TanyaB все записи автора

Friday, August 24, 2007 - 12:00 AM

Jazz Etc.
Bublé's grows in experience, vocal range

By Paul de Barros
Seattle Times jazz critic

Michael Bublé, whose album "Call Me Irresponsible" (143/Reprise) has topped the jazz charts 14 weeks, is riding to the Vancouver airport, headed for Los Angeles.

Bublé's voice is deeper and more mature now than it was when he hit the international scene four years ago, able to sustain long, low notes and keep them full and rich. Has he been doing anything special to achieve this?

"I've moved up to four, five packs a day," quips the Canadian. "And then there's the bottle of scotch before breakfast."

At 31, Bublé is still a kid at heart, who loves to joke with the press, particularly about our hapless descriptives for voices — "smoky," "scotch 'n' soda," "honeyed."

Unlike a lot of performers, though, he actually likes interviews. He squeezed this one in at the last minute, despite the fact his Seattle shows at McCaw Hall — Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — have been sold out for weeks. (There are still tickets for the Monday show in Portland, though they are very expensive — $150-$305: www.ticketsnow.com.)

"I think I'm just older," he offers. "My range has naturally gotten lower and lower. And, like anything, the more you do it, the more you learn."

It's heartening that Bublé has continued to learn and grow. At first regarded with high suspicion by critics as yet another unctuous, Las Vegas-style derivative of Sinatra, Bobby Darin and Harry Connick Jr., Bublé has proved he is not just about style — which he definitely has on stage — but substance.

Many tunes on the new album were recorded live in the studio — with full band and strings — giving it a convincing, immediate feel.

"I afforded myself the opportunity to take a risk and sing live," he says. "Because of that, there's a little more continuity, emotionally. Maybe not as slick, but quite honest. The ballads were my favorite — 40, 50 strings and everyone's playing along. And you can really get into the lyric."

When Bublé launches into the bouncy Sinatra favorite "The Best Is Yet To Come," the track bristles with élan, thanks not only to Bublé but to arranger John Clayton, also the pen behind the last Diana Krall album.

"John is so brilliant," agrees Bublé, who says he personally invited Clayton and the great Bill Holman to write for the project. "John seems to be able to just take a song and make it stronger than you thought it would be. Just when you think it can't get any meatier, it does."

Never entirely a retro artist, Bublé has always done songs from the "second" Great American Songbook of the '60s and '70s. His bossa nova duet with the great Brazilian singer/songwriter Ivan Lins on Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" is a brilliant stroke. Miraculously, he and David Foster (who produced most of the album) transformed the dark, aching Leonard Cohen ballad "I'm Your Man" into swinging jazz.

Bublé grew up in Burnaby, B.C. (also home to Michael J. Fox), and after paying dues in local lounges and bars caught a break when former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney invited him to sing at his daughter's wedding. Foster was a guest, and the result was Bublé's first, self-named CD, released in 2003.

Since then, the effervescent showman has sold 13 million albums worldwide.

So why do two of the world's top jazz singers — Krall being the other — hail from British Columbia?

"Canada is a nation of observers," answers Bublé. "This American songbook is one of the greatest gifts ever given to the arts by America. We watch."

Bublé is doing a lot more than watching.

"Well, some people say there's nothing else to do in Canada Saturday night," he says, switching back to type.