This Is Bop: Jon Hendricks And The Art Of Vocal Jazz
Peter Jones
263 Pages
ISBN: 978 1 78179 874 4
Equinox Publishing
2020

Few are the jazz singers accorded the fanfare usually reserved for the music's great instrumentalists. Jon Hendricks was one, taking scat and vocalese to unprecedented heights. As author Peter Jones recounts—in what is the first biography of Hendricks—the singer's life was the stuff of movies. Born in poverty in 1921, Hendrick's story contains scarcely believable drama, personal tragedy, mixed-race marriages— at a time when laws forbade such a union in half the US states—a heroin addiction, and artistic triumphs against all the odds.

In a long, frenetic career Hendricks sang with a roll call of jazz greats, while the trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross paved the way for the likes of The Manhattan Transfer. France bestowed upon Hendricks its highest order of merit, the L��gion d'honneur, for both his service during World War II and for his artistic achievements. On the cusp of eighty, Hendricks became Professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Toledo and holds the distinction of being the first African American to lecture at the Sobornne in Paris. All this in spite of being unable to read a note of music. As Jones puts it, "He turned this shortcoming into a virtue."

On the subject of musical literacy, Hendricks was forthright regarding the intellect versus the spirit: "The great operatic arias of Giuseppe Verdi are taken from the folk songs of the Neapolitan fishermen. They can't read. They wouldn't know a note if you put it in a boat...It's the hearing of the music that's the important thing, I think. If you can hear it, you can sing it or play it."

And Hendricks' hearing was acute, singing note for note the horn solos of