Rachelle Ferrell

jazz singer; pop singer

Personal Information

Born in 1961, in Berwyn, PA.
Education: Berklee School of Music, attended.

Career

Jazz and pop vocalist. Began singing at age 13; appeared in clubs in Philadelphia area and sang backup on recordings by Patti LaBelle, George Duke, and others, 1980s; signed to Blue Note label; released debut jazz album, Somethin' Else, in Europe and Japan, 1990; toured Europe and Japan, 1990-92; appeared at Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, 1990; released pop debut album, Rachelle Ferrell, 1992; Somethin' Else re-released in U.S. as First Instrument, 1995; released Individuality--Can I Be Me?, 2000.

Life's Work

Though the worlds of jazz and black pop have numerous musical interconnections, the divide between them has been an increasingly difficult one for performers to surmount in recent years. That difficulty is vividly demonstrated by the career of Rachelle Ferrell, a superbly talented vocalist who has steadfastly attempted to make her mark in both realms. Though she has amassed a strong following in both genres and can sell out large urban auditoriums across the U.S. and in several foreign countries, her recording career has been only an intermittent one.

Ferrell was born outside Philadelphia in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, in 1961. Her childhood was suffused with music; her father had played jazz, the family listened to gospel, and she took classical music lessons in violin and piano. She found her musical calling at age 13 as a substitute vocalist, and from then on took any opportunity she could to sing. Ferrell attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston, a unique institute of higher education with a curriculum that focused on popular music. There Ferrell honed her already strong musical foundations and cultivated her songwriting and arranging abilities; among her classmates was the soon-to-be jazz star Branford Marsalis.

Sang Backup for Patti LaBelle

Teaching music in a program run by the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, Ferrell made the acquaintance of the legendary jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie, she told Ebony, told her parents that "Rachelle is gonna be a major force in the industry." Ferrell built a fan base in local venues around Philadelphia and began singing backup on recordings by various artists; some of them, such as Patti LaBelle, with Philadelphia roots. By the late 1980s, Ferrell had evolved into a formidable musician, with strong songwriting skills and a six-octave vocal range that was matched among active singers only by superstar Mariah Carey.

But her skills and work in the industry still had not brought her a recording deal. That changed after executive Bruce Lundvall of the jazz-oriented Blue Note label heard a demo tape of her pop compositions and sought out one of her live jazz performances. Impressed, Lundvall realized the range of Ferrell's talents and arranged an unusual contract with Blue Note and its parent company, Capitol, that called for one pop and one jazz album. The jazz disc was recorded first, but, mindful of the limited market for jazz in its U.S. birthplace and the commercial risks of categorizing Ferrell as a jazz artist, the label decided to release it only in Europe and Japan, where African-American jazz artists have a long history of finding appreciation.

Entitled Somethin' Else, the album topped Japanese charts in 1990 after it was released by Capitol's Toshiba EMI branch and Ferrell supported it with an appearance at Japan's Mt. Fuji Jazz Festival and at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Recorded with a group of veteran jazz players with whom Ferrell had worked for years, the album featured standards such as Rodgers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine," but also ventured into more unusual material for a jazz artist such as Sam Cooke's pop hit, "You Send Me." In her Blue Note biography, Ferrell pointed to her long experience as a performer as a reason for her interpretive abilities: "...When one performs four sets a night, six nights a week, that experience affords you the opportunity to present the song from the inside out, to express its essence."

Released Pop Debut

The album also included two Ferrell originals, and it was Ferrell's songwriting that came to the fore on her R&B debut, entitled Rachelle Ferrell and released in 1992. Industry insiders were well aware of Ferrell's talents, and the album got strong advance buzz, won positive reviews from critics, and climbed to the top of Billboard magazine's Heatseekers chart of emerging recordings. But there things stalled--partly, Ferrell believed, because Capitol's marketing efforts were so strongly geared toward young listeners that adult releases like hers tended to get lost in the shuffle. Rachelle Ferrell received little radio airplay.

Ferrell's ace in the hole, however, was her continuing appeal to live audiences. Touring in support of the album, Ferrell packed such huge venues as the twin Fox theaters in Detroit and St. Louis, elaborate 1920s movie palaces usually reserved for big-name headliners. Capitol took notice and belatedly began to support the album with a major marketing effort. After languishing in the lower reaches of the charts for over two years, sales picked up, and Ferrell received a gold record for sales of 500,000 copies. She also picked up an award from the live-performance trade magazine Pollstar for Best Adult Contemporary/Jazz Artist in 1994.

The Blue Note label decided to capitalize on this new success by releasing Ferrell's Somethin' Else album in the United States. It was given the new and more distinctive title First Instrument, a title that was Ferrell's own suggestion. "I chose this title to remind people that the voice was and is the first instrument," she told Ebony. "Today, the voice has taken a bit of a backseat to the technology....I want to bring back the intrinsic value of the voice."

Struggled with Categories

First Instrument topped jazz charts, but Ferrell noticed that despite her best efforts, she felt increasingly constricted by the categories that are such a prominent feature of the contemporary music marketplace. Asked by the San Francisco Chronicle whether she would choose jazz or pop if forced to pick one or the other, Ferrell retorted: "If you have to choose between your right leg and your left leg ..." She noticed that the new fans she had acquired with the Rachelle Ferrell album seemed disappointed when she sang jazz exclusively at concerts after the release of First Instrument.

