Bobby McFerrin
b. 11 March 1950, New York City, New York, USA. To call Bobby McFerrin a jazz vocalist is hardly to do him justice, for when McFerrin performs— he usually appears solo in lengthy concerts-he uses his entire body as a sound—box, beating noises out of his slender frame while emitting a constant accompaniment of guttural noises, clicks and popping sounds. To all this he adds a vocal technique that owes a slight debt to the bop vocalist Betty Carter and her daring swoops and scat vocals. McFerrin was brought up in a musical family- both his parents are opera singers, his father performing on the film sound-track of Porgy and Bess in 1959— but his main jazz influence came from the jazz-rock of Miles Davis' BITCHES BREW album. Training as a pianist at the Juilliard School and later at Sacramento State College, he worked first as an accompanist, then as a pianist and singer during the '70s. He came to public notice in 1979, when he performed in New York with the singer Jon Hendricks, from whom he learnt much, but it was his accompanied appearance at the 1981 Kool Jazz Festival which brought him widespread acclaim. By 1983, he had perfected his solo style of wordless, vocal improvisations. His debut album contained a dramatic reworking of Van Morrison's Moondance, while THE VOICE mixed his fondness for pop classics-this time, the Beatles’ Blackbird- with more adventurous pieces, notably the self-descriptive I'm My Own Walkman. The 1988 album SIMPLE PLEASURES shows off his wide range with its mixture of pop classics and self-composed material. The highlight of the album was his idiosyncratic version of Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love, complete with a vocal electric guitar.