Jackie Allen international Jazz Vocalist, Blue Note Recording Artist Interviewed by David Keys

DK: You've been out of the country touring. What's your favorite country to perform in other than America, of course?
JA: I almost hate to say this, everywhere but America. The reason is that you're always this honored guest and people have so much respect for the music. I remember touring in Morocco. Oh, we were treated so wonderfully there. and the food...you would go from town to town and you were just treated like royalty. It was amazing how kind people were, especially when you see that the people don't have very much, but even so, they give everything they have. It's just amazing. People are so kind and generous, money or no money. They respect the art form, and even though we can be considered the ugly Americans and politically they may not agree with a lot of what's going on over here or who our president is at the time, they still accept that we're human beings.

DK: How do you handle your son Wolfgang's care when you're touring?
JA: So far, he's come along everywhere. We've been to Europe twice and Asia and across the country a number of times. It's kind of what he knows. Right now we're going between central Indiana and Chicago weekly, so it's like a four and a half hour trek.

DK: While finding your way into the major league music arena, did you have something in the back of your heart that told you everything would work out for you?
JA: That's an interesting question. I remember in the beginning being incredibly nervous with terrible, terrible stage fright. I don't know how many times I told myself "I never want to go through this again." It could be something that happened on the bandstand, and because of that, I would forget lyrics or come in at the wrong place, and so I would never want to do it again. But there was something in the back of my mind that said "Jackie, you haven't even given this a fair ride yet. You're not at a point where you can judge yourself. You've got to give yourself several years of experience before you can say you're not good at this." So, there was something in the back of my mind that wouldn't allow me to be a quitter. And I think I found that out a few years after college. There was a certain connection I felt I had with all of the other musician who had stuck with it. And I felt sorry for all the musicians who had given up. I felt like...ooh, you're not part of the club anymore. But now as I look back, they were probably very smart because most of those people probably didn't have the talent or they didn't have the drive.

DK: The planet is full of talented people and you're one of the successful jazz musicians in a very challenging field. Why do you think some people make it in the music business and others seem to fall by the wayside? People want to know why you're successful compared to someone who may or may not be as talented.
JA: I think part of it boils down to trust in your own voice, especially in the arts. I know I would not have been signed to a label like Blue Note if they didn't believe I have my own voice. And I know that a person isn't going to succeed sounding like someone else. You know? And so, at a certain point I began to trust myself and I stopped trying to sound like the other famous people I was influenced by--Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald or Nancy Wilson, the people who inspired me. Eventually I had to let their interpretations go and listen to what was going on in my own ear. And I enjoyed that so much more. When I found that other musicians were willing to play with me and seemed to actually enjoy working with me, especially being a singer, that made it all the better.

DK: When you are gathering and preparing material for a recording project, do you choose material that's marketable or do you just let if fly artistically and let the chips fall where they may?
JA: I pretty much let it fly, although when I do record, I like to have a good amount of variety. I like to think of it as a film that has a beginning or an introduction, a middle and a climax. I like to have high periods and low periods. I like to have some serious dark material and some very light material. I like to have the peaks and valleys and the sense of an ending, but when recording, you never know how a song's going to turn out. Few of them actually end up as we rehearsed them or as I conceived them. And then, of course, there are so many other people who get involved when you're in a larger recording situation. So, on a certain level, it can be fortunate and unfortunate. We actually had to record a demo for Blue Note. They wanted to hear what the recording was going to be like, and then at that point they told us what songs they accepted, what songs they didn't accept, and which ones they wanted amended somehow. Then they threw some more ideas our way. I have a manager now, and he had ideas. It's amazing how many people get into the mix. There is a little politics involved. I had to decide how strong I was going to be about which material I wanted to keep even if someone wasn't too keen on it, and what material I thought they might be right about. You know, maybe one song is a little weaker than another song, or maybe the tune's okay but the arrangement is not quite there. So, it was interesting to go back and forth. Of course, I'm working with very, very brilliant people. I have a manager who has many years of experience. He was one of the first investors in A&M records and the manager for many successful artists such as Natalie Cole. These people have a lot of experience, so I'm just learning from them. And yet, I had to weigh that against my own soul and say, "Okay, this is fine, but who is Jackie in all this?"

DK: Okay. Which songs did you do with your co-writer Oryna?
JA: "If I Had," "Slip" and "Tangled", the title track.

DK: How did you work with Oryna, your co-writer? Did you have the lyrics first?
JA: We actually kind of bantered back and forth. We started with ideas for lyrics and, luckily, she's a very open writer, so she would just let me hack away with what she had initially, or I would take one line or two lines out of something she had and say, "Let's go in this direction." And she would say, "Okay, that's great." So at that point it was sort of a collaboration of lyrics and my music.

DK: Your tune "Coal Grey Eyes" has a rock edge to it. Have you been performing it on stage?
JA: Yes, in fact when we originally worked on that song, the arrangement we came up with was a little more like a revolutionary marching band, with a fife and drum kind of thing. And we actually had a horn player come in the studio and bring a number of different wooden flutes and a penny whistle. It had a really hip little flute part on that front end but at Blue Note a couple of guys didn't like the sound. They didn't understand where we were going with it, so they had us pull that part out and asked, "Can you add a heavier guitar thing?" So they actually pushed it more to the rock version because Dane, our drummer, just plays brushes. He turns over the bass drum and plays on that and it has this big ringing sound. So we expand that one out a little bit and take it back in the other direction, although the guitar still rocks.

DK: That's interesting. You say he turns over the bass drum? He actually gets up and turns the bass drum over?
JA: Sometimes he does. Actually, on that song he kind of bends over the bass drum. One thing you should know about Dane is that he has studied extensively in Ghana, Cuba, and Africa; he's gone around the world. He's tenured at Lawrence University, and part of the deal up there is he can take these extensive sabbaticals whenever he wants. He's really into playing a number of different percussion instruments. So it's kind of fun to have him around. We just let him bring his box of toys and go nuts.

DK: Is there a song on Tangled that's closer to your heart, or is there a particular song that you feel is going to last over time and become a classic?
JA: That's a good question. I have no clue. We've been playing the songs for audiences and different people respond to different songs. I do know what the record label thought of as singles, "When Will I Ever Learn" would be a strong one to release to the more general audience and the tune "If I Had" to more of a jazz audience. Those are decisions that they made, but I picked all of the songs for the record. Ultimately, I like them all. It would be better to ask which ones are the weaker ones and which ones are the strong ones. The feedback I'm getting from some people is that the front-end feels like a pop album and the back-end feels like a jazz album. It wasn't by design.

DK: As an educator, do you feel that instructing people to listen to Ella and Sarah along with contemporary jazz and pop will help jazz become more relevant to the average 16-year-old, the 20-year-old, the 30-year-old person? Do you think the mixture can help jazz find a larger audience again?
JA: I think so. I mean that has been the definition of jazz. If we make this a closed jazz style of music, it's going to sound more like the jazz that my father plays. He's a Dixieland jazz tuba player and bless his heart, but that is a closed form. So, do we want to stop jazz at a certain point in history and say that jazz shouldn't be played beyond the '40s or the '50s? Well, that's crazy, too. As much as I feel like my students need to know the history and learn the standards and vocabulary, I almost feel like they need to be inspired. And what is going to inspire them more than the music that's all around them today. It can feed into what they are doing. And this is what I'm allowing myself to do now. I mean, I grew up in the '60s and '70s, and a majority of the music I heard was not jazz. Why discount that? Why not let that feed into what it is I'm doing? It's actually, I think, a way to reach out to a greater part of the audience. If I'm doing my own version of a Paul Simon tune for example, that's going to grab a lot more peole then if I was going to do my version of a Jimmy Van Heusen tune.

DK: Right.
JA: It's all about expressing yourself through a standard. My understanding is it's a way to show the audience who you are through a standard, which is material they are already familiar with. And another way, I suppose, is to do original music.

DK: Are you teaching voice as it applies to jazz, or are you teaching voice in general?
JA: Voice as it applies to jazz.

DK: How many of your students are female versus male? It seems there are more female jazz vocalists.
JA: Right now I have nothing but female. I have had male students in the past.

DK: How do you help your students understand how to flow through advanced harmonies and rhythms? How do you help them get used to performing with a player like Laurence Hobgood.
JA: The students I am working with right now are at such a high level that they already have some understanding of that. A lot of them are working with Laurence Hobgood because we both teach at Roosevelt here in Chicago. They were already working with him in a combo setting. Before I taught at Roosevelt, I was teaching at a school called The Old Town School of Folk Music, which is a unique school for its kind, more of a community school. so, I would have all levels and colors, just every type from the community, many immigrants, people who had no exposure to jazz. And it was a lot of fun to give them the real basic tools. We would spend time talking about where "one" [beat one] is or I would spend time giving them the crudest sense of harmony. Everyone in the glass had to write a blues tune and perform it for everybody. I had group classes that formed a small combo at first. I would have five singers and a combo--piano, bass and drums. They were all at about the same level and they would learn to communicate with each other. The singers learned their keys and how to write an arrangment. The band learned how to interact and play behind a singer.

DK: What do you do to protect your voice when you're on a massive tour and singing a lot?
JA: Not too much. I've been singing now for so long that I don't have to think about it so much. The hardest thing is when I'm actually not performing a lot and that has happened more recently. Before I was signed, I was doing club dates on a regular basis and teaching a couple nights a week. I was singing everyday. But now, while I'm waiting to start touring again, I'm seeing that I'll go up and do, say, one show a week or it might be a couple of weeks before I do something, and that's much worse, actually.

DK: Because you're cold.
JA: Yeah, it's like a runner. You can't run competitively if you're not out running everyday.

DK: Back to your new CD for a second. I think it's cool that Blue Note is releasing CDs like Tangled: CDs that blend pop-oriented material with high-quality straight-ahead jazz. And they're releasing them right along with their ultra-straight-ahead material. They're working several facets at the same time.
JA: People try to criticize Bruce Lundvall, president of Blue Note. He says, "I'm not dropping the other stuff. I'm just adding new stuff, and there's no reason why I can't. He's putting out some heavy artists who deserve to be on a great label. He's not dropping the other straight ahead artists.

DK: And he's not living in the past either. He's developing new listeners.
JA: And he's in his seventies. He just celebrated his seventieth birthday. He also knows that if he wants a successful label, he has to develop new listeners. Take Norah Jones. Maybe some jazz artists don't respect her, but she certainly helped out this huge jazz label. She put them in the black.

DK: She helped the industry. You can sit around and say, "Well, she has country influences and inflections," but her presence helped expand the listener base?
JA: They said that about Diana Krall, too, but that's always happening. I found that jazz musicians--and my husband and I are in this group--as hip as they are, can be very snobbish. Some jazz musicians say, "You're not playing pure. You're not playing edgy enough." Where does this come from? You're expressing yourself as a musician. It's almost like they want to hold other people back, you know?

DK: Right. It's good you were able to do the type of CD you did.
JA: It's honest, actually.

DK: Where is your favorite getaway?
JA: My favorite getaway is going in the yard and doing some digging. I dig and plant and I look at my flowers and my vegetables; I can completely get lost. It's my favorite thing to do.

DK: So you've got a great garden?
JA: Well, it's starting to be. We bought this house about two-and-a-half years ago. In that short period of time I've planted more than half-a-dozen fruit trees and this last fall and winter, between my neighbor's house and my house, I planted maybe a couple thousand bulbs, all kinds of bulbs, and then I started getting into the vegetable garden. I love to cook. When I was working my way through college, I worked in a real fancy green house that specialized in culinary herbs, some rare and wild flowers, and that really got in my blood. My mother is a florist, so I just love doing that. I love to cook with fresh herbs. So, I grew a number of vegetables last year. A lot of them I never got to eat because we were on tour. When we came back, the broccoli was all flowered out. The cabbages were already done. So, I just offer them to neighbors when we're gone, but I really enjoy the patience you learn as you go out everyday and see the tiny growth. I love it when I come out a few days later and the very small things have changed.

DK: What type of cuisine do you like to prepare?
JA: Italian is probably the easiest, though I love French cooking. We spent some time in Paris when my son was born. My husband had a year sabbatical from college and he was studying with this famous bassist. But because I had just gotten signed to this manager at the A440 label and was doing really well, we decided to make it one semester. I went over for just a month with my son. We rented this wonderful apartment in this old market district. There was a market close to us that had been there for 800 years. I would go there almost every day to get the most amazing food. There were several shops that sold nothing but the finest cheeses, several wine shops, and some shops that sold nothing but fresh fish that came in daily. A couple of tables sold nothing but fresh herbs cut that day out in the country. The smells were just amazing, wafting out from rotisserie chickens. Pretty flowers, too. Old cobblestone streets, really narrow. It's just like a walking street. So, I would go there and find something else to prepare. We cooked at home a lot. It's too crazy going to a restaurant with a 2-year-old. We drank wonderful wine every evening with dinner. It was a blast! I was just in hog heaven.

DK: I was going to ask if you enjoy wine. We have a wine section in our publication.
JA: Yes, I do enjoy wine. My husband is much more of an aficionado. Some of the more rare French wines are really fun.

DK: Do you ever cook with wine in your sauces and things?
JA: Yes. Sometimes I'll make a red sauce of if I'm making a stock, I'll use white wine.

DK: I'll bet you have an interesting home. What does it look like? Are you into interior design?

JA: It's family functional. We have a nice house from the late 1930s on a really pretty street in one of those old historic areas in Muncie, Indiana. My husband got a great deal on it from an older couple that was scaling down, and they sold it off the market. Some neighbors of theirs, who were also in the music department--actually jazz pianists--told us about it. It's a beautiful three-bedroom house on a large lot with beautiful wood and stone work.

DK: All humans ask the same questions: "Who am I? Why am I? What am I?" We're all searching for meaning. What gives you your inner light?
JA: That's a big question and it can vary from day to day. I think if I look at it in negative terms, I know there are times I get very frustrated and depressed. And I know from my own experience that every time that has happened, it has only happened for a very short period of time. Even though I may feel I'm in an awful, awful space for the moment, I know just from past experience that a day from now--several hours from now, two days from now, a week from now, or whenever--that will be gone. And I believe in that, and I trust that. Also I love adventure. I'm sort of the personality that would just as soon not know what's going to happen tomorrow because that's more exciting to me than knowing exactly how the next five years are going to play out. So, I suppose if there is an extreme of my personality type, I seek out danger. I'm not a thrill seeker, but I suppose that on a certain level, getting up in front of a bunch of strangers, closing my eyes and singing to them--I suppose there is a little danger there. One thing I can add to this, too, is I've come to find things may not happen to you in life when you want them to happen, and they rarely ever do, but they happen in their own way. You hear this over and over again, but I'm one of those perfect examples, I suppose. I never gave up on myself. I always had this hopeful outlook about the music, and there were only a few short periods where I got sort of cynical and dark about performing. I always felt that I wanted to move forward, I wanted to keep recording, I wanted to keep performing at my best and delve further into the music because there were payoffs there. I'm 47 years old now and to be signed to a major label at age 46 was pretty amazing in an industry where people in their early twenties like Norah Jones, Kurt Elling and Diana Krall get singed. You know? A white singer from the Midwest, in her forties, getting signed--what's that about? But because I opened myself up to it and allowed it to happen, it just did. You know? So, I have to keep reminding myself of this through the coming years. Another thing was having a baby at the age of 43 when I thought I was past the time where I could have a child. That was my first one. I believe in the Universe, you know?

DK: Yes, I know. In my life I've found the cliché "It's darkest before the dawn" is real, and that one door has to close to allow...
JA: Another door to open. That's one that I really believe in.

DK: It's been great talking to you, Jackie. Let's end the interview with some final words about your new CD.
JA: There is a concept for this album, as the title Tangled suggests. I was thinking about going beyond the last CD called Love is Blue. That was, to a certain extent, a concept album that went into the darker side of love. It reminded me of one of the albums Sinatra did. You know, Only for the Lonely. And in that thought is a continuation of what this next album is going to be. I dislike recording a bunch of tunes that have no relationship to each other. Why do you put an album together? Why do you write a book? I can't help but think about what the collection is about. So, when I saw that the title of one of the lyrics our writer had used was "Tangled," I just loved it and I told her I wanted to write the song and I wanted it to be the title track. She kind of laughed, but I said the reason was I felt like I had an idea, a concept of something to work toward. It is a fairly large umbrella. Tangled is about the complexities of relationships.