The vocalese trio of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross are regarded
among the finest jazz singers of all time although they performed and recorded
together for just five years from 1957. Hendricks was a a noted lyricist who
developed the skill of writing words for complicated jazz tunes by top
instrumentalists. He met Lambert, who was an arranger as well as a singer, in
New York and they decided to apply the technique to songs for an album titled
'Sing a Song of Basie'. They intended to use a choir but the vocalese style was
so complex that they reportedly couldn't train...