Great Jazz vocalist Shirley Horn has died. Horn began as a pianist, playing in her mother's parlor. She possessed a signature breathy style of singing (she accompanied herself, years before Norah Jones or Diana Krall) that has been imitated, but never equaled.
She rarely toured, but gained acclaim through her recordings. She opened for Miles Davis at the Village Vanguard in the 1960s. Miles was generally suspicious of vocalists, but saw in Horn the sensibilities and phrasing of an accomplished instrumentalist. These gigs lead her to Quincy Jones, but their collaboration was for the most part disappointing, as Jones tried to make her into a stand up singer. She spent most of her later years in Washington
Horn was a genius of tempo and phrasing, slowing down and extending a line until it almost turned in on itself. It was a technique so artfully executed that when she was done with a song, the listener had the impression that every substance had been slowly, deliciously wrung out of every note and every lyric. This is hard to explain in words, but try imagining a tune as a kind of Mobius Strip, a thing that a twist makes and is fascinating in its deceptive simplicity. This was music in Shirley Horn's hands.
Like Miles, Horn knew the value of the silence between the notes and never sought to fill the music to the brim. Instead, she drew her audience to her center, and revealed through quiet what so often gets drowned out by noise.
Her last years have been extremely difficult. She suffered from arthritis and diabetes and had lost a foot, making pedaling (piano) impossible. She also contracted breast cancer and was hospitalized with a stroke in June. She never went home.
Shirley Horn was 71.
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