POO: Vocalist / Singer / Crooner / Yodeler / Bard / Songster / Belter

Who's your favorite?

Currently torn between Chet Baker, Elvis, Al Green and Maria Callas.

I'll pick Elvis for universality.

Off the top of my head, Tim Buckley.

Fulfilling all seven roles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPPtrqvHGEg

Tim Buckley is a great choice.

Purely for their voice & singing (without getting into repertoire, cultural significance, etc.)? If so, Ariana is my favorite.

Sam Cooke makes some of the most pleasant sounds my ears have ever heard, but is that what I want to hear for the rest of my life? Gah, I can't say. Do I want someone a little rougher but can form a tighter bond with? I mean, Neil Young is out for sure. I have trouble with him before any album of his is over. Something in the middle.

Tempted to say Aretha because I can alternate between Columbia era beauty and Atlantic era (and beyond) power.

Nina Simone.

almeda riddle

Marvin Gaye

The best vocalists I've seen perform are Nagamani Srinath and Tanya Tagaq.

Emmylou Harris

Lots of good choices.

Neko Case doesn't seem to have been mentioned.

In terms of sheer range and consistency, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

It's really a complex exercise, because you have to account for vocal tics, accents, and other things you'd grow to loathe if it's the only voice you'd ever hear again. Like, Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Durante fill me with immense joy in small bursts, but I'd kill myself after 10 years of nothing but either of them. At the same time, a clearer, largely unmannered singer like John Denver would make me forget about all things a voice could do.

imo this question is unanswerable.

Limiting it to mainstream pop singers, Grace Slick and Kurt Cobain are two who come to mind where I can enjoy even comparatively banal material because of their voices. Most of the time, though, when listening for pleasure, I don't put something on just to hear someone's voice. xp Fischer-Dieskau is a good example: I thought about him but, like, I put on Schubert to hear Schubert.

"Bard" make me think of poets or songwriters as opposed to just vocalists, though, so from that angle, Joni Mitchell.

That's precisely what I like about Fischer-Dieskau: he makes Schubert sound like Schubert, Bach sound like Bach, Brahms sound like Brahms, Berg sound like Berg, etc.

That makes perfect sense. It's more just my limitations as a classical listener - I think I just don't listen to vocalists enough to have strong opinions as I do with pianists or guitarists.

(But I do always like Fischer-Dieskau, which is why I thought of him!)

Interesting. An off-putting vocalist is likelier to ruin a classical piece for me than a poor pianist/violinist/guitarist, etc., which is saying something, because I often feel like I’m overly sensitive to differences in performance.

Freddie Mercury

Grace Slick is best answer I can come up with right now, hi5 sund4r

That's too hard! Sandy Denny or Neil Diamond. Or Sam Cooke.

Mark Hollis. I just love the sound of his voice

Levi Stubbs (thinking through my all-time favorite songs, "Ask the Lonely" owes most to the vocal)

Karen Carpenter or Stevie Wonder

nina simone for sure

runners up sandy denny and nick drake

they don't have enough material or enough breadth but those are probably my favorite voices

simone is just a universe unto her own though, she interprets the american songbook, has classical and jazz chops, super inventive, formally interesting, punk-adjacent, intense waves of emotion - everything i want and the most of it.

Nina is extraordinary. Winston Rodney too.

other people i might pick on different days: scott walker, buffy sainte marie, bob fuckin dylan

George Jones

xp i've been meaning to check out burning spear, and now that thread has been bumped in my mind

first thoughts were Bowie and Jimmy Scott

Louis Armstrong, Roger Daltrey, Yoko Ono.

alive: Carla Bozulich

dead: Sandy Denny

Don't know anybody who fits all of those, but Dylan and Chuck Berry for vocalist-bard, Elvis and Charlie Rich and Al Green for singer-crooner, Stevie and Aretha for singer, Blue Yodeler Jimmie Rodgers, Eric Burdon the belter---songster, the travelling human jukebox, w originals and covers: Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Chicks, Emmylou, maybe Dylan sometimes on the Endless Tour.

Jerry Lee Lewis vocalist-singer, kind of in-between, an influence on Dylan's phrasing, seems like (and JLL's Dylan covers are ace), Johnny Cash great vocalizer, though also a bit between that and singing at times.

Bessie Smith, vocalist-singer-belter.

Billie Holiday, vocalist-singer-crooner, though I like her best as vocalist, the plainer sound, others can be too embellished.

None of my favorite singers have “great voices” so for me this comes down to the singer who most convinces of the emotion of a lyric, the most invested...Brel, Om Kalthoum, Michael Stipe. Just in that regard, it’s always gonna be Elvis.

Dylan is a goddamn amazing singer.

Mark Hollis. I just love the sound of his voice

Yeah, he also sprang to mind when I started mulling this over.

Thom Yorke in his prime is also up there for me.

Bjork

If I had to pick one, and were to go the a cappella route, I'd agree with (not a strip club) Clay and go with Almeda Riddle

Ornella Vanoni from Italy. She's the one for the desert isle.

But also love Dalida, Dusty Springfield, Donna Summer, Elis Regina

Xpost, Charlie Rich is a good answer

I pretty much agree with most people’s choices

Sandy Denny in the non-Dylan category. Only downside is her relatively small catalogue.

Speaking of Dylan, my first thought upon seeing this thread was:

My voice is really warm
It's just there, it ain't got no form
But it's just like a dead man's last pistol shot, baby

Gram Parsons

oh alright then, Parson Brown vs. Gram Parsons

Lol

Billie Holiday seconded, I don’t think there’s another voice that affects me as deeply, save for maybe Mavis Staples, but Mavis doesn’t have those decades of Great American Songbook standards in her catalogue.

Speaking of Jerry Lee Lewis vocalist-singer, kind of in-between, an influence on Dylan's phrasing maybe...Johnny Cash great vocalizer, though also a bit between that and singing at times, I should have included Joplin in this "hinge" category: whatever sound is needed to make her point, incl. pitches that make me think of free jazz reeds, and, as Ellen Willis pointed out, she can sing or vocalize over or through any kind of audio traffic pattern, incl. godawful acoustics of venues built long before rock, thus (as Willis noted), anticipating the sonic solutions of articulate noizemakers like Plant, Axl, the Nazareth dude, and the whole school of pre-Cookie Monster metal vocalists, proving they got balls by squeezing 'em (compliment, I'll take that over "dirty" Cookies, for the most part).
Also, she could shift too and from harmonic vibrational singing, sweetly as she pleased---making me think of Little Richard, as in this note for What Are You Listening To?

notes just now, trying to wrap brane around what it just experienced:

Little Richard, Southern Child omg, cert worth mention try to describe finely calibrated sense of pitch, sweetly piercing and sensitive, like Joplin’s "Summertime" all the time while rolling round on the farm vehicles and such, musos no prob as he makes something----something, not nec of nothing but working a few phrases not nec going anywhere but around and around earth and space certainly some robust to muscular phrases, whatever he does with them and voice very clear despite all the screaming he had done press sheet says label was like oh we don’t know about him doing country or was it just that it was so out there how compare to his other new records around then? seemed pretty out there in 70s Hendrix doc Sweet girlish laughter but unsettling as in high school wtf but no complaints after all Out Dec. 4 and always

― dow, Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Linda Sharrock could shift like that too on Black Woman, title track and other nightmare beauty, *also* beauty as beauty in hummingbird "Bialero."
Annisette of Savage Rose doesn't go as far out, far as I know, but has quite a range.

I'd say Rudy Vallee is the greatest crooner overall, though I have to concede that Bing Crosby demonstates superior voice control. Cab Calloway gave a very impresive performance in the Big Broadcast that overshadowed even Crosby's. Mae West is also pretty good.
Despite these considerations, as well as Morton Downey's classical training and formidable technical ability, my personal preference is for the Mills Brothers who are more charming.

Shit, I can't believe Art Garfunkel didn't immediately spring to mind. That voice sends me.

Terry Callier

Liz Fraser, yo