Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln
a.k.a. Anna Marie Woolridge, Anna Marie Wooldridge

ABBEY LINCOLN

It's Her Time Now
With Over the Years, Abbey Lincoln once again reminds us that she remains jazz’s premier diva, a singer whose art has only grown richer with time. This most personal of vocalists has filled her recordings of the past two decades with her own superb compositions and stocked them with exceptional guest soloists. ( Over the Years features saxophonist Joe Lovano.) Now in the sixth decade of her career, Lincoln is as ready for retirement as Tiger Woods.
Barnes & Noble.com: The records of the '90s that you've done with in collaboration with your producer, Jean-Philippe Allard, have been so rich in so many ways. Could speak to that relationship and the effect on your records?

Abbey Lincoln: I think Jean-Philippe is a brilliant man. He knows a lot about music, not only this form but the classical tradition and other forms. He called me in 1989 and asked me what I wanted to do. He never suggested that I didn't know what I was doing, and he wanted to help me to do what I was doing -- and that's what he's done. The first album was called The World Is Falling Down. He brought me J. J. Johnson. I asked for Ron Carter. So I get this kind of help from him. I asked for Stan Getz, and he told me he would check it out. He got him. That was You've Got to Pay the Band. So I've not been here alone. Jean-Philippe is a great ally. He suggested Joe Lovano for this album, although I hadn't thought of him. I'm glad he did. Joe was brilliant. And I asked for Jerry Gonzalez, because he'd worked for me as a percussionist on an album called Talking to the Sun. I didn't know he played trumpet!

B&N.com: In interpreting your tunes, how specific are you with the musicians? Do they help create the arrangements?

AL: No. They're head arrangements. In that way they help create them. But I know how many choruses I'm going to use. I know what key it is in. And I write them. So it's me. They have lead-sheets, they learn the songs, and bring their understanding and their spirit to it. So I don't try and really control things -- except that I do. I like the tempo that I want. Everything is about how I hear the song. And they know how to interpret the song. Brandon McCune is brilliant. So is John Ormond, and so is Jaz Sawyer. That's my quartet.

B&N.com: Who were some of the singers you concentrated on when you were forming your singing personality?

AL: Well, I heard Billie Holiday when I was 14, on a Victrola, in the country, where I was living. She was always a great influence on my life. She was social. And she didn't try to prove that she had a great instrument. This is not the form for people who use that approach. That's the European classical tradition. We have voices. Louis Armstrong was a great singer. It has nothing to do with having a great voice. So I had a chance to listen and to meet many of these great performers and singers, and I come from Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, all of these people. I sing in that tradition. I don't try for anything they do, just like they didn't try for anything that anybody else was doing, but interpret a song on a level of understanding and with skills, knowing where one is. It's a brilliant musical form. The musicians are masterful when it comes to theory and harmony. So I'm not here alone. I learned a lot about the music through Max Roach. I didn't know about Charlie Parker, I didn't know who he was -- or Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonious Monk or all these people. Working with Max, I had a chance to meet some of these folks. All of them.

B&N.com: You were just speaking about singing the song with understanding. On Over the Years, "Somos Novios" ( "It's Impossible" ) is in Spanish.

AL: That's a beautiful love song. Armando Mazanero is the writer. I've been singing this song for about 15 years, and I'm not sure of everything I'm saying, but I know that it's a love song. We are lovers. And it has nothing to do with motive or anything. A pure love. It's one of my favorite songs. "When the Lights Go On Again" comes from the Second World War. When I was 12 or 13 I heard that song. I must have been in Kalamazoo at the time. One day I was thinking, working on the album before I went into the studio, and that line just came into my ear -- "When the lights go on again all over the world." I thought, "Wow." So I called the music store. It's like an unconscious companion that is with me all the time, and whispers in my ear sometimes."Lucky to Be Me" is by the great Leonard Bernstein. There was a brilliant singer named Mabel Mercer, and I heard her sing that on a recording. I'd been meaning to sing it over the years, but I finally got to it.

B&N.com: Another thing that's fascinating to me is that your songwriting started in midlife.

AL: It takes a while, I think, to awaken here. I had been writing words, but I never saw myself as a composer. And I would write lyrics to other people's songs, like Oscar Brown, Jr. I wrote a lyric to Thelonious's "Blue Monk." We hadn't talked about it. I didn't ask him if I could write it. I just wrote it, because I felt that I knew what he was talking about, and it really touched me. And he gave me permission to use it, to record it, and was quoted as saying that I was not only a great singer and actress but a great composer. I had never written a thing. I knew that he knew something that I didn't know. Thelonious was not a flatterer, nor a liar. It freed me up. The compositions get better and better for me, I think.

B&N.com: I remember reading of Monk telling you not to be too perfect.

AL: When I told Max Roach about it, Roach said, "He means 'Make a mistake.' " It took me a while to understand that. But what they meant was, you try for something. If you crack, at least you tried for it. Don't be so perfect. Yeah. Make a mistake. Mmm-hmm. That's what this form of singing is all about. I mean, you reach for something and it works. [laughs] Yes.

B&N.com: In your bands you've nurtured a lot of individualistic younger musicians, like Steve Coleman and Rodney Kendrick and Marc Cary and the band you have now.

AL: I've never worked with greater musicians than the ones I'm working with now, the ones I've been working with. They are not lauded, and they are not rich yet in money. But I remember when all of these other folks weren't, either. It's always been kind of a secret society. The musicians are as great as they ever were. There will never be another Charlie Parker. Or John Coltrane. That's what this work affords us, individuality, and that's who you are, and there is nobody to replace you.

-- Ted Panken

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