McFerrin, Bobby

▪ 1996

      Imagine a symphony orchestra performing Rossini's William Tell overture not on their instruments but by singing. Imagine, in fact, an album of orchestral works by Mozart, Bach, and other masters with the melodies sung instead of played. If you were the American vocal virtuoso Bobby McFerrin, to imagine it would be to do it, as he and the St. Paul (Minn.) Chamber Orchestra did on the 1995 album Paper Music and as he went on to do in concert.

      McFerrin had sung classical music, as written and in his own improvisations, since the mid-1980s, and he did an album with cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1992. Earlier he had become known as an original jazzman who sang a cappella, providing his own percussion accompaniment by tapping his chest. He also sang standards and folk songs, 1960s rock and soul tunes, and jazz themes with original lyrics. He had always preferred to sing without fixed lyrics, sounding like a trumpet, a bass, or a guitar, with a full-bodied voice that ranged from bass to falsetto. In concert he might wander through the auditorium singing, make up songs on listeners' names, conduct his audience in spontaneous choirs, or burst into a condensed version of The Wizard of Oz, complete with tornado sounds and munchkin, witch, and scarecrow voices. On record he could improvise all the parts in a vocal group himself, as in his hit "Don't Worry, Be Happy." If a McFerrin performance was anything, it was spontaneous. "Improvisation," he said, "is the courage to move from one note to the next," and the word courage provided a clue to the force behind his career.

      Born in New York City on March 11, 1950, McFerrin had parents with distinguished vocal careers. His mother, a soprano, was a Metropolitan Opera judge who chaired the vocal department at Fullerton College, near Los Angeles, and his father, who sang at the Met, dubbed Sidney Poitier's singing on the 1959 Porgy and Bess sound track. In McFerrin's youth he was inclined to become a minister of music, but after attending California State University at Sacramento and Cerritos College, Norwalk, Calif., he instead became a pianist and organist with the Ice Follies and with pop music bands. In 1977 he auditioned for and won a singing job.

      As a swinging jazz and ballad vocalist by 1980, McFerrin was touring with popular jazz singer Jon Hendricks. Inspired by Keith Jarrett's improvised piano concerts, in 1983 he worked up the nerve to sing alone. His had been a triumphant career ever since. Among other projects, he recorded television commercials and the "Cosby Show" theme; improvised music for a dance troupe and to actor Jack Nicholson's readings of Rudyard Kipling's children's stories; coped with audience guests such as comedian Robin Williams and saxman Wayne Shorter on his Spontaneous Inventions album and video, and won a string of Grammy awards. Clearly, McFerrin had gone far beyond the customary jazz vocal boundaries; he said, "People are always asking me to describe what I do, and to me it's just singing, but one of the reviews called it . . . McFerrining."

      (JOHN LITWEILER)

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