A Standing Ovation Is Not Enough for Samara Joy

Normally, the Grammy Awards telecast is unwatchable, what’s been called a “hysterical celebration of the mundane,” yet don’t count the Grammys out. Although each year I find less and less to get excited about in the telecast, the latest was actually great for good music. The big upset was that the usually forlorn category of “best new artist” went to an individual who is more than deserving: the exceptional 23-year-old jazz singer Samara Joy. It’s not the first time — at least since I’ve been watching — that the Grammy voters have made what we can agree is the right decision. In 1994, Tony Bennett deservedly won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and in 2008 another jazz album, “The Joni Letters” by Herbie Hancock, took home the prize. In 2011, Esperanza Spalding won as “best new artist” — the competition, as laughable as it now sounds, was something called Justin Bieber. Now, it’s happened again: Samara Joy in addition to receiving the new artist award won for “best jazz vocal album” for her second release, “Linger Awhile.”In general, I don’t object to the jazz vocals award, as over the past 25 years that category has been dominated by Cassandra Wilson, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, Cecile McLorin Salvant, and especially Dianne Reeves, all of whom are imminently worthy. Yet in giving the bigger awards to Messrs. Bennett and Hancock, as well as to Ms. Spalding and now Ms. Joy, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is showing that it truly wants to honor the best in contemporary music, rather than, as so often seems to be the case, simply sucking up to whatever forgettable pop headliner happens to be currently dominating the charts.Ms. Joy won her first major award in 2019, when she topped the Sarah Vaughan Vocal Competition at Newark NJPAC. (I’m proud to say I was in the house.) Now at 23, Ms. Joy is the youngest winner of the jazz vocal Grammy. The most remarkable aspect of her music is not that she has tons of chops and technique, a beautiful voice, and the ability to swing. I’ve heard other contemporary singers, including Veronica Swift and Anais Reno, who can do all that, rare and amazing as it is. What I like about “Linger Awhile” is how Ms. Joy consistently embraces songs that she can make swing and that tell complex stories. To begin with, she deserves credit for seeking out an antique like “Linger Awhile,” a hundred-year-oldie that’s been pretty much abandoned since Dizzy Gillespie reworked it into the bop anthem “Groovin’ High” several generations later. She not only resurrects this ancient love song: She makes it live and breathe anew as the title of her album.Yet “Linger Awhile” is relatively straightforward: “I’ve something to tell you, so linger awhile”; she delivers a fast and snappy treatment reminiscent of the many “chasers” on Sarah Vaughan’s great concert albums. Then there is “Social Call,” about rekindling an old love — something you can’t imagine a millennial would be able to comprehend let alone sing about in a way that makes it illuminating for us old dogs who know well the Jon Hendricks and Gigi Gryce song.Ms. Joy even writes lyrics that are well beyond what we might assume is the emotional range of a 20-something. On “Nostalgia,” her own text to a 1947 Fats Navarro classic, she provides not only words to the published melody but also the trumpet solo. It’s the happy tale of a couple that’s stayed together for 50 years, reminiscing about the day they met. Conversely, “Guess Who I Saw Today?” is about a similar couple that is clearly in a much more dysfunctional state. Thelonious Monk’s ‘’Round Midnight” is like Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” perennially overdone by jazz and even non-jazz singers of all ages, but Ms. Joy invests herself fully in the text, which in this case is the less-known lyric by Jon Hendricks, which also gives her rendition a feeling of freshness.The sheer delight of the well-named Ms. Joy was reaffirmed for me during the Winter Jazz Fest last month, when she performed on a long bill with two other acts at Le Poisson Rouge. This is more normally an alt-rock venue, and in that tradition the big room was bereft of chairs. Upon arriving, I realized that to hear Ms. Joy, who was the climactic act, I would have to stand up for four hours. I did it, and was rewarded when she took the stage with a favorite song of mine, Frederick Hollaender’s “This is the Moment,” which I associated with the sublimely cool pop singer Jo Stafford and the eternally underrated bebop trumpet icon Kenny Dorham.I couldn’t tell you what else she sang — it was impossible to take notes while standing up — but I can tell you that I would gladly do it again to hear Samara Joy.

A Standing Ovation Is Not Enough for Samara Joy

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