The Royal Bopsters

The Royal Bopsters – Party of Four (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:40 minutes | 729 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Motema

If you’re allergic to vocalese, stop. Sorry about that, but you’ve arrived at the wrong review. On the other hand, if you’re a vocalese virgin eager to lose your innocence, vocalese is the arcane art of grafting a verbal story onto a specific solo by a jazz musician (think of Eddie Jefferson’s Moody’s Mood For Love, “There I go, there I go…” based on James Moody’s alto solo on I’m In The Mood For Love). Creating appropriate vocalese lyrics moves well beyond scat and is about as easy as juggling spiny cacti while walking a tightrope blindfolded. And backwards. Jon Hendricks was the consummate master. Annie Ross was certainly no slouch (‘Twisted’ was written overnight to fit a Wardell Gray solo). And Georgie Fame has shown a lot of talent too. If you think that writing vocalese is hard, performing it requires extraordinarily gymnastic vocal skills and range.

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The Royal Bopsters – The Royal Bopsters (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:06:26 minutes | 834 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Motema

The Royal Bopsters Project sees vocalese pioneers Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross brought together with other greats such as Mark Murphy, Bob Dorough, and Sheila Jordan, on a release masterminded by Amy London and her new vocal jazz quartet, creating a widely-acclaimed recording that both pays homage to the founders of the genre and brings the art form into a new era.

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