One of the finest pure-jazz male vocalists in the LP era was David Allyn. He easily was among the hippest uptempo singers and one of the most heartbreaking balladeers. It's hard not to snap your fingers when David launches into swingers on albums or tear up when he works a vulnerable torch song. David had amazing early experience, starting with trombonist Jack Teagarden in 1941, the same year Frank Sinatra was with trombonist Tommy Dorsey. [Photo above of David Allyn by Olivia Myers at Dizzy's Coca-Cola in New York in 2010]
As great as David was, he should have been bigger and better known. Drugs, prison and the same old story created unfortunate gaps in his career. But he didn't let those things stop him. David's problem, I suppose, is that he was too sensitive and too much in love with beauty. Yet great arrangers such as Johnny Mandel, Bob Florence and Bill Holman understood this completely (you can read my multipart JazzWax interview with David here).
Allow me to offer up three tracks so you have a baseline sense of what I'm talking about. Here's David singing Long Ago and Far Away, with an orchestra arranged by Johnny Mandel in 1957...
Here's David singing Shake Down the Stars with an orchestra arranged by Bill Holman in 1958...
And here's David singing Love Is a Serious Thing backed by a band arranged by Bob Florence in 1964...
Now that you get the picture, here's a radio interview with David conducted some years ago by Les Block at KSAV in Minneapolis...
David Allyn died in November 2012.
JazzWax note: KASV's interviews for its Johnny Mercer special can be found here.
from JazzWax http://ift.tt/2hQcJ5R
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