REVIEW: Katharine Whalen, Katharine Whalen's Jazz Squad (Mammoth)
- Michelle Aguilar
As any performer from Donny Osmond to David Bowie knows, one of the hardest things in the world to escape can be a persona. This is perhaps the dilemma Katharine Whalen faced when recording her first solo album, a vacation from her day job as resident Billie Holiday stand-in for the hot North Carolina retro band, The Squirrel Nut Zippers.
In the past five years, Whalen has good-naturedly and with a lot of cheek gone along with the Zippers in their ironic, postmodern flirtations with uptempo hot combos and jazz swing genres of the '20s, '30s and '40s. Yet, notwithstanding Whalen's indefatigable enthusiasm for running with the SNZ boys' antics, their ethos seems to have consistently boxed her into singing all her songs through one of only two personas: Lady Day or Betty Boop.
Whalen's self-titled solo debut seems to be trying to break out of that box, resisting the temptation to wheedle the young hipsters with her old parlor tricks and instead demanding that they experience her on her own terms.
Meet her terms: The eponymous album by the Jazz Squad is a collection of hits and forgotten hits from the 1920s and '30s, with spot-on vocals and a fairly authentic sounding backing band. There are no winks here, no Hello Kitty-style playing around with the limited archetypes available to women singers in the Depression Era. Whalen lilts lovingly over songs like the Fred Rose/Walter Hirsch mid-'20s hit "Deed I Do" and Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson's "My Baby Just Cares For Me," with a deep affection and with a clear desire to pass for the real thing. So, there's little flapper-girl sultriness or the cutesy Tin-Pan Alley antics, like Whalen's employed on SNZ records. Her approach here is more sophisticated, showing off more of what her voice can do.
The selection of songs from the '20s and '30s is a bit of a red herring. For what Whalen seems to be aiming at with this record is an evocation of the more stripped-down but stately jazz combos of the '40s and '50s. In fact, Whalen seems here to be channeling another, quite different Lady Day, i.e. jazz vocalist Anita O'Day, who like Whalen first made her name in a thrill-seeking boy-dominated band. In the 1940s and '50s, O'Day successfully left Gene Krupa's band and began doing her own unique takes on the melodies and rhythms of standards and hits from the '20s and '30s. As a result, O'Day became one of the few performers to survive the music industry's new demand for crooners and individual voices. While Whalen has nothing nearly so complicated on her agenda, like O'Day, she is relaxed and confident enough on this album to break out of what people might expect her to do with an album full of Depression-era hits.
Whalen's vocals on this record are more poised and relaxed and sound rather like the real thing, although at times they perhaps veer a little too close to cocktail jazz. The clean production on these backing tracks, which feature little more than standup bass, piano and guitar (the last one provided by husband and day-tripping Zipper James Mathus) steer clear of the liberal dose of goofiness to be found in your average SNZ album. For better or for worse, Whalen's attempt is much less humorous and more intent on getting it right, so to speak.
Throughout the album, Whalen, with understated joy, rolls over and under these songs' rhythms, pitches and lyrics. In "My Old Flame," a piano torch song which has Whalen reminiscing about a first love so old she can't remember his name anymore, her voice is atmospherically breathy yet strong, strolling effortlessly through hard-to-catch pentatonic tones. In "There Is No Greater Love," Whalen is able for the first time to use her voice to convey genuine melancholia, a feat she never really accomplished with SNZ. She doesn't give in to her older ways, even in "Sugar," which verges almost on Dixieland territory and could have been right at home in the SNZ catalogue (I'd never cheat on my sugar/'cause I'm sweet on my sugar/my sugar baby of mine). On a SNZ recording, I expect that Whalen would most likely have turned on her lovelorn flapper voice (see "You're Driving Me Crazy," and "Prince Nez"), but here, without the manic stylings of the Zippers behind her, her voice is strong and steady, adeptly navigating the waters without resorting to cuteness.
All Squirrel Nut Zippers fans are not going to like this album. It's not exactly an album that's going to inspire anyone to dance, or do anything really except sit and listen in appreciation. But it is a beautiful, highly personal record. Listening to this album is rather like watching a tomboy as she tries on her first prom dress and realizes there is a world of possibilities out there for expression.
