Female tenors are not a common vocal range, but Linda Kosut does a have very low voice, and she does call herself a tenor. Her voice was also silky and sinuous when she sang at Anna’s Island on Oct. 20. She will be bringing her cabaret show to Pearl’s in North Beach next week to celebrate the works of jazzman Oscar Brown, Jr.
That evening at Anna’s in Berkeley was billed as Long As You’re Living, a tribute to Brown. Not all of her numbers were by him, but the assortment drawn from his 13 albums made a lively, varied program. Accompanied by the Max Perkoff Jazz Trio, she made smooth transitions between widely different styles. In The Snake (“Take me in, oh tender woman”) she added a little-girlish quality to her contralto. For Call of the City, a scat song with actual lyrics (vocalese), she evoked Ella Fitzgerald in a higher register, then slid right into Tower of Time with a nasalized mezzo sound having frontal tones reminiscent of Petulia Clark.
For Humdrum Blues, her voice had a smoky plaintiveness similar to Sarah Vaughn, but with an edge worthy of Janis Joplin. In an Oscar Brown translation from Jacques Brel, she captured essences of Piaf. When she moved into the syncopations of Dat Dere she began to sound like Chuck Berry.
Linda has interesting sounds and good control in all ranges she attempts. She has a good sustain, but she deliberately limits the extent of her mellifluous voice. Sometimes she truncates notes rather than prolong them to the extent that she might wander off pitch, and sometimes she substitutes smoky overtones for upper registers. She told me she learned singing from her father at the piano. She agreed that having a tenor or a baritone as her first model of a singing voice might have influenced her choice of vocalization.
She’s pretty and looks good on stage, but she does not personally connect with the audience. She is happy to let you look at her, but she does not look back. She was relaxed and moved around the small stage gracefully, but not very much. She showed the most physical animation on “Snake,” but was generally casual, letting her voice express the most. Before the show, I asked her if she does much intro patter. “Yeah. I talk. I talk.” She said, but she didn’t much, except when she spoke about Oscar Brown.
After the interval, she opened the second set with what she called Brown’s signature song, “Bid ‘Em in”. She explained he had great sympathy for slaves. Indeed, in his career he had