In the modern world's expansive history of women singing, Phyllis Hyman offered a stylish personal chapter, performing with a compelling blend of warmth and cool which few artists of her time could rival. And if it goes without saying that she died too soon, her work - the art Hyman developed as she passed this way - is well worth mentioning as a tribute to her presence and stature among music's most notable champions.
For if she remains the spiritual sibling of Nancy Wilson, (and, yes, Jimmy Scott) her mystic sisterhood with Edith Piaf or Etta Jones is equally measurable. With these women and with Scott, she shares a passion for communicating the ironic mix of delicacy and power amply demonstrated in the set of recordings here, when Hyman, at one time or another, lets a whisper blossom into a shout, has a cry falling back as an urgent murmur, all achieved with her eminent precision of phrasing and an ability to keep time that becomes a pulse of the soul.
Expressive qualities of this kind often define themselves, which is to say they regularly defy categorization. Strictly speaking, Phyllis Hyman was never a jazz singer. But neither was she a pop star nor Rhythm and Blues diva. A romantic, maybe, certainly a lover of the wonders available along the diatonic scale. A poetic beautician, perhaps, whose coifs emerged from words. Finally, though, she was a singer, a smooth architect of sound who built moods out of silence and turned notes into richly stated colors.
Her star was rising sharply during the middle 1970s, when a pair of NYC nightspots, Rust Brown's, and Mikell's, located a few blocks apart on Manhattan's smart Upper West Side, started featuring Phyllis Hyman as a stellar attraction, showcasing the highly polished entertainment package she put together while doing road gigs with several dance bands, vaudeville orchestras and opening acts for established headliners.
Crowds flocking to Rust Brown's were sophisticated enough to order hipness from the club's menu, and they soon marveled at Hyman's lush vocal deliveries and her stunning appearance. Tall, stately in her bandstand gestures, the youthful Pennsylvanian quickly glamorized the midnight hour with a regal aura she now wore with an apparent ease and comfort.
Just a few minutes away, Mikell's hummed its own promise in a setting as lively as it was intimate. Shining stars could find a galaxy here, and Phyllis Hyman would soon draw attention from jazz buffs and pop aficionados. She was finding her very own voice and a highly individual manner with the presentation of varied materials. Celebrity figures, the success stories of an international scene in showbiz: Nick Ashford/Valerie Simpson, George Harrison of The Beatles, Al Jarreau and George Benson were paying enthusiastic notice to the arrival of a vital new talent.
By the summer of '76 the inevitable was in sharp focus as Phyllis Hyman recorded a fresh interpretation of the hit by Philly harmonizers, The Stylistics. Betcha By Golly, Wow can turn into fluff if the tune is mishandled, but its lilt, along with the creamy texture in the lyric, proved amiably suitable for Hyman's insightful touch. The song, written by the supreme team of Linda Creed and Thom Bell, was also embraced by a charmed bit of backup sax playing by jazz soloist Gary Bartz. Working with drummer Norman Connors, who was an assistant producer for the session along with Onaje Allan Gumbs, she found a special zone in this music.
Included here also, from that same early studio adventure, is a duet tour-de-force with bassist/singer Michael Henderson, and in a playful journey across the touch-and-go-giving-way-to simultaneous conversation that often spices courtship rituals, Hyman shows out in a most demanding passage. Many more than a few fine vocalists just can't cut it singing in the company of others. But listen closely to the subtleties threading all over this pairing. Can't We Fall In Love Again provides evidence of things done - as the old folks sometimes say - on a purpose.
This initial recording effort made a wiggle on the charts, a true victory for Phyllis Hyman as a first-time starter. Her pedigree as a thoroughbred became indisputable. Those elusive elements needed to become a winner seemed to have fallen into place, and the obvious call was for full speed ahead. But the intricacies of plot in this drama were still unfolding.
Ai affari sono affari. So goes an Italian expression, an opera of small talk that's just as emotionally informed in English: business is business. The often bruising world of transactions that surround performance art or entertainment seldom ought to be described as kind. Now and then hard-nosed, fair, once in a while hilarious. But kind? Not...
Hyman's association with her manager, Glenda Gracia, was the product of a friendship that brought together a couple of young, smart, ambitious women looking to live out the particulars of a dream: success in a tough, demanding field that has its glittering awards as well as its formidably discouraging obstacles. Showbiz is a term that frequently means "making it" is wonderful, but falling by the wayside can be sheer unadulterated hell.
"We went through some changes," Gracia has said in a gem of understatement. "Starting out, the artist takes you through changes to see if you can earn high marks. They need to do it. As a friend, as an attorney giving her advice and counsel, I was able to keep a straight A with Phyllis."
