I got out Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavichord" and we began reading through the preludes and fugues just to see if they were singable. We soon found, like many before us, that we were swinging Bach's music quite naturally. Since there were no words, we improvised a kind of scat singing a la Louis Armstrong, which we later reduced to simple doo's and boo's, dah's and bah's so as not to get in the way of Bach's counterpoint. We took advantage of two characteristics common to both jazz and baroque music: rhythm and improvisation. Jazz and baroque styles both require a good steady tempo, and most of the great baroque composers were organists who considered improvisation as part of their musical baggage - just as a jazz musician does today.
We continued rehearsing in our off time for most of that year (1962), then approached Philips about making a recording. We, and they, thought we might sell a few records to our families and friends. As a matter of fact, in France that's about what happened. Fortunately, when the recording came out in the States (in 1963), there were a few disk-jockeys who like it and who spread the word. It began climbing the charts, eventually making the top 10, then staying in the top 100 for almost a year and a half. That first recording, and the two that followed it, won Grammies for "Best Performance by a Chorus". The first "Bach's Greatest Hits" (Jazz Sébastian Bach in France), also won a Grammy for "Best New Artist". (The other albums were Going Baroque and Swinging Mozart or Anyone for Mozart in the US)
For the most part, the early albums were well received. We got favourable comments from some of our idols: Glenn Gould, Ella Fitzgerald, Yehudi Menuhin and Dizzy Gillespie. Some music critics raved, some were reticent, and a few were downright hostile. One German critic accused us of casting a satanic influence on music in general, yet the London Times critic admired our "exceptional understanding of 18th-Century performing practices."
In the spring of 1964 we got a call from Richard Adler, who organised the Soirees Musicales at the White House for the Kennedys. When Lyndon Johnson became President after Kennedy's assassination, he and Mrs Johnson resolved to continue the musical evenings. We were invited to sing at a State Dinner in the White House honouring the Israeli Foreign Minister Levi Eshkol. Until then we had made only one public appearance, a concert we organised ourselves at the Cite Universitaire in Paris. In spite of some jittery nerves, our short recital at the White House - which we shared with violinist Mischa Elman - went reasonably well.
I remember being very impressed by Ladybird Johnson. Standing with her husband at the end of the evening while some 100 guests filed by to shake hands, she managed to say something personal to each one. Her husband had the disconcerting habit of winking each time he shook hands, almost as though there was a wired connection between his hand and eye muscles - a typical tic, perhaps, of a consummate politician. After the White House, we performed at New York's Madison Square Garden for Johnson's political campaign, though the French singers would have been had put to distinguish a Republican from a Democrat. Those were heady times: staying at Hiltons, being escorted in limousines, meeting famous people.
We worked hard to make the move from the sound studios to the concert hall. Since we hadn't used any re-recording, our eight singers could give a faithful reproduction of the LP's. Also, we soon found that we had stumbled on to a built-in international audience: Bach's music was known everywhere, and our doo-boo-doo scatting presented no language barrier for either the Japanese or the Argentineans. In concert we dressed in black, with gowns designed by Yves St-Laurent and tuxes by Pierre Balmain. With white lighting, mixed with a bit of rose to highlight skin tones, we sought to make a nice picture that wouldn't distract our listeners from using their ears. For good contact with the audience, we talked about the music, and shifted places occasionally to illustrate Bach's instrumentation. In my arrangements I stayed very close to Bach's own writing, just adding light bass and drums to underline the rhythm.
Swingle-singing is best described as the use of the voice as an instrument in a fusion of jazz and classical styles. In a sense, one leads to the other. Once the singer masters the skips and jumps of the instrumental writing, the jazz feeling follows instinctively, as does the scat-singing. In fact, until I began publishing my arrangements in printed form, I never wrote the scat syllables down. The singers could improvise better scat than I could write. Of course, Bach is the most swinging of all baroque composers: with his music you can shift easily from a baroque to a jazz style by simply altering the rhythmic inflections.
The Swingle Singers might never have existed had it not been for two earlier French vocal groups. The great Blossom Dearie, who lived and worked in Paris in the 50s, formed an eight-voice group called the Blue Stars. Their recording of "Lullaby of Birdland" sold well in America. Four of the Blue Stars, including myself, later became Swingle Singers. Everyone who worked with Blossom got an education in jazz vocal style. The Blue Stars, by writing their own arrangements with mostly French lyrics, created an authentic French jazz vocal group sound. Nowadays their recordings are hard to come by, but Blossom herself has become an internationally celebrated jazz singer.
