The
jazz world long ago
stopped thinking of her as
Max Roach's ex-old lady, but
you remembered the two of
them 40 years ago as Abbey
Lincoln sang her first
number.
"Over
the years longing to see/
into the night what is to
be," she sang, in that
strange driftwood voice. You
wondered if she knew what
was coming when she used to
sing torch songs in the
postwar supper clubs under
the name Anna Marie or Gaby
Lee, or when she started out
in the movies ("The
Girl Can't Help It,"
1957).
"Never
knowing what's really ahead:
A world of illusion and
fires to be fed," she
sang tonight. Her pianist,
Brandon McCune, hung out a
richly flowered backdrop
from which her 70-year-old
voice resounded. She wrote
these questioning words,
this music.
Her
eight-year marriage to the
pioneering bebop drummer
Roach came along in 1962,
for one thing, after she
dropped the torch song act
and recorded several
historic jazz albums in New
York with him and some
equally hard core jazzmen
such as Coleman Hawkins,
Sonny Rollins, Benny Golson,
Wynton Kelly and Kenny
Dorham.
Among
the sides was
"Freedom Now
Suite," in which her
feelings found full play,
and which made her a famous
vocal icon of the 1960s.
These
feelings were a good deal
more assertive than the ones
coming out at the Jazz
Bakery, where she often sat
in a pitiful plastic
armchair on stage listening
while her present drummer,
Jaz Sawyer, and her booming
bassist, John Ormond, pumped
up the volume.
Tonight
her feelings were more
musical than political,
although there were ample
helpings of bitterness to be
heard on top of those
boom-boom- boom vamps that
John Coltrane used to favor.
And there was a pronounced
undercurrent of erotically
flavored pop fatalism,
typified by "Windmills
of Your Mind" with its
spirals within circles.
She
hasn't lost
her timing, this late in the
game. She deployed it on
"I Should Care,"
one of several numbers that
brought down the house.
Lincoln couldn't seem to
bring herself to say the
last affirmative line,
"and I do,"
tantalizing her audience
just long enough to bring a
belly laugh.
Here
and on a hilariously bitter
blues tune about a faithless
lover, "Whatcha Gonna
Do," she showed what
distinguishes her: Her stuff
comes from the belly and the
heart.
Lincoln
saved a beautiful and seldom
heard love song by Phil
Moore for her encore, which
she almost didn't get when
her audience mistook
"Windmills" for
the closer. This song, too,
was about a faithless lover,
one named Joe, and her a
capella rendering brought to
mind Billie Holiday in its
candor and simplicity. It
brought the exiting audience
back and it brought her
another standing ovation.
That's
one more thing her tomorrows
have brought.
