I seem to have amassed 4 SV records without ever listening properly to any of them - this weekend though, her version of Lush Life (on a budget phillips comp. called Cool Baby) has been on constant repeat: the old 'using the voice like a instrument' cliche seems to apply, but not through wild melisma or wordless wailing. It's more that she presents the tune in a way ornamented as an instrumentalist would, in a way that interestingly disregards the emotional demands of the words and instead inserts herself in the music with a full awareness of the harmonic structure.
In the Blossom Dearie RIP thread, someone described BD as delivering the words like a typeface: in some way this fits SV too, though not the same typeface - but the way she lets the vocal melody work as music, the way she lets meaning emerge from the music rather than 'autobiograph-ise' the words is lovely.
― sonofstan, Monday, 16 March 2009 09:23 (fifteen years ago) link