The Song Planner

Vocal Jazz / Standards / Crooner Jazz

familyStarted c. 1935Peak 1954-1962; 1996-2004; 2013-2017Last big hit still active

Located in 1 route

Jazz → Vocal Jazz / Standards / Crooner Jazz

This is jazz with a singer out front and the song itself as the star. The textures are warm and uncluttered: a piano trio brushing softly behind a ballad, a big band swinging hard under an up-tempo, or a string section pooling around a torch number. Tempos run the full spread, from rubato near-whisper to bright finger-snap swing, but the constant is intimate, conversational phrasing that bends the melody around the lyric. The repertoire leans almost entirely on the Great American Songbook, those evergreen Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, Rodgers and Kern standards, sung with romantic restraint and impeccable diction. Moodwise it lives between two poles: the heartsick 3 a.m. ballad and the tuxedoed, champagne-bright swinger. Voices range from honeyed baritone crooners to agile scatting sopranos who improvise like horn players. It is, by design, the friendliest door into jazz, melodic, lyric-driven, and built for repeat listening rather than chin-stroking.

History

The family grew out of the 1930s and '40s big-band era, when singers like Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, and the young Frank Sinatra stepped out from the dance orchestras to become attractions in their own right. The microphone made an intimate, conversational delivery possible, and the crooner was born. When Sinatra moved to Capitol in the early 1950s and cut concept albums like In the Wee Small Hours (1955) with Nelson Riddle, the modern vocal-jazz LP took shape: a mature singer, sophisticated charts, and the Songbook treated as serious art. Ella Fitzgerald's Verve Song Book series (begun 1956) canonized the repertoire composer by composer, while Billie Holiday's Lady in Satin (1958) defined the torch ballad and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross turned scat into the word-stuffed art of vocalese. Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Mel Tormé, and Tony Bennett rounded out a golden generation. Rock pushed the style toward nostalgia by the 1960s, but it never died: Bennett's 1975 duets with Bill Evans renewed its credibility, and a 1990s revival led by Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr. returned vocal jazz to the pop charts. Today Gregory Porter and Cécile McLorin Salvant carry it forward, proof the songbook still breathes.

The sub-genre landscape

The family's center of gravity sits with its two most developed lanes, Big Band Vocal Jazz and Jazz-Pop Vocal. Big Band Vocal Jazz is the swinging, brass-fueled heart of the tradition, the Sinatra-with-Riddle and Basie-backed sound where a confident voice rides a full orchestra. Jazz-Pop Vocal is its crossover descendant, the lane that keeps the music on the charts by softening the edges toward pop, the territory of Krall and Connick and, later, Michael Bublé. Between them they define what most listeners actually mean by "vocal jazz."

Around that core sit the repertoire-defining and stylistic lanes. Vocal Jazz, Jazz Standards, and Great American Songbook Jazz name the shared material itself; Crooner Jazz, Traditional Pop Jazz, and Swing Vocal Jazz describe the classic male-and-female delivery; while Jazz Torch Song carries the heartbreak ballad lineage of Holiday.

The more specialized spin-offs map the family's edges. Scat Singing and Vocalese are the virtuoso wings, where the voice mimics a horn or sets lyrics to recorded solos. Cabaret Jazz and Lounge Vocal Jazz lean theatrical and intimate, Soulful Vocal Jazz pulls toward gospel and R&B in Porter's direction, and Contemporary Vocal Jazz gathers the present-day inheritors. Traced through these names, the story runs from swing-era crooners, through the Songbook's golden age, to a living tradition that still finds fresh singers.

Sub-genres in this family

15 sub-genres · 2 written up

Big Band Vocal JazzJazz-Pop VocalCabaret JazzContemporary Vocal JazzCrooner JazzGreat American Songbook JazzJazz StandardsJazz Torch SongLounge Vocal JazzScat SingingSoulful Vocal JazzSwing Vocal JazzTraditional Pop JazzVocal JazzVocalese

Defining artists

Show 6 more

Essential listening

Show 6 more
← Explore Jazz

Sources

  • Wikipedia: In the Wee Small Hours (Frank Sinatra, 1955, Capitol)
  • Wikipedia: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (1956, Verve)
  • Wikipedia: Lady in Satin (Billie Holiday, 1958, Columbia)
  • Wikipedia: Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and Sing a Song of Basie
  • Wikipedia: The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975) and When I Look in Your Eyes (Diana Krall, 1999)
  • Wikipedia and AllMusic: Gregory Porter Liquid Spirit (2013) and Cécile McLorin Salvant WomanChild (2013)