Kurt Elling — Male Vocalist of the Year

By Dan Ouellette I Nov. 7, 2024

“There’s something to learn from every musician you play with,” says Kurt Elling.
(Photo: Mark Sheldon)

This year’s Male Vocalist of the Year, Kurt Elling also scored the top spot in the Critics Poll back in August. He says he’s thrilled with the honors that have stretched for multiple years beginning in 2000.

“I’m gratified,” he says, while in the midst of yet another round of performances and recordings ranging from singing with big bands to his newly hatched idea of spontaneous duo offerings in his Wildflowers series. “It’s my heart’s desire. I like to keep busy. How’s that for being a kid from Rockford, Illinois, who grew up singing in the church choir? It’s crazy how far I’ve come to fall in love with the jazz sound and culture.”

What’s extraordinary about Elling is that he delivers a special melding of smart, poetic, romantic, cool renderings of music with a jazz sensibility marked by bold innovations of interpretation, inventive phrasing and occasionally hip scats.

He says he’s still learning by deliberately placing himself into challenging settings. Kurt Elling will not go stale. “There’s a whole universe of music yet to be explored,” he says. “There’s something to learn from every musician you play with.”

Case in point: collaborating with North Carolina-based guitarist Charlie Hunter for the supergroup SuperBlue, the COVID project that truly stretched Elling. He admits that it was a radical departure from the music he usually plays. “I was scared, but that tells me that I’ve got to keep going,” he says. “I never had as much to write my own for music that didn’t have a melody line I was familiar with or even unusual chord changes. It was a big challenge.”

SuperBlue started as a result of the Elling team bringing in Hunter to co-produce an album that was built on an upbeat electric groove. “I always wanted to hear Kurt in a different setting that’s not as acoustic as a piano trio,” says Hunter, who has been a friend since their early ’90s Blue Note days, when Bruce Lundvall signed them both in the same week. “But I know that musically he could sing over everything. So I got together with my Butcher Brown friends DJ Harrison and Corey Fonville in Richmond, Virginia, and we made a lot music. We sent Kurt a ton of tunes, and he wrote lyrics to create the final product. We sent him so much that a lot ended up on the cutting room floor.”

“Like so many people, I was depressed,” says Elling. “Even though we were in different studios because of COVID, when it was over we were able to hit it right away for dates. That was huge. It was important for me to get in front of audiences to play this beat music, and I didn’t have to wear a suit and tie.”

“Kurt realized that he can exist in this new world of groove and hip-hop beats,” Hunter says. “I knew he was the guy to do this because, really, is there any other person who can sing like Kurt? Sure, it was a challenge for him, especially with a songbook that’s not the ordinary. Everyone knows the standard tunes. You let them play themselves. But this was different. You have to be in the trenches. It’s a totally contrasting approach. Still, he didn’t have anything to worry about.”

The group recorded two albums for the Edition Records label, 2001’s SuperBlue and 2023’s SuperBlue: The Iridescent Spree. They toured the world for three years. Plus, Elling and Hunter spun out their side project as The Guilty Pleasures with the first EP volume including drummer Nate Smith. “Kurt said, let’s just go into the studio for a quick run through our favorite AM radio songs from our youth,” says Hunter. “Kurt picked the tunes and then we made them new with funky grooves — music from AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, ZZTop. That was a lot of fun.”

Obviously never one to sit still for long, Elling says sometimes the action these days makes his head spin. “This is a humble brag about this amazing day in New York I had recently,” he says. “I got up in the morning, went to the Sear Sound studio and did a spontaneous Wildflowers, Vol. 2 recording with Joey Calderazzo. The album took four hours. From there I headed up to Lincoln Center and put on my suit to play the last of my three nights with Wynton’s orchestra. After that I went straight uptown on the 1 train to Smoke and sat in with Branford Marsalis’ quartet. From there, we hung out, then headed to Birdland to catch the last set by Artemis. That’s a hell of a lot of action for a jazz singer. There it is. Dreams do come true to have all these kinds of friendships and collaborators.”

