(No, not the ones in my head.)
So you know how sometimes you go to look one thing up on the intrawebz and then you find yourself sucked into about 20 other things, and then as you go to close your browser, you remember that you never even looked up the first thing you meant to?
Yeah, that’s how I came up with
Five of the Greatest. Dead. Voices. Ever!
1. Karen Carpenter – This is how this whole post started—I was looking up something about drumming in regard to my son (who is taking lessons), and I remembered how during Christmas I amazed my sister and wife with this little trivia nugget: Karen Carpenter is the greatest drummer to come out of New Haven, Connecticut!
They laughed because: A. They’re not old enough to remember any actual performances by The Carpenters; and B. They had no idea that The Carpenters came from New Haven; and C. They thought I was joking.
Well, I’m not:
That aside, Karen Carpenter had one of the most haunting, mellifluous voices in music history, and one of the most distinctive—as soon as you hear it, you know it’s her and absolutely no one else. Every note seem effortless, and she possessed that remarkable bittersweet quality. If you watch the clip above, you can see she sounded as good live as she did on record. Amazing.
Although there are plenty of songs from which to choose, I’m going with “Top of the World” because it’s probably their most happy song.
2. Eva Cassidy – Not many people know of this brilliant vocalist, who sadly died of cancer in 1996 before she really hit big. She had one CD, but thankfully, someone had the presence of mind to record a bunch of her live performances, which were simply remarkable.
After she died, some of those recordings were released, including her version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which found it way onto the BBC radio’s “Top of the Pops” program in Great Britain, where it lit up the phone banks—people called in demanding that they play it again and again. It became a hit, and a few of her covers, including “Time after Time,” also received a lot of airplay in England, and then eventually here in the U.S.
If you’ve never heard her version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold, prepare yourself for a beautiful, pure voice and maybe a few goosebumps … oh, and never wanting to hear any other version again.
3. Freddie Mercury – Really, do I need to explain this? A four-octave range, operatic sensibilities and the consummate showman.
4. Johnny Cash – Again, maybe known more for his distinctive baritone and delivery than his actual vocal abilities, but ol’ J.R. could belt it out when he wanted to.
With Johnny Cash, there are hundreds of examples of how he made his voice part of the song. This is one of my favorites, not because of the subject (obviously), but the way he *sings* this song (as opposed to that sort of talk-sing thing he often did)—it was late in his life, his once-formidable voice is weakening, but you can hear how he seems to be summoning everything he has left in it to reach his Lord. Inspiring to even us atheists.
5. Elvis – Before the gyrating pelvis, screaming girls and white jumpsuit, there was a guy from Tupelo Mississippi who could really sing, brandishing an amazing voice that could be at turns raucous and tender and that had tremendous range. Power ballads, rock’n roll, blues, gospel, that crappy stuff he did for the movies—there was pretty much nothing he couldn’t sing and not make memorable.
Even at the end, when he was fat, bloated, drug-addled Elvis, that voice was still there.
Again, like Johnny Cash, there are thousands of tunes from which to choose, but I’ll go with my wedding song.
He wasn’t The King by accident!
.Freddy was never trained either, all natural. He was also Indian which surprised me too.