"I live comfortably in the worlds of pop, R&B, jazz, gospel, and even classical music," Ferrell explained in her Blue Note biography. "Ultimately I would like to be accepted on the basis of the full scope of my music rather than the narrowness of music and marketing." Nevertheless, a struggle over the direction of Ferrell's career ensued, and for a period of several years she grew disaffected with the music business and even stopped writing new music.

Ferrell reemerged in late 2000 with a new album, Individuality (Can I Be Me?); she told Essence that her time away from music entailed "giving myself permission to be who I am." That new identity seemed to encompass a reconciliation of the various musical impulses that had defined Ferrell's career, for it included both jazz and R&B elements that showcased Ferrell's magnificent and undimmed voice to best advantage. Individuality (Can I Be Me?) featured Ferrell's own compositions. "This entire album was written from the space of personal experience," she told Essence. "I'm so grateful to be able to express these things. It's beautiful to be in a daily state of gratitude."

Works

Selected discography

• Somethin' Else, 1990 (released in Europe and Japan).
• Rachelle Ferrell, Capitol, 1992.
• First Instrument (U.S. re-release of Somethin' Else), Blue Note, 1995.
• Individuality (Can I Be Me?), Capitol, 2000.

Further Reading

Books

• Contemporary Musicians, volume 17, Gale, 1997.

Periodicals

• Billboard, September 5, 1992, p. 27.
• Down Beat, July 1995, p. 13.
• Ebony, December 1996, p. 62.
• Essence, December 2000, p. 58.
• San Francisco Chronicle, August 29, 1993.

Other

• Additional material was obtained online at: http://www.allmusic.com and http://www.bluenote.com.

— James M. Manheim

See Rachelle Ferrell Lyrics

• Active: '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Vocal Music
• Instrument: Vocals
• Representative Albums: "Rachelle Ferrell," "Live at Montreux," "Individuality (Can I Be Me?)"
• Representative Songs: "You Don't Know What Love Is," "'Til You Come Back to Me," "It Only Took a Minute"

Biography

Composer, lyricist, arranger, musician and vocalist Rachelle Ferrell is a recent arrival on the contemporary jazz scene, but her visibility on the pop/urban contemporary scene has boosted her audience's interest in her jazz recordings.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Ferrell got started singing in the second grade at age six. This no doubt contributed to the eventual development of her startling six-and-change octave range. She decided early on, after classical training on violin, that she wanted to try to make her mark musically as an instrumentalist and songwriter. In her mid-teens, her father bought her a piano with the provision that she learn to play to a professional level. Within six months, Ferrell had secured her first professional gig as a pianist/singer. She began performing at 13 as a violinist, and in her mid-teens as a pianist and vocalist. At 18, she enrolled in the Berklee College of Music in Boston to study composition and arranging, where her classmates included Branford Marsalis, Kevin Eubanks, Donald Harrison and Jeff Watts. She graduated in a year and taught music for awhile with Dizzy Gillespie for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Through the 1980s and into the early '90s, she'd worked with some of the top names in jazz, including Gillespie, Quincy Jones, George Benson and George Duke.

Ferrell's debut, First Instrument, was released in 1990 in Japan only. Recorded with bassist Tyrone Brown, pianist Eddie Green and drummer Doug Nally, an all-star cast of accompanists also leave their mark on her record. They include trumpeter Terrence Blanchard, pianists Gil Goldstein and Michel Petrucciani, bassists Kenny Davis and Stanley Clarke, tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Pete Levin. Her unique take on now-standards like Sam Cooke's "You Send Me," Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love," and Rodgers & Hart's "My Funny Valentine," captured the hearts and souls of the Japanese jazz-buying public. In 1995, Blue Note/Capitol released her Japanese debut for U.S. audiences, and the response was similarly positive. Her 1992 self-titled U.S. debut, a more urban pop/contemporary album, was released on Capitol Records. Ferrell was signed to a unique two-label contract, recording pop and urban contemporary for Capitol Records and jazz music for Blue Note Records. For four consecutive years in the early '90s, Ferrell put in festival stopping performances at the Montreaux Jazz Festival.

Although Ferrell has captured the jazz public's attention as a vocalist, she continues to compose and write songs on piano and violin. Ferrell's work ethic has paid off, and Gillespie's predictions about her becoming a "major force" in the jazz industry came true. Her prolific songwriting abilities and ability to accompany herself on piano seem only to further her natural talent as a vocalist.

"Some people sing songs like they wear clothing, they put it on and take it off," she explains in the biographical notes accompanying First Instrument. "But when one performs four sets a night, six nights a week, that experience affords you the opportunity to present the song from the inside out, to express its essence. In this way, a singer expresses the song in the spirit in which it was written. The songwriter translates emotion into words. The singer's job is to translate the words back into emotion."

Ferrell has made her mark not as a straightahead jazz singer and pianist, but as a crossover artist who's equally at home with urban contemporary pop, gospel, classical music and jazz. ~ Richard Skelly, All Music Guide

Individuality (Can I Be Me?) Buy this CD

Live at Montreux Buy this CD

Rachelle Ferrell Buy this CD

First Instrument Buy this CD

Somethin' Else Buy this CD

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)