And the blur of Kurt Elling’s activity doesn’t stop there. After trying out new material for a live recording with WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany, and an acoustic session with Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith at the Akbank Jazz Festival in Istanbul, he returned stateside in November and December for dates with SuperBlue. In January he launches his ambitious Weather Report project of dynamic reinventions on compositions by Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter. Expect lots of honorable tributes, but also get ready for the twists and turns that Elling will surely put into the mix, lyrically and arrangement-wise. He’ll be breaking some rules for Weather Report fans.

Elling also serves as the jazz advisor for the classical music-oriented Ravinia Festival in Chicago. ”I help hone the blade,” he says. “For example, I’m insisting they bring in Robert Glasper.”

On Wildflowers, Vol. 1, like wildflowers growing from seeds sleeping in the ground, Elling harvests a fine, colorful crop of intimate songs from yesteryear — dating back to Johnny S. Black’s 1915 tune “Paper Doll,” put on the standard song list by the Mills Brothers with their 6-million-copy bestseller in 1942. “I have to have a Mills Brothers tune in all the series,” Elling says. “The first vinyl I ever bought was a Mills Brothers album. I was either square or hip, but that’s how I heard a whole bunch of those classic standards. They swung so hard and had a mellow sound, and I had a fondness for their phrasing.”

Elling has always danced into many pools of music, but this spontaneous six-track collection (really an EP) showcases his brilliance as a baritone vocalist in step with rising-star pianist Sullivan Fortner — and in a guest slot, Cécile McLorin Salvant, on the gorgeous Fred Hersch/Norma Winstone ballad “Wish (Valentine).” The vocals/piano duo covers Mumford & Sons’ emotive “After The Storm,” as well as strike gold with the Mercer Ellington gem “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,” made famous by Elling’s hero Jon Hendricks.

“Everyone out here playing at a certain level holds a whole new world for me,” says Elling. “My goal is to play with incredible musicians to learn from them, to collaborate so that I can sing in a way that I wouldn’t otherwise. That’s what I’m after. I want to sing better. That’s what Wildflowers is all about.”

Vol. 1 came about when Elling and Fortner happened to be in town in between their own projects. They texted each other song ideas, then met in the studio without rehearsals to create an impromptu recording. “It’s like capturing lightning in a bottle,” Elling says. “Or in this case, grabbing wildflowers. You cut a bunch of wildflowers, put them in a vase with water and place them on the dining room table.”

For McLorin Salvant’s guest performance, Elling says he viewed her and Fortner on Instagram playing “Wish (Valentine)” as a practice session for the pianist. “Cécile texted me to ask if she could come to the session,” says Elling. “I told her, yes, but the price of admission was that she sing with us on ‘Wish.’ That’s the kismet I was hoping for in this series.”

As for including Wayne Shorter’s tune “Ana Maria,” Elling says, “Wayne continues to inspire. And Herbie. With SuperBlue, we did an electric twist on their tune from their 1+1 album, ‘Aung San Suu Kyi,’ with my lyrics and retitled as ‘Where To Find It.’ One of my goals is to keep getting people to know the music of Wayne and Herbie. The world would be a better place. I’m a singer and add lyrics to discover Wayne, it’s a win for everybody. So, of course I wanted to do ‘Ana Maria’ on Wildflowers Vol. 1.”

Vocalist Tessa Souter had recorded her lyrical version of the song on her 2018 album Picture In Black And White. Elling wanted to “enlarge” her lyrics to add to her “initial trajectory.” He reached out to Souter for her permission, then contacted Carolina Shorter for her permission to add more lyrics to her late husband’s song. “We were in the studio getting ready to record this when I heard back from Carolina,” says Elling. “She replied, ‘It’s a beauty. Please proceed and we’ll talk later.’”

The recent Elling adventure with more wildflowers arrived in November as Wildflowers, Vol. 2, his surprising collaboration with pianist Joey Calderazzo and a special guest contribution from trumpeter Ingrid Jensen.

The future holds a wish list for Elling to pick more wildflowers with ih favorite artists, including pianists Fred Hersch, Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes, for starters. The series will continue as schedules permit for Elling and his admired guests. DB