By Steven Fullwood

Dianne Reeves is used to breaking the rules. As a preteen, during the Civil Rights Movement in Denver, the Grammy-award winning artist was active in protests in high school against segregation. As an artist, she’s just as rebellious and eschews the label “jazz singer” in favor of being called an artist whose foundations lie in jazz. Hard to place comfortably in any genre, Reeves’ catalog illustrates the cross-genre path she has forged for over two decades. She points to her formative years as the basis for her way of seeing and being in the world of music.

“I grew up listening to a lot of different kinds of music – R&B, soul, gospel, rock-n-roll – and the music was very conscious music,” she recalls. “And another thing that was happening was that jazz musicians were reaching out to world musicians and they were coming together, and I was listening to all of that.” Reeves views music as one thing – an expression of self – the spirit of which has given birth to thirteen, genre-busting albums. As her latest album reminds us, The Best of Dianne Reeves, she’s provided the world with a wide-range of musical experiences – most notably jazz – that has both expanded the genre and remained very true to its roots. Best known as a “jazz” singer, she has been criticized as abdicating the throne as this generation’s preeminent jazz artist in the tradition of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday or Sarah Vaughan. Reeves shrugs off the critique and instead hones in on art in general and artistic integrity in particular.

“There are so many critics that say so many things,” she laughs, “the way that I view it is me today or tomorrow it is someone else. Overall, you have to stay true to yourself and your art and keep on grooving because they, meaning critics, will call you many things.” She does acknowledge the compliment buried within the critique. “It does however feel really good, to be mentioned in such company, but at the same time there are some incredible, young up-and-coming talents that I’ve either had the opportunity to work with or talk to and they all have these unique and different voices, so you know,” she says, smiling.

Speaking of that company, Reeves’ The Calling, Celebrating Sarah Vaughan, uses her supple vocals to honor the jazz legend that she says made a way for singers like herself to come up and pursue their artistic journeys.

“Sarah viewed her voice as an instrument first. The album I did celebrates her artistry, not her music primarily because she sang so much music,” she says with wonderment. “This is a project that I’ve always wanted to do. So I got together with my really good friend Billy Childs, and we discussed it because I wanted to do an orchestra record mainly because when Sarah decided to do her live Gershwin project (the 1982 album Gershwin Live!), she basically put that whole project together herself.”

Vaughan won a Grammy for that recording, a fact that disturbs Reeves greatly.

“Can you imagine someone like her, whose career had spanned generations, and only won one Grammy? For all of that work. She wasn’t a star; she was a universe. By the time I had discovered her [it] was the ’70’s, and she had been singing for over 25 years by then,” Reeves points out. “She was not afraid to try and sing different things.”

At best, Reeves’ own sojourn mirrors Vaughan’s (just two Grammys, so far). Most people are unaware of her catalog; that she has dabbled in straight-ahead R&B/soul (1985’s Never Too Far); that she’s covered tunes by rock artists such as Peter Gabriel (“In Your Eyes” on 1999’s Bridges), or that she was part of assembling three generations of jazz musicians for the magnificent 1996 album, The Grand Encounter.

Although the journey has yet to end, Reeves says that 2002 is the year where she is going to take a much-needed rest.

“I have been recording and touring almost non-stop in the last five years, and right now, I feel I need to live a little bit,” she says while sipping tea. “So now the dream is being fulfilled because we’re doing a lot of orchestra dates and it’s exciting, and the music is different, it’s challenging, and by the same token where I am right now is to stop and really try to smell the roses. M

June 2002

Author: MOSAEC