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Carla Cook: Just a Swingin' and a Groovin'
Carla Cook has been doing music and doing it spectacularly well for a number of years. However, it was with the release of her acclaimed, Grammy-nominated debut CD, It's All About Love in 1999 that Cook separated herself from the ever-growing pack of young female jazz vocalists. In fact, with her remarkable voice, finely honed musicianship and boundless repertoire, Carla Cook has the potential to be the most important jazz singer of her generation.
Just don't tell her that. "I got into this because I wanted to make music that I loved," says Cook. "Whatever God has for me that's the thing I want to get. I listen to my intuition and if it feels good and it feels right and it feels progressive, then that's what I'm going to do."
On the evidence of her just-released sophomore CD, Dem Bones, Carla Cook has every reason to trust her intuition. Dem Bones is a wonderfully inventive and superbly executed jazz record with references to funk, Brazilian and inspirational music. "It is a tribute to the trombones that I've worked with," Cook explains. "When I moved to New York, about 10 years ago, I worked with a band whose leader was a trombonist. Sometimes I would sing with lyrics, but other times I would simply harmonize trombone lines with him. Five years later I met yet another trombonist, and the same sort of thing happened." Her work with
Lionel Hampton
vibraphone1908 - 2002
George Gee Swing Orchestra
band / ensemble / orchestraThe trombonists and other instrumentalists on Dem Bones were not chosen at random. "It is important to me that I know the chemistry is going to work when I select musicians." Cook assembled a trombone section composed of players that she had worked with before.
Fred Wesley
tromboneb.1943
Count Basie
piano1904 - 1984
Sun Ra
piano1914 - 1993
Abdullah Ibrahim
pianob.1934
Cyrus Chestnut
pianob.1963
Billy Kilson
drumsb.1962
James Genus
bassb.1966
As good as the musicians are, it is Cook's own remarkable gifts that hold the listener's attention on Dem Bones. She has a ravishing voice: burnished and soulful with a perfectly clear tone. Her range extends from a second soprano down to a second alto. "I am a B-flat kind of a woman," laughs Cook. Her intonation and articulation are marvels of precision and her trumpet-like scat choruses are exceptionally well constructed. According to Cook, good pipes alone don't cut it. "When I'm teaching voice, I'm also teaching how to be a band leader. It's not enough to know how to sing a song. You need to learn how to count it off. You better know the key. When [the musicians] know that you know what you are talking about, that's when you earn their respect."
Cook's wide-ranging repertoire reflects her own diverse musical interests. She speaks about
Wes Montgomery
guitar1923 - 1968
Aretha Franklin
vocals1942 - 2018
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Ernestine Anderson
vocals1928 - 2016
Weather Report
band / ensemble / orchestra
Stevie Wonder
vocalsb.1950
While she has assimilated a variety of musical influences into her style, 'my source," says Cook, "would be
Sarah Vaughan
vocals1924 - 1990
Fortunately, after years of working her way up through the trenches, Carla Cook has found her own voice. "I know what I want," she says simply. That self knowledge is what has allowed Cook to successfully embrace the disparate material found on Dem Bones. Rather than celebrating eclecticism for its own sake, Dem Bones highlights various aspects of a single, complex musical personality.
On several cuts, Cook embraces the jazz tradition of the singer as instrumentalist. She sings the verse to 'the More I See You" accompanied only by the trombones of Harris, Jefferson and Wesley. When the rhythm section appears at the chorus, she glides radiantly through the lyrics before dropping into the bone section to scat in unison with the trombones. On the instrumental "For the Elders," Cook sings the trombone lines in perfect harmony with Wesley and Harris.
Although she is hardly the first singer to experiment with combining jazz and funk, Carla Cook makes the marriage work. Rather than treating them as incompatible idioms, Cook recognizes that both "grooving" and 'swinging" are, fundamentally, exercises in rhythm. On 'dem Bones," an original tune, Cook hits the kind of groove that makes even the rhythmically challenged want to start dancing. When she begins her scat chorus, she not only digs into the tune, she gets even deeper inside the groove. Halfway through the song Cook drops out completely and leaves Wesley, Harris and Jefferson to jam.
Cook reached back to her childhood for Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe." Her tough, funky performance differs as much from the composer's original recording as it does from the versions by jazz singers
Patricia Barber
pianob.1955
Nancy King
vocals1940 - 2025
Trombonist Matthew Gee may have written "Oh Gee," but Cook included the song as a tribute to
Eddie Jefferson
vocals1918 - 1979
Cook also has a deep love for the music of Brazil, and Dem Bones features two Brazilian tunes with English lyrics including an absolutely gorgeous version of
Antonio Carlos Jobim
piano1927 - 1994
As much fun as tunes like "Oh Gee" and 'dem Bones" are to sing, it is the quieter pieces that are closer to Cook's heart. "I started off trying to sing bebop and wanting to scat through everything," recalls Cook. "By the time you get older and you've lived some of these lyrics, you interpret them differently. They don't mean the same thing as when you were younger. I notice that I am now taking things at tempos that I never would have taken them at years ago." Cook cites the lightly swinging "Just a Sittin and a Rockin" as her favorite cut from the album.
Cook also delivers a quietly powerful performance of the spiritual, "Come Ye Disconsolate." Cook's earliest musical experiences came singing in the choirs of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and the inspirational music of her childhood remains an important part of her musical identity.
Throughout Dem Bones, Cook sings with a confidence and command that are the byproduct of a lifetime of developing her craft. The Detroit native began studying music as a girl. Her early education centered on European classical music, and she studied piano and string bass. Cook discovered jazz through her older brother and the Detroit radio station WJZZ. "It was the kind of station," Cook notes wryly, 'that the "Jazz Police" now would have everybody arrested for. They'd play Eubie Blake in one moment and then they would play Weather Report the next. And it all worked. It was a great format."
In discovering jazz, Carla Cook found her calling. "I knew from the 7th grade that I wanted to be a jazz singer. I never said I wanted to be famous or be a star, I never used those words. I wanted to be a jazz singer." Cook chose to attend college in Boston because of that city's vital jazz scene. After graduation, she moved to New York. She spent the next several years working in small clubs and sitting in with musicians. Cook resisted the idea of recording unless she could do so on her own terms. "I think my idea of Hell would be to record something I hated just because someone was sure it would sell millions of records." The right opportunity finally appeared in the form of the independent record label MAXJAZZ. Cook praises the creative freedom MAXJAZZ allows her. "I know it sounds like I'm just saying this, but they really are special and different."
In 1999, MAXJAZZ released Cook's debut CD It's All About Love to a strong critical and audience reception. "I was pleasantly surprised that [the CD] had such a wide range of acceptance." She was even more surprised when it received a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. 'the label was new. I was new on it. It was just completely out of the blue."
Cook's plans for the near future include promoting Dem Bones and performing at clubs and festivals both in the USA and abroad. She would also like to carve out some time to work on her songwriting, and she looks forward to working more with large ensembles. "I don't think I have matured enough musically to pull off the great Carla with Strings yet." But big bands are a different story. "It just feels so good. When it's a really swinging big band, that wall of sound behind you, you can't replace that with anything." She will also continue her involvement with a project close to her heart. Cook has been performing in Udu, a jazz opera by trombonist Craig Harris and poet Sekou Sundiata that highlights the shocking reality that slavery still exists in the 21st Century in the Northwestern African nation of Mauritania.
As for the future, Cook wants to continue to take risks. "I believe in pushing the envelope. I believe in experimentation, which was exactly what Bird and all of those guys did. Sometimes your choices are going to be better than other times. But as long as you are exploring things, you are growing as an artist."
That's not to say that Carla Cook doesn't have career ambitions. "One day, I'd like to scat with the Muppets on Sesame Street." "You know," she muses, "you can get some kind of award and it would all be good, it would all be wonderful, but you"ve got to really be somebody deep to get onto Sesame Street. Dizzy and Joe Williams, they were on Sesame Street. I'm aiming for that."
Is there a particular Muppet that Cook is looking forward to trading fours with" "Elmo is just a cutie, but I remember I liked Snuffleupagus. Snuffie was cool."
No doubt that, when they eventually meet, Snuffie will think the same thing about Carla Cook.
Tags
Carla Cook
Interview
Mathew Bahl
United States
Lionel Hampton
George Gee
Fred Wesley
Count Basie
Sun Ra
abdullah ibrahim
CYRUS CHESTNUT
Billy Kilson
James Genus
Wes Montgomery
Aretha Franklin
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Ernestine Anderson
Weather Report
Stevie Wonder
Sarah Vaughan
Patricia Barber
Nancy King
Eddie Jefferson
Antonio Carlos Jobim
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