Gayle Kolb Getting Sentimental With the August 31 release of
her debut recording Getting Sentimental, Chicago's Gayle Kolb makes a
triumphant statement in song after a stretch of years away from music. Produced
and arranged by acclaimed Chicago bassist Dennis Carroll for JeruJazz Records,
the album reveals Kolb's metamorphosis from a former nightclub headliner in Los
Angeles, Las Vegas, and her hometown of Chicago into a compelling jazz artist in
full command of her material and her gift.
Kolb will showcase the album on its release date during her
Chicago Jazz Festival debut, performing with the same personnel heard on the
recording: guitar great Bobby Broom, in whose trio Carroll has been a longtime
member; Cleveland piano phenom Joey Skoch; ace trombonist Tom Garling of the
Chicago Jazz Orchestra and Chicago Yestet; bassist Dennis Carroll: and the
always-in-demand drummer George Fludas.
With her low tones and coolly relaxed phrasing, Kolb never
settles for easy emotion. "Gayle sells a song without having to do the big
dramatic stuff," says Carroll. "She is a subtle conveyor of story
[with] real authenticity."
Among the tunes Carroll had Kolb cover was Ray Brown's
rarely heard "Gravy Waltz," recorded by the Oscar Peterson Trio in
the early '60s and with lyrics by talk show host and jazz pianist Steve Allen.
"I had her go toe to toe, back and forth, with [Broom]," says
Carroll. "It was real old school."
Kolb turns in a thoughtful version of "Two for the
Road" featuring a smoldering trombone solo, and a bright but pensive
reading of Marcos Valle's "If You Went Away," performed in a
medium-tempo arrangement featuring Skoch on electric piano.
Another highlight is a beautifully restrained rendition of
Jimmy Webb's masterpiece, "Wichita Lineman," recorded not long after
the death of its beloved interpreter, Glen Campbell. Kolb had sung the song
early in her career, when she mixed a lot of country and pop into her sets.
Gayle Kolb was born and raised in the southwestern Chicago
suburb of Oak Lawn, where her father served as mayor for nearly three decades.
She studied piano throughout her childhood, and later sang in the high school
choir.
Relocating to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, she met the
keyboardist and vocalist Mel Norfleet, who became her mentor and urged her to
go hear Lorez Alexandria. Attending a show by the Chicago-born Alexandria, Kolb
experienced a kind of epiphany. "Lorez was unbelievable," she says.
"She spoke the lyrics, pronounced them, and you believed every word. I
realized that that was what I wanted to learn and accomplish with my
music."
Though Kolb did mostly commercial singing during engagements
at the Hyatt and Bel-Air hotels, she discovered that when she inserted a jazz
classic like "Midnight Sun" into her set, she drew the crowd in.
(Kolb has been compared to such cool-school singers as Peggy Lee and June
Christie, but says her primary influences were actually Sarah Vaughan, Carmen
McRae, and Joe Williams.)
After moving back to Chicago in 1974, Kolb was contracted to
work five nights a week in a suburban showroom, a gig that lasted four years
and gave her the opportunity to take her show to Las Vegas. Back in the Windy
City, she was asked to fill in for Lainie Kazan, the theater and TV star.
Eventually Kolb became fed up with commercial singing and
quit the music business to devote herself to her family. She also found
satisfying work as an interior designer. But jazz beckoned in the early 2000s.
Newly single, Kolb reached out to musician friends and sat in at jam sessions,
getting her chops back and learning tunes again. Singing before audiences after
all her time away proved "difficult and scary," she says.
Gayle Kolb Dennis Carroll
Having seen the highly regarded Carroll (pictured above with
Kolb) in performances in Chicago and admired his work with singers, Kolb called
him out of the blue for advice on reentering the music world -- or not. "I
knew he would tell me the truth about my singing," she says. "He
would tell me if I should go home. I was ready for that."
During her afternoon "audition" at his house,
Carroll had Kolb sing songs at extended lengths and also scat -- something she
had done very little of. "I wanted to see how much jazz she had in
her," Carroll says. She passed all tests with flying colors, and it didn't
take him long to make a decision. "We can do a CD," he told her after
seven minutes, by his estimation.
And thus began Gayle Kolb's exciting new chapter as a jazz
artist on record -- singing, swinging, truth-telling.
