Johnny Hartman—”You Are Too Beautiful”
Enjoy the wonderful lyric job of singing by baritone Hartman — the only vocalist Coltrane ever used in his recordings — with some exquisitely delicate accompaniment in "You Are Too Beautiful For One Man Alone." The 1933 lyrics are by Lorenz Hart and the music is by Richard Rodgers.
As a kid, Louisiana-born John Maurice Hartman (1923-1983) migrated to the North with his family. As so many families from the South did, they moved to Chicago.
There Johhny sang in the same Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church where Ruth Jones (later known as Dinah Washington) played the piano. Johnny described himself -- even when singing in that church -- as a cool singer. "That was just me, my style of singing."
Johnny started studying to play the piano at eight.
He went to DuSable High School where music director Walter H. Dyett nurtured Johnny's interest in music. That school was a real breeding ground for jazz talent, as other DuSable alumni have included Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Clifford Jordan, and Dorothy Donegan.
In the 1940s, Johnny Hartman attended the Chicago Music College at Roosevelt University, and from 1943 on he performed for the troops as part of the Special Service at army bases and canteens.
Hartman was the winner of Arthur Godfrey's October 1946 amateur singing contest, Johnny's prize was a booking to stay one week at the El Grotto Supper Club, Chicago, with Earl "Fatha" Hines and his Orchestra.
Johnny made a great hit with the club audiences, and the week was extended to a 7-month engagement.
In February 1947 Johhny made his first recordings with pianist Marl Young.
After Hines, Johnny joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1948, and when Dizzy's band broke up, Johnny joined Erroll Garner.
After that Johnny would go on as a solo artist but it wasn't easy for a black entertainer in 1950s America.
Johnny: "I've seen times when I couldn't go into a white club and sing my style of singing." Singing the blues was allright for a black baritone, but no love ballads to white ladies.
"The idea of a black man singing love ballads and swooning white females didn't sit well in 1950s America," according to Joan Merrill in "Jazz Profile."
That and Johnny's dissatisfaction with the popularity of rock and roll made Johnny decide to give up performing.
Around 1960, Johnny went oversees to London, England, where, after an initial engagement at the Astor Club, Berkeley Square, he performed succesfully in clubs and on televison for a year and a half.
But when he got back to the United States after an absence of almost two years, Johnny realized he was forgotten and had to build up his singing career all over again.
And that wasn't easy for a shy man when coupled with the wrong management.
Other singers like Tony Bennett and Sammy Davis, Jr. loved his style of singing. Davis said if he had to take five records to a desert island, one of them would be a record of ballads sung by Johnny Hartman.
In May 1963, Ella Fitzgerald, in a New York Herald Tribune News Service interview about singers she like to listen to, said about Johnny Hartman: "He has such dept and feeling, and he always sounds so manly," and she would be happy if he made more records.
Ella's wish came true when in July Impulse announced the release of the newest album of this baritone: "John Coltrane and Jonny Hartman."
It contained 6 ballads, all recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood, New Jersey, in a three-hour recording session on March 7, 1963 (A seventh song was not released).
Besides singer Johnny Hartman and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, the musicians were pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.
Jones is the only of these men I ever had the pleasure of seeing and hearing live in The Hague.
Driving to Van Gelder's studio at 445 Sylvan Avenue, they heard Nat King Cole singing "Lush Life" on the car radio and at the last moment they decided to include that Billy Strayhorn song into the session.
According to the liner notes "This record serves a double purpose; it brings back into the public ear one of the most neglected singers of the middle bop era and it proves in a novel -- for them -- way that John C. and his Thrilling Three are eloquent balladiers and very, very sensative accompanists."
Bariton jazz singer Johnny Hartman was Coltrane's unequivocal choice for the vocalist he'd like most to be caught with in front of a mike.
Once labeled a jazz singer it became even more difficult for Johnny to find work in the sixties, when the rise of The Beatles changed the music production scene.
Johnny said “there were hardly any nightclubs left hiring the previous generation of non-rock vocalists.” And again time was not on Johnny's side.
Johnny Hartman began recording again in the 1970s and received a Grammy nomination in 1981 for his album "Once In Every Lifetime."
When Hartman died two years later in September 1983, age 60, Johnny was almost forgotten. A few months earlier Johnny had returned to England for an engagement at the Canteen in May 1983, but he became ill upon arrival.
Only after his death did he become more popular than during his lifetime, even though he had recorded hundreds of songs.
With the arrival of the Compact Disc, his ballads were re-released on many albums. And his voice could be heard in Victoria’s Secret commercials and in two movies produced by Clint Eastwood.
In 2012 Prof. Greg Akkerman wrote a biography about Johnny Hartman, called "The Last Balladeer."
In May 1982, Johnny Hartman gave a nice interview about his look upon his singing style and career to John S. Wilson of The New York Times, which is worth reading on this Sunday:
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/21/arts/pop-jazz.html
Finally, Johnny Hartman was very careful about enunciation and acknowledging the original melody. Johnny himself says in the liner notes of his LP "Once In Every Life": "When a writer writes a good song, you shouldn't deviate from it with too many tricks. There’s nothing you can do with a good song except sing it." And that he did!
