummer thrown in.

Considering Grappelli's role in the Reinhardt legend, one might expect that the Reinhardt-Grappelli tracks are the ones that come up to one's expectations while the rest are a bit of a letdown. But the split is along different lines, for the two vocalists have just about the most irritating voices I have heard in music that has pretensions to jazz.

Again, the liner notes give the game away by recalling the uneasy relationship between jazz and French popular music of the time. The vocal tracks are firmly in the latter genre, very mushy, with all the instrumentalists rather subdued and solo improvisation completely absent. In contrast, the Warlop and Wal-Berg tracks are vigorous and full of jazz improvisation, from not only the guitarist (both Reinhardt and the one in Wal-Berg's orchestra) but also Warlop and the saxes and trumpet.

Only Reinhardt shows flashes of the greatness that soon became his mantle, especially because of his unique technique and tone, but Warlop and the others too prove that they had the potential to carve out a name in jazz. Wonder what became of them.

JAZZEBEL

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