Irene Kral: A Voice So Irresistible

by Steven A. CerraThursday, June 1, 2017

Drummers and “chick singa’s” do not go together like love and marriage and a horse and carriage.

Contrary to what Sammy Cahn and Jimmy van Huesen say in their lyrics, drummers and female Jazz vocalists “… is an institute you [can] disparage” just by asking most drummers about their experiences in working with female Jazz singers.

By the way, before this introduction gets labeled as some sort of sexist rant, the same can be said about the antipathy that many drummers have about working with most “boy singers,” too.

My statement is only a generalization, but most of the time, drummers work with singers because they have to in order to make a few schimolies and not because they want to as singers usually drive them nuts.

There are exceptions, of course.

It was a total blast to work with Anita O’Day during a two week stint as a member of her trio at “Ye Little Club” in Beverly Hills [John Poole, her regular drummer, had taken ill].

The late Irene Krall is also among my special favorites, a list which includes the likes of Carmen McRae, Blossom Dearie, Ruth Price and Ruth Olay. I heard Irene sing with Shelly Manne’s group on a few occasions and I remember him remarking: “Irene is just the best. She’s like another member of the band. She’s a musician.”

And Russ Freeman, the late pianist who worked with Irene in Shelly’s quintet and on Irene’s 1965 recording Wonderful Life, said of her: “She is a gas to work with. Her choice of tunes is so different and she handles difficult material like a snap.”

Hal Blaine, the drummer on the Wonderful Life album said of Irene: “When she did that cut on Sometime Ago, we were all spellbound. Most singers do the tune too slow like they want to wrap themselves in every word. She sang it perfectly and then went on to do a swinging version of Bob Dorough’s Nothing Like You Has Ever Been Seen Before. Just like that: bam, bam. What a pro.”

Music captivated her at an early age. As Gene Lees recounts in the following excerpt from his essay on Irene’s older brother, Roy Kral [a pianist and a singer], and his singer-wife, Jackie Cain:


"When I was about seventeen, we were rehearsing our dance band in my basement. Four brass, four saxes, three rhythm."

read more at: http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com.br/2017/06/irene-kral-voice-so-irresistible.html

I first was introduced to Irene Kral's voice at a friend's house in the mid-1970s...

Irene Kral: Second Chance

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com
I first was introduced to Irene Kral's voice at a friend's house in the mid-1970s. After high school each day, my friend and I used to spend a few hours listening to his father's record collection from the 1950s. Among the many LPs was a copy of Maynard Ferguson's Boy With Lots of Brass (1957).

My friend also had quite a stereo system—a Macintosh receiver, a Dual turntable and a pair of chest-high Altec "Voice of the Theatre" speakers. Everything sounded great on there, especially brassy big-band recordings.
The track we loved more than any other was Moonlight in Vermont, featuring Irene Kral on the vocal. According to the album's liner notes, this was Kral's first recording session, and she had aced the song on the first take. My friend and I loved Kral's warm vocal backed by Ferguson's supersonic high notes on the ballad. This version remains for me the definitive Moonlight in Vermont.

A few years later, while running through LPs at Harvard Square's Coop in Cambridge, Mass., I came across an album by Kral accompanied only by pianist Alan Broadbent. The album was Where Is Love? (1974). At first glance, it seemed to be the polar opposite of Boy With Lots of Brass. Here was Kral, the big band singer, with just a piano behind her. Pretty gutsy, I thought. So I bought the LP.

What I found remarkable about this Kral album was how maternal she sounded on her own. There was a hearth-like toastiness about her voice, a simplicity to her phrasing that wasn't too heavy but self-assured and sincere. And her song choices fit her voice perfectly. As for Broadbent, his intensity and wide chord voicings romantically framed Kral's intonation and filled in the spaces gracefully without crowding her.

So when Gentle Rain came out in 1977, also featuring Broadbent, I grabbed it. In the years that followed, I hoped that more Kral-Broadbent collaborations would be issued. This of course, grew increasingly unlikely, since Kral had died in 1978 at age 46 of breast cancer. The scarcity of material only added to the sensitivity and importance of her recordings.

Then a couple of weeks ago, a package arrived from Jazzed Media, a label in Littleton, Colo. Inside was Second Chance, a new CD with Kral's picture on the cover. When I turned it over, there on piano was Alan Broadbent, along with Peter Marshall on bass and Frank Severino on drums. I was stunned. The material was recorded live in 1975 at The Times Restaurant in Studio City, Calif, and the songs were a tasteful mix. Finally, previously unreleased Kral-Broadbent material had surfaced—but how would the CD sound?

When I put on the album I was immediately blown away. Second Chance sounds as though it was recorded last week in a top-notch studio rather than in open space more than 30 years ago. How remarkable. And the material is as tender and touching as the earlier two. Great news for jazz singers looking for examples of vocalists who created intimate moods in clubs. [Pictured: Alan Broadbent]

Much of this album's sterling sound has to do with Rod Nicas, the credited recording and mastering engineer. Nicas, according to Graham Carter of Jazzed Media, was active in the Los Angeles jazz community in the '70s as a recording engineer. He worked for Albert Marx of Discovery Records for several years and was asked by Dennis Smith, Irene's steady at the time, to record her. "Rod had the recording sitting in the bottom of his closet, along with other recordings by Jackie & Roy, which I released a couple of years ago," Carter told me.

Irene was singer-pianist Roy Kral's sister, and he was her early role model. Kral sang with local bands in Chicago and then joined a vocal group in 1954, singing lead and playing the drums. In 1957 Carmen McRae recommended her to Maynard Ferguson, who hired her to record tracks on Boy With Lots of Brass. From there, recordings followed with Herb Pomeroy, Steve Allen, Junior Mance and Shelly Manne. She also turned up on two tracks on Laurindo Almeida's Guitar from Ipanema—Winter Moon and Old Guitaron.

I wish I could single out tracks on Second Chance for praise but I can't. They're all knockouts. You really have to listen to this gem from start to finish, as if experiencing the live set at the club. Included here is The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Second Chance, Misty Roses, Sometime Ago, Star Eyes and Nobody Else But Me. Each of the 14 tracks receives the Kral and Broadbent treatment—introspective depth with enormous charm.
It's so rare today for a jazz album of previously unreleased material to surface bearing important work and remarkable fidelity. If you dig intimacy, Second Chance is a must-own.

Used with permission by Marc Myers
http://www.jazzwax.com/2010/10/irene-kral-second-chance.html