Fans of
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross specifically, and vocal jazz in general, have long heard about the early sides recorded before the trio came together in 1957. In fact, each member -- Dave Lambert,
Jon Hendricks, and
Annie Ross -- was separately a pioneer in bop-inspired vocal improvisation, the type of vocalizing that concentrated on the most purely musical aspects of singing. The El Records compilation
Improvisations for the Human Voice compiles 25 of those early sides and provides a terrific complement to their best recordings, the string of LPs they recorded for Columbia between 1959 and 1962 (which were collected on an excellent two-CD compilation, The Hottest New Group in Jazz). The
LHR story begins in early 1945, when Dave Lambert and his friend
Buddy Stewart persuaded top bandleader
Gene Krupa to record a side with their modernistic vocalizing (the title was "What's This?"). Lambert and
Stewart recorded more sides during 1946, and when
Stewart died in a car accident, Lambert inaugurated a full vocal group to record his experiments. By 1955, those experiments also included whiz-kid vocalist
Jon Hendricks, perhaps the vocal world's best young
Charlie Parker acolyte (as well as friend). Two years later, their apartment jam sessions and recordings began to encompass
Annie Ross, who had showed her improv chops as early as 1952, when she recorded with the king of vocalese,
King Pleasure. Before they landed on Columbia, however, they recorded an LP of
Count Basie charts (
Sing a Song of Basie) and another
Basie-inspired LP (
Sing Along with Basie), but with the complete
Basie group playing along. At 25 tracks, this disc is expansive enough to include seven Lambert sides from the '40s, four early
Ross songs from 1952, a trio of
Hendricks/Lambert recordings (including their landmark version of "Four Brothers"), and still find the space for the majority of
Sing a Song of Basie, one track with
Basie himself, and five rarities from 1958-1959. It's clear that newcomers should head directly to recordings from the Columbia years, but these tracks comprise a wealth of seminal vocal sides by the most inventive minds in the art of vocalese. ~ John Bush