Trevor Hodgett
Notice how the album charts suddently seem to be full of excellent young women jazz singers like Stacy Kent, Clare Teal and Jane Monheit? You’re a better man than me if you can convincingly explain why there’s such renewed interest in the classic jazz repertoire of songs by writers such as Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart but with the revival continuing, English singer Sarah Moule, judging by the quality of her current CD Something’s Gotta Give, might just be the next singer of standards to find herself shifting albums by the truckload.
Oddly enough it was listening to a pianist, rather than to a singer, which first introduced Moule to the profound satisfactions of jazz. “I really fell in love with jazz when I listened to Thelonious Monk” she reveals. I bought a £3.99 CD called Portraits and I couldn’t believe how beautiful the sound was. It made me want to cry. And I just thought, “That’s it, I’ve found the music I will never get bored with. I had been listening to modern soul but I found it lacking in musical depth and I couldn’t find the meaning I was looking for in those kind of lyrics. So Thelonious Monk was the turning point and then I discovered fantastic writers like Lorenz Hart and Johnny Mercer.”
Moule’s current CD entirely comprises songs written either by Fran Landesman, many of them in fact composed recently in collaboration with Moule’s pianist husband Simon Wallace, or songs by Johnny Mercer. “Fran really crafts the lyrics.” enthuses Moule. “I am lyric-led as a singer and Fran’s got an interesting intellectual and emotional take on life. I don’t have a dark outlook on life and so I want songs that have some kind of optimisim in them and although Fran can be very dark she’s also very funny and I tend to see the funny side in what she writes. And she is increasingly optimistic now and I appreciate that – on this album her songs aren’t dark, just thoughtful and thought-provoking.”
The Johnny Mercer songs on the album include That Old Black Magic, Days of Wine And Roses and Jeepers Creepers. “There’s fantastic craftsmanship in his songs and they’re so natural to sings as well because he uses everyday speech but in a beautiful, elegant way. But I have to say that That Old Black Magic is a monster of a song. It’s hard to sing because it’s long and you’ve got a huge emotional range that you have to sustain. And obviously there are two absolutely stellar recordings of the song by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra so you feel like you have them looking over your shoulder when you record that. I thought a lot about the lyric and I tried to find my own angle on it and I hope I did – but it’s up to the people who listen to it to decide!”
Moule feels her singing style is continuing to mature. “An album is a record of a moment in time and then you carry on gigging and as you gig you develop what you’re doing and you get a new take on the music and the music you make just moves on. I’m constantly learning stuff about jazz and jazz harmony – it’s a huge learning curve”. Sarah Moule’s Something’s Gotta Give is on Linn Records.