The lady was fierce.
Of course I love her in her brief bit in The Girl Can’t Help It, above, and she is never less than breathtakingly gorgeous and unstintingly real in all of her other (too scant) film work, from her romantic lead in Michael Roemer’s Nothing But A Man to the knowing cameo Spike Lee had her play in Mo’ Better Blues. But her biggest impact and best art was in the musical realm, from her vibrantly angry declamations on the groundbreaking, still galvanic We Insist!, a 1960 collaboration led by her soon-to-be-husband Max Roach (they married in 1962, divorced in 1970), to the astonishing solo work of many years later. Her career renaissance was in the form of this amazing run of recordings (beginning with 1990’s The World Is Falling Down), for which she assembled the most sensitive and wide-ranging groups of players—Hank Jones, Clark Terry, Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden, Archie Shepp, Jackie McLean, Stan Getz, Kenny Barron, to name but a handful—and sang a mix of American songbook standards, jazz classics, and trenchant, nakedly honest originals, investing each phrase with absolute authority and, sometimes, breathtaking vulnerability. Really an artist of genius. I’m not the world’s most easily starstruck guy, but I still vividly remember standing behind her in a bank line in the mid-’90s (she wore that same sort-of top hat that she’s seen in on many of her album covers of the period) and being too cowed to speak. To merely bask in her presence—which truly was regal, in its way—seemed the thing to do.
This was a punch to the gut. I just finished posting her jaw-dropping rendition of “Nature Boy” on my Fb page. Some people have “it”. She seemed to have been constructed using nothing but “it”.
Wow. Saw her live once in Chicago about thirteen years ago where she did a wonderful version of “Mr. Tambourine Man”. The audience was transfixed through the whole set; I’m glad to have had that experience.
Don Maggin’s forthcoming bio of Max Roach will have more about the Max-Abbey relationship and vicissitudes.
I remember enthusing to a friend online about the
powerfully beautiful (to me) recording of Cole Porter’s) …” ‘I’m in Love,’ with Abbey Lincoln.” Riposte from my friend: “Oh, yeah, man! Me too!”
I think Abbey was a bit more approachable than you give her credit for; I spoke with her briefly after a Sunday afternoon concert she gave in Park Slope many years ago and found her quite accessible. Still, a bank line isn’t exactly the most conducive spot to strike up a conversation, so you were probably right to admire in silence.
Glenn, have you read the 1998 interview with Abbey that’s in Wayne Enstice’s book Jazzwomen? Part of it is excerpted here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=yVdAxXks194C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
She has some devastating things to say about “We Insist!” starting with, “My career survived that, too.”
I wish that she had had more film work. When one looks at the non-entities who have occupied space on our screens for decades, whom it’s impossible to relate to, although we are supposed somehow to “care” about them, it leaves the impression that Abbey was simply too original for the impoverished imaginations that make movies.
Has it ever been acknowledged anywhere that GLENN KENNY is an ABSOLUTE, 100% DEAD RINGER for the guy who played the unctuous attorney Maury Levy on THE WIRE?
You are IDENTICAL TWINS.
ABBEY LINCOLN : http://www.worldnews.digirookstudio.com/us-headlines/11-abbey-lincoln.html
I was just thinking about that scene from “The Girl Can’t Help It” a couple of days ago. I remember thinking “That would make a nice thread on a film blog.”
It is evidence of my laziness that, as vivid as that one brief scene was to me, I never got around to watching “Nothing But a Man.” Quick! To Netflix!
Anyway, thanks for the tribute. Even the generally ignorant like myself know your praise is justified.