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Comment by numinary1 | Hacker News Reader

This is amazing. Great format. It would be cool to link original recordings too, but merely nice-to-have, not essential. I love being able to listen to the solos unaccompanied.

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Some of them are there. Joyspring, My Favorite Things, I'll Remember April (Lee Konitz). Probably copyright problems with the others.

Speaking of Joyspring -- Manhattan Transfer does a version of this, where they fit words to the actual solo.

While we're on the subject: Clifford Brown's son is a DJ on KCSM (San Mateo). He didn't know his dad very well, obviously.

"Sing Joy Spring", lyrics by Jon Hendricks. Jon wrote lyrics to dozens (hundreds?) of jazz solos. Was one hell of a singer, too -- check him out singing John Coltrane's solo on "Freddie Freeloader" [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSsT7pcVVpw (third solo is Jon)

Ohh that's awesome, thank you! McFerrin and Jarreau and the Basie band sound so good.

> Speaking of Joyspring -- Manhattan Transfer does a version of this, where they fit words to the actual solo.

Jon Hendricks fitted the words to the actual solo. Sorry, giving the credit to MT didn't feel right. Article about it:

Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring”: Jon Hendricks’ Vocalese Genius https://www.tuneintoleadership.com/blog/jon-hendricks-vocale...

Jon Hendricks was awesome! Hear his scatting (and lyrics) on Airegin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul54NWmwLxs

TIL about the lyrics being from Jon Hendricks. Thanks.

He wrote the lyrics for that entire album (Vocalese) and sings on it too -- one of the solos on "Airegin", and a scat solo somewhere else (maybe the Night in Tunisia thing, been a while since I listened).

He also wrote the lyrics for their versions of "Birdland" and "Four Brothers", and maybe four of the tracks on Swing, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of.

It's certainly been a while since I looked at the CD for Vocalese.

I was wrong about "Another Night in Tunisia" -- the solo Jon sings starting around 1:40 actually has lyrics. I think the melody scatting for most of the rest of the song is actually Bobby McFerrin.

Oh, there we go, the scat solo starting at 2:30 in "Ray's Rockhouse" is Jon.

Weirdly enough, if I cam to believe Discogs got the liner notes faithfully, they're not crediting Jon with singing a solo on "Airegin". I'm still 99% certain Jon sings the last solo in that song. (Interestingly, singing lyrics over his own scat solo from the original Lambert, Hendricks & Ross recording of "Airegin".) For sure it sounds like him, no one other than Manhattan Transfer is credited with vocals on that track, and when they recorded it live they don't even attempt to sing it, replacing it with a sax solo.

I just listened to that again. I don't have a good enough feel for what he sounds like vs. the guys in the group.

He does get a credit for vocals and lyrics in Discogs, but they don't say which track:

https://www.discogs.com/master/97226-The-Manhattan-Transfer-...

Oh, the blog post there is lovely. Just used the lyrics to sing through "Sing Joy Spring" while listening to the original Clifford Brown recording.

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