Describing her initial impressions of this artist whose career she would guide for more than a decade, Glenda Gracia recalled an unforgettable night spent at Mikell's. "I'd gone there with Roberta Flack, who was telling everybody about this terrific new singer. Well, Roberta wasn't one to exaggerate. First of all, Phyllis came out on the bandstand just drop-dead gorgeous, with this quality of poise and assurance that had to be incredible for somebody so young and appearing in front of what sometimes got to be a bit of a rowdy, certainly a really demanding, audience. But she silenced the place. You could hear the proverbial pin fall as it hit the floor. She was beautiful, in command, and simply overwhelming with this truly brilliant voice. People were in awe." This was the late 1970s. At that point, Hyman's life in music had been in motion awhile, under the essential tutelage of her husband-manager Larry Alexander. Both the marriage and professional relationship ended in divorce. Three recordings made during that association are included in this collection. On: Gonna Make Changes (a song she wrote), The Answer Is You, and Be Careful (How You Treat My Love), Hyman's delivery has a fully confident timbre on material performed when she was yet in the process of finding herself as a vocalist. The touch is sure on these fundamental "slow jams," that are provided an edge with her restless tonal explorations.
The late 1970s also saw Phyllis Hyman reach out for some variations on the themes, references and individuals who played crucial roles in her creative growth. One exceptional example occurred when she recorded the challenging, resolutely anthemic Somewhere In My Lifetime for sessions that were produced by Barry Manilow and Ron Dante. Here, in definitive fashion, she reveals both the strength and vulnerability intermingled with the sort of immediacy located most familiarly in a Western vision of Greek tragedy.
If indeed seeing is believing, no one who watched Hyman in the Broadway musical Sophisticated Ladies will ever doubt the woman's capacity for enchanting a gathering of the hip or the nouveau arriviste. The rendition of Duke Ellington's In A Sentimental Mood is from the show's original cast album. One of America's great soul singers came apart in an attempt to interpret Ellington's compositions. No knock on her to say an element of genius is required for such an effort. Or, as they say on the basketball courts in Harlem, some folks got game, others have not. Listen here. This MOOD? PH has most definitely got game.
And Phyllis' full deck gets played on a piece that may seem like a trifle up top. But keep paying attention. Before Tonight You And Me is over she pours cream on the lyric but, more so, the rhythm, straight to the max for openers, has its gallop on the real side, on and off the beat with ease and a sassiness that is rich; subtle, too. Keep time? Yeah. Even as it seems to be nothing more than the basics.
Wherever the true groove was, Phyllis Hyman seemed more than merely capable in pursuit of it. Her direction, charted as a concert and a journey, caught the attention of a legend, the ruminative genius of the Philly Sound, Kenny Gamble, who, along with Leon Huff and Thom Bell, brought the notion of an aesthetic muscularity to American social dancing.
Illuminating the collaborations between Hyman and Gamble are four selections that describe those forces of personality and determination in place when studio sessions become things apart from the ordinary. The meter, achingly slow on Living All Alone, transports a nearly cinematic feeling for a woman traveling alone through urban nights, wishing, looking ahead despite what's gone down in the past. This is a recording as a portrait, and therefore no surprise should spring from Dexter Wansel's arrangement as it cites the contours of heartbreak and the cadence of a steady, unyielding stride. Leon Huff was on the scene for this one in another of his often mysterious but effective roles in an executive producer's hat.
Old Friend lives on from the pen of Linda Creed Epstein, and Hyman pours out all the feelings of loss clearly felt in the passing of someone so close to her. But there is nothing funereal here, a sparkle is the constant as Phyllis says good-bye while Linda's song replies a thanks for remembering.
Working together again in 1991, Phyllis Hyman and Kenny Gamble put their mutual stamp of approval on the term lush as guiding light. When I Give My Love (This Time) speaks of love and love-making from start to finish, with all the caring and gentle asides the imagination may wish to encourage. Chanting for love's sake is a provocative exercise that shouldn't ever be undertaken casually or with an incomplete awareness of the territories on this map. Phyllis Hyman knew...
From the same studio date, Living In Confusion is about hurting and the continued search for better times. The sorrow isn't a downer, though, because the grit amid the sterling of the singer won't let that happen. And, well, yeah, these are tunes for sensualists, the sojourners who seldom rest seeking pleasures of the flesh. Phyllis Hyman had taken notes from a Billie Holiday page where it says, no apologies, don't explain.
Glenda Gracia has pointed out something central about the way an artist
is perceived. Kenny Gamble, she remembers, had a way of seeing Phyllis
Hyman that in sum embodies one sharply indicative adjective: Fabulous.
"To him she had that sort of blaze glowing from within that builds the sort
of career you have with, say, Barbra Streisand. That's how Kenny
thought of her. That big. That spectacular."
On Friday, June 30, 1995, a few hours before she was scheduled to sing
in concert at Harlem's fabled Apollo Theater, Phyllis Hyman took her
own life. She was 45 years old.
Clayton Riley
E-mail
me.
