Billie or Ella? Maria or Renata? Technique or feeling?

I'm a little late to the party...but The Ella "songbooks" are simply outstanding.  She is so polished and oh the ease of her singing is enthralling to me.  I saw her at Radio City Musical Hall and she was one of the few artists that had the audience in  rapt attention the entire time.  Piano, bass, drum kit and that amazing voice. 

The other was Frank at Madison Square Garden "The Main Event", you could hear a pin drop in the place. He had a big band/orchestra backing him up.  Frank gets you with the phraseology/timing.

Regards,

barts

+1 @hilde45 so true so true

Frogman, very nice selections all. Thanks for posting them. Lester Young is a particular favorite and it was nice to hear him playing alongside Ella. I love any of  the music where he accompanied Billie Holiday too. Both he, Coltrane and Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins are my all time sax favorites, all geniuses in their own right, just like Ella and Billie in theirs.

Mike

@skyscraper Both he (Lester Young), Coltrane and Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins are my all time sax favorites, all geniuses in their own right, just like Ella and Billie in theirs.

Prolly going to ignite yet another flame war, but what about Sonny?

At 4 AM in the studio, he announces I'm hot now. To the dismay of the engineer..

@frogman 

I noted a clear distinction in my initial post of “the ‘60s stuff” in regards to Lincoln.  When I think of jazz vocalists, I think of people singing jazz music.  I don’t consider the likes of the masterful pop songwriters I mentioned to be jazz.  They wrote immaculately crafted 3-minute pop songs.  They may be all fancy and stuff, with someone like, say, Ella Fitzgerald exhibiting incredible vocal prowess and improvisational acumen, but it’s often still fancy pop songs.  She ain’t singing the likes of Parker/Gillespie/Davis/Monk/Mingus/Coltrane etc.

This is why I mentioned ‘60s era Abbey Lincoln as an example of a vocalist singing jazz music.  Perhaps others may provide input in this regard.

That’s how I see it.
Perhaps, in apropos fashion, this could all be “boiled down” to a classic Gershwin line: “you say, ‘potato’/I say, ‘puh-tah-toe’”

These categories were invented by the salespeople at record companies so minimum wage store clerks would know into which bins to stick the records. With digital freeing us from physical storage everything can be reduced to two categories: good music and bad music. I vote Lawrence Welk as first inductee to the latter. I cringed when he came on TV and my uncle said You like music. Here's the show for you. And to be polite I had to watch. Prolly there's a Nurse Ratched somewhere saying Lawrence Welk is all some of the patients here have. 

* cultural reference