Dave Lambert (singer)

Dave Lambert, New York, circa July 1947.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

Dave Lambert (* 19 June 1917 in Boston , Massachusetts as David Alden Lambert ; † 3. October 1966 in Westport , Connecticut ) was an American jazz - singer and arranger . He was one of the founders of the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross .

Life

Dave Lambert began his musical career unsuccessfully as a drummer and was temporarily active as a tree surgeon. After his discharge from the US Army, where he had served with the parachutists , he sang in 1944 in Johnny Long's Big Band, where he was also active as an arranger; then in 1944/45 he belonged to the G-Noters, a vocal group that recorded with the Gene Krupa Orchestra and to which Buddy Stewart also belonged. In a duo with the orchestra, Lambert and Stewart recorded the number “What's This”, the first vocal version of a Bop track . After Lambert left Krupa, he continued to work with Stewart, for example in 1946 for a keynote session with Red Rodney and an all-star band of bebop musicians like Al Haig , Curley Russell and Stan Levey , where they used their unison voicing that they had introduced at Krupa, but now combined it with the element of improvisation , to be heard in titles such as "Charge Account", "Cent and a Half", "Gussie G." or "Perdido". They recorded the tracks “Bopelbaby” and “Bopelground” in 1948 with Allen Eager's sextet . On February 26, 1949 Stewart and Lambert were guests with "What's This?" At one of the Royal Roost Sessions of the Charlie Parker Quintet.

Lambert led several vocal groups of his own after Buddy Stewart's departure in the late 1940s and 1950s and worked for a Broadway show called Are You with It? . In early 1949 he recorded two singles for Capitol with his Dave Lambert Singers , two standards and "Bebop Cubop" in textless syllables, accompanied by Haig, Russell and Max Roach . Capitol also used the Lambert Singers in Stan Kenton's vocal group, the Pastels , and as a background singer for singers like Mel Tormé and Jo Stafford . Pete Rugolo , who worked for Capitol at the time, had Charlie Barnet record a number of numbers for the young label with Lambert and Stewart, including a new version of "What's This?" Which he had arranged and which was now called "Bebop Spoken Here"; “After you have introduced the piece with long and detailed cadences , which you alternately scan, accompanied by dissonant screams from the brass, the leader Charlie Barnet appears as a square and orders: Wait a minute! What are you guys talkin 'about? In order to explain the bebop language to outsiders, Lambert and Stewart begin the song with a series of comical nonsense phrases that are linked together by explanatory, if absurd, texts. (...) After their first chorus and a trombone solo, the boys return to exciting scat solos, not in unison, but each improvising independently. "

Lambert then also worked in 1951 for the band leader Georgie Auld , for whom he put together a choir, as well as for Neal Hefti , Mel Tormé and Carmen McRae . In terms of quality, the works were very different, partly jazz-oriented, partly a light accompaniment. Two years after Buddy Stewart's accidental death (in February 1950) Lambert heard the single "Moody's Mood for Love" by the singer King Pleasure , which was released on Prestige ; this new Vocalese style influenced him (and independently of him, his future partners Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross ); he contacted King Pleasure and worked with his Singers on two recordings for Prestige, replacing Slam Stewart's bass in Lester Young's interpretation of " Sometimes I'm Happy " and for Erroll Garner's piano in the Charlie Parker number " This is Always ".

He wrote the vocal arrangements for the Clef recording session with Charlie Parker, conducted by Gil Evans ("In the Still of the Night" / "Old Folks") in 1953, on which Annie Ross also worked with his singers. In 1953 he met Jon Hendricks , who was a great admirer of his work with Buddy Stewart in the 1940s; In 1955 Hendricks recorded with him and his Dave Lambert Singers in a quartet the track "Four Brothers" for Decca .

Since 1957 he formed the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross with Hendricks and Annie Ross , with which a number of successful albums appeared. In addition, Lambert presented a solo album in 1959, but could not pursue the solo career because of the success in the trio. Hendricks and Ross were the singing stars of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross , but occasionally Lambert's rather unpolished vocals took center stage, as in the song "Bijou" or occasional vocal solos such as in the Horace Silver melody "Come On Home" . For the trio, he shared the work on the arrangement and text of the numbers with Hendricks. For the arrangements he drew on his experiences with Buddy Stewart, when he had tried to “create breathtakingly complex and invigorating sounds from the combination of two voices. (...) When it became clear to him and Hendricks that they could achieve any desired effect with just three voices, Lambert received the most remarkable vocal group sound in twenty years. ”In doing so, the two avoided the overly tight harmony of the then current groups like to orient the Hi-Los and the Four Freshmen , but worked with another harmony scheme that was reminiscent of black blues and jazz groups of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Hokum Boys or the duos of Lonnie Johnson / Spencer Williams . For example, Lambert worked on the Ellington album with vertical structures, in which he laid voices over voices, where Duke Ellington laid clarinets over trombones and baritone saxophones.

After Ross left, Yolande Bavan followed in 1962 , with whom three more albums were created until 1964, but with their three albums for RCA-Victor, they could not build on the era with Annie Ross. After the three separated in 1964, Lambert tried to set up a new vocal group ( Lambert & Co. ), but did not get a contract. DA Pennebaker recorded the audition in the RCA studios in the documentary Audition at RCA .

In 1966, Lambert was killed in a traffic accident when he tried to change a tire on his car on the expressway.

Keynote 78 by Dave Lambert & Buddy Stewart with Red Rodney's Be-Boppers: "A Cent and a Half" (1947)

Discography (selection)

• Lambert, Hendricks & Ross - The Swingers ( Blue Note Records )

literature

• Will Friedwald: Swinging Voices of America - A Compendium of Great Voices . Hannibal, St. Andrä-Wölker 1992. ISBN 3-85445-075-3 .

Web links

Commons : Dave Lambert  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Dave Lambert Centennial
• Dave Lambert at Allmusic (English)
• Dave Lambert at Discogs (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from W. Friedwald, Swinging Voices of America - A compendium of great voices . St. Andrä-Wölker 1992, p. 167.
2. ↑ Quotation from Friedwald, Swinging Voices of America - A compendium of great voices . St. Andrä-Wölker 1992, p. 177.