At the beginning of this month, American jazz vocalist Samara Joy was big news: she won two Grammys. The prize for the best vocal jazz album was somewhat in line with expectations, because her album Linger Awhile with edited jazz classics like ‘Misty’ and ‘Round Midnight’ was very well received. But with the award for Best New Artist Joy came as a big surprise; she beat the indie rock duo Wet Leg, the Eurovision-winning rock band Maneskin and singer Latto, among others.
These weeks it feels like she is floating on a cloud, says a smiling Samara Joy on the stage of LantarenVenster in Rotterdam on Sunday evening. Her ‘Can’t Get Over This Mood’, the frivolous opening track of her album, ties in with that feeling. Sarah Vaughan sang it dragging and enticing, Joy delivers a crisp, invigorating version.
Samara Joy, who dropped her surname McLendon, brings to mind great jazz voices with her singing. There isn’t an article that doesn’t refer to how she’s an ‘old soul’, how she sings with the same kind of depth as Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald. How she transports you to another time with that creamy voice full of vibrato. And also how she chooses to sing in the classical jazz tradition.
Confident appearance
Contrary to her old-fashioned voice and her black and white dress with the high heels, Samara Joy is only 23 years old. She has been singing gospel all her life, at home, with her family in the Bronx. In 2019 she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition; in 2021 she released her debut with a small jazz label. The fact that her jazz went viral via social media did not go unnoticed in the music industry. The major jazz label Verve was only too happy to embrace the rising star.
At the kick-off of her European tour, Joy’s confident appearance with her piano trio immediately catches the eye. She is engaging, feels at home on stage and she talks a lot about the songs she brings. Like ‘Nostalgia (The Day I Knew)’ by Fats Navarro, which she has put into words. She had imagined how, had he not died early, he would have looked back on his life.
She doesn’t just sing songs from her records. In Betty Carter’s fast-paced “Something Big,” she shows how she can handle acceleration. She honors her mentor, the late pianist Barry Harris with ‘Now And Then’. Joy can dangle song notes from bungee cords. Then they jump down and bounce up and down in the depths for a while. But she can also soar upwards with a sweep, with extended high notes that surprise again and again. She decorates everything florally, just as the higher jazz school prescribes.
Modern twists
But the depth in her voice, the way she can string notes effortlessly, singing tied notes as if it were one long note, is truly admirable. You keep forgetting how young she really is. A striking highlight will be Nancy Wilson’s well-known ‘Guess Who I Saw Today’. Step by step the drama of adultery unfolds, after which Joy and her band suddenly switch to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Lately’.
This elaboration remains somewhat safe and traditional, and you hope that she will be able to give her own songs a more modern twist in the future, for example. But for now, Samara Joy is not without reason the most sought-after jazz name at all festivals.