Jon Hendricks — singer brought new dimension to jazz
Jon Hendricks, a jazz singer and songwriter who became famous in the 1950s with the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross by putting lyrics to well-known jazz instrumentals and turning them into vocal tours de force, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 96.
Although he was a gifted vocal improviser in his own right, Mr. Hendricks was best known for adding words to the improvisations of others.
He took pieces recorded by jazz ensembles such as the Count Basie Orchestra and the Horace Silver Quintet and, using their titles as points of departure, created intricate narratives and tongue-in-cheek philosophical treatises that matched both the melody lines and the serpentine contours of the instrumental solos, note for note and inflection for inflection.
Mr. Hendricks did not invent this practice, known as vocalese — most jazz historians credit singer Eddie Jefferson with that achievement — but he became its bestknown and most prolific exponent, and he turned it into a group art.
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, with Mr. Hendricks as principal lyricist and ebullient onstage between-songs spokesman, introduced the concept of vocalese to a vast audience. Thanks not just to his clever lyrics but also to the group’s tight harmonies, skillful scat singing and polished showmanship, it became one of the biggest jazz success stories of the late 1950s and early ’60s.
The trio’s success extended beyond the jazz world. They appeared in upscale nightclubs and on national television in addition to the traditional round of jazz clubs and festivals.
Mr. Hendricks began collaborating with fellow jazz singer Dave Lambert in 1953, and four years later their efforts paid off.
Mr. Hendricks and Lambert hired a rhythm section to accompany their vocals and a 12-piece choir to simulate the sound of the Basie band’s reed and brass sections. When the choir had trouble mastering the rhythmic nuances of the Basie style, Annie Ross, a British-born jazz singer who had made some vocalese recordings of her own, was brought in to coach it.
Ross’ efforts to imbue the studio vocalists with the proper jazz feeling proved futile, and they were let go. She ended up singing on the session with Lambert and Mr. Hendricks; their voices were multitracked, a rarity in those days.
The resulting album, “Sing a Song of Basie” (1958), was a hit. In the wake of its success, the three vocalists decided to make their partnership permanent.
Mr. Hendricks moved to London with his family in 1968 but returned to the United States in 1973. For the next two years he wrote jazz reviews for The Chronicle and taught classes in jazz history at UC Berkeley and California State University Sonoma.
Mr. Hendricks’ stage show, “Evolution of the Blues,” in which he traced the history of black music in song and verse, opened at the Broadway Theater in San Francisco in 1974 and ran for five years. His focus later shifted to Jon Hendricks and Company, a vocal quartet that carried on the tradition of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.