Jazz singer pioneered ‘vocalese’ style

TOLEDO, OHIO — Jon Hendricks, the pioneering jazz singer and lyricist who with the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross popularized the “vocalese” singing style in which words were added to instrumental songs, has died. He was 96.

His daughter, Aria Hendricks, confirmed his death to the New York Times. She said he died Wednesday at a New York City hospital.

Hendricks found fame in the 1950s and ’60s teaming with Dave Lambert and Annie Ross. Their interracial trio became one of the most celebrated jazz vocal groups ever, and among the latter-day stars they influenced were Joni Mitchell and Manhattan Transfer.

The trio’s first album, “Sing a Song of Basie,” won acclaim for its use of vocalese, in which the voices mimic the instrumental parts. Hendricks wrote the lyrics to existing Basie songs, and the three recorded their own voices in layers instead of using backup singers.

Others experimented with vocalese before Hendricks, but he is widely regarded as the father of the spirited singing style for popularizing it. In the 1980s, he collaborated with Manhattan Transfer on an album called “Vocalese” that won three Grammys, one for Hendricks himself.

He first teamed up with Lambert, a be-bop singer he admired, in the mid-1950s; the duo had a hit with “Four Brothers” and “Cloudburst.” The two became a trio with the addition of Ross in 1957. The English-born Ross was already known for her own vocalese lyrics to Wardell Gray’s music in the classic “Twisted.”