Mimi Perrin joined the Blue Stars after Blossom left the group to return to New York. Also a fine pianist and singer (with a diploma in English from the Sorbonne), Mimi began working in the studios in the late 50s. About that time a recording of a vocal group in the States set the jazz world on its heels: "Sing a song of Basie" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross took some Count Basie big band arrangements, added their own lyrics, and reproduced the entire Basie sound with just their trio of voices by means of a prodigious use of over-dubbing and re-recording. It was a performance that made a huge step forward for all jazz vocal groups.
During that same period a very young Quincy Jones was working for a recording company in Paris as producer and arranger. He had recorded, both in Paris and Stockholm, some lovely compositions and arrangements for big band. When the blue Stars disbanded, Mimi Perrin decided to form a group in the tradition of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross with the aim of vocally reproducing Quincy's music. She formed a group of six singers - including some ex-Blue Stars and future Swingle Singers - and called it the Double-Six, 'six' because there were six singers and 'double' to suggest the over-dubbing.
After some initial work with Quincy, the Double Six embarked on more than a year of rehearsals and recording sessions (at a studio in the home of Notre Dame organist Pierre Cochereau) done mostly at night because we were still earning our living during the day. We often had difficulty locating original scores. With Quincy's album there was no problem because he was in Paris and had the scores with him.
But the second album was a mixed bag: we had to locate scores from many different sources. For example, we wanted very much to do the arrangement of "Fascinatin' Rhythm" that Bill Russo had written for the Stan Kenton band. We contacted the Kenton office and were given permission to record the piece, but were told that the original score had been lost. We then spent many hours lifting the arrangement note by note off the LP. This was before the advent of cassettes, so we were obliged to poke the needle down into the same groove again and again, trying to identify a note that the second tenor sax was playing in some soft but crunchy chord. It's a good way to get to know a score.
The album of Quincy's music, and the three that followed it, were far ahead of their time. About a generation later a young French public found this treasure in its midst, and in France the Double Six albums became best sellers. The hard work, dedication and professional discipline of Mimi's gang made the formation of the Swingle Singers seem like a breeze.
With the Blue Stars, the Double Six and the Swingle Singers coming along one after the other, many people assumed that there was a school of jazz vocal groups in France. There wasn't, but there was a core of studio singers who wanted to go a bit further, who were willing to work in their free time, and who insisted on getting things right without worrying about quick financial reward.
One of the several singers who were members of all three groups was Christiane Legrand. Christiane's father Raymond and uncle Jacques (Hélian) were well-known band leaders in the 40s and 50s; another famous family member is brother Michel. Christiane's voice is unique; it simply commands your attention. With her training in classical piano and feeling for jazz, she was an ideal lead singer for a group like the Swingle Singers. Her solo in the Largo from Bach's "F-Minor Harpsichord Concerto" really defines what the group is about.
Jazz vocal groups have always used the voice as an instrument. Back in the 30s, the fabulous Mills Brothers had "Daddy" Mills vocalizing authentic string bass sounds while two of the brothers scatted instrumental riffs behind the third brother's swinging solos - all in a jazz-combo style that still sounds fresh today. Later on, the big band vocal groups were like a section of the orchestra, singing with the kind of tight voicing that one would expect from the brass. My favourite group of that era is the Pied Pipers, whose early line-up included both Jo Stafford and Frank Sinatra.
That kind of group singing requires a straight tone, accurate pitch, vocal flexibility and good mike technique. Beginning shortly after the war there was a chain of vocal groups, each with its own sound and personality, who developed and broadened this style of singing, keeping it alive in spite of the explosion of Rock and Pop music in the 50sand 60s. They were the Four Freshman, the Hi-lo's, Singers Unlimited, Manhattan Transfer, Take Six, Gold Company, New York Voices, The Real Group, Voices Iowa and many more. Pinnacles of instrumental singing were reached by Al Jarreau and Bobby McFerrin, whose vocal gymnastics defy belief. It's interesting to note, however that when pioneers like Jarreau and McFerrin appear, other singers eventually find a way to imitate at least some of the things they do, thus pushing the overall development a bit further.
A good part of the next 10 years was spent touring with the Swingle Singers. Between tours we recorded 12 albums, moving chronologically from Bach and Handel to Telemann, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and some early 20th Century Spanish composers. In between, there was a Christmas album and one with the Modern Jazz Quartet. They were all done in our traditional jazz-classic mode: scatting to a light rhythmic background.
For several years the rhythmic background was made up of Guy Pedersen on string bass and Daniel Humair on drums. Daniel had two special cymbals made: he called them his Mozart cymbals. They were very small, with frequencies that passed over those of the sopranos, permitting him to wail away at ease. Pierre Fatosme (Christiane's husband) was our sound engineer, record producer and manager. As engineer he performed miracles with three-track board, giving one track to the women, one to the men, one to the instruments, and then finding space somewhere for the solos. Guy and Daniel recorded live with the singers, patiently repeating take after take until we got it right. The retakes did give Daniel time to explore different colours, riffs and fills; he could then invent a much better drum part that I could ever write.
In 1969 we got a telephone call from the New York Philharmonic asking if we could do the premiere of a large work for orchestra and 8 voices written by Luciano Berio. It was called Sinfonia. There was some disagreement in the group about doing this work because we were booked for a well-paid tour in Sweden at the same time; the Philharmonic could only offer us basic expenses. It so happened that a few months earlier I had fallen in love with Berio's music when I heard Cathy Berberian sing Berio's "Circles" in a concert at the Louvre. I threatened to beat the singers over the head if we didn't grab the chance to perform this man's music. Fortunately, the Swedes let us shift dates, and we plunged into the preparation of a very difficult score. The premiere, conducted by Berio himself and recorded live by CBS, was a great success. Sinfonia has since become one of the most often-performed contemporary orchestral works of our time.
By 1984, when I retired from touring, we had performed the piece some two hundred times with most of the world's great orchestras - and the group has performed it quite regularly since. It's a staggeringly beautiful work, and a very important one in the history of 20th Century music.
When performing Sinfonia the group is often booked for about a week, including orchestra rehearsals and three or four performances. It makes a pleasant change from regular touring. Flitting around the world might sound romantic, but when you're doing one-night stands, peering out the window of your hotel wondering what country you're in, it becomes a bit drab. You arrive in a town, check in at the hotel, go to the hall, do a rehearsal and sound-check, grab a bite to eat, perform, go to a reception, get back to the hotel, snatch a few hours sleep, then start the same routine the next day. It's not a honeymoon.
In 1973, for reasons both personal and professional, plus a feeling of une certaine usure (as we used to say in Alabama), we decided to disband. During those ten years there were very few changes in personnel. In fact, four of the singers were in the group from the beginning to the end. It was probably time to stop, but I think the singers will agree when I say that we produced some fine performances, made some excellent recordings, and - in spite of the ups and downs of touring - had some great times together.'
middle years - a history of the english swingle singers
The original French group rehearsing in my apartment in Paris in 1963.
Standing: Jean-Claude Briodin, Jean Cussac, Christiane Legrand, Jeanette Baucomont, Claudine Meunier, Anne Germain. Seated: Claude Germain and Ward Swingle. Photo: Jacques Aubert-Philips.
Five members of the "Double Six" rehearsing with Quincy Jones in 1960.
Left to right: Ward Swingle, Christiane Legrand, Jean-Claude Briodin, Claude Germain, Mimi Perrin, Jean-Michel Poudubois (sound engineer). Seated: Quincy Jones. Photo J P Leloir
The Double Six, 1962: Jean-Claude Briodin, Eddy Louiss, Ward Swingle, Claude Germain, Mimi Perrin, Claudine Meunier. Photo: J P Leloir
The Swingle Singers in 1964. Standing: Alice Hérald, Claude Germain. Sitting: Jean Cussac, Anne Germain, Christiane Legrand, Ward Swingle, José Germain, Jeanette Baucomont. Photo: Jacques Aubert-Philips
The Swingle Singers relaxing after a concert at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966. Standing: Jean Cussac, Claude Germain, José Germain. Seated: Alice Hérald, Ward Swingle, Christiane Legrand, Daniel Humair (drummer), Jeanette Baucomont, Claudine Meunier, Guy Pedersen (bass player). Photo: private.
A Sinfonia rehearsal with Luciano Berio and Leonard Bernstein at Avery Fischer Hall in 1970. Photo: Pierre Fatosme
The Swingle Singers in 1973: Back row: Joseph Noves, José Germain, Hélène Devos. Front row: Claudine Meunier, Jean Cussac, Christiane Legrand, Ward Swingle, Nicole Darde. Photo: Jean Guilbaud-Philips
Some Highlights From 35 Years of the swingle singers
In 35 years of touring the swingle singers have given over 3000 concerts
The group has produced over 40 albums and hundreds of a cappella arrangements
1960s
- In 1963 the first album (Bach's Greatest Hits) reaches the top 10 and stays in the top 100 for a year and a half.
- Jazz Sébastien Bach Album, and the two that follow, win Grammy Awards for "Best Album by a Chorus".
- Bach's Greatest Hits Album wins a Grammy Award for "Best New Artist".
- In 1964 the group sings at a State Dinner at the White House.
- the swingle singers sing at New York's Madison Square Gardens for Johnson's political campaign.
- Yves St-Laurent and Pierre Balmain provide costumes for the group.
- the swingle singers record advertising jingles for Chevrolet, Alcoa Aluminium, Betty Crockett and others
- the swingle singers record an album with the Modern Jazz Quartet.
- In 1969 the group premières Luciano Berio¹s "Sinfonia" with New York Philharmonic, conducted by Berio and recorded by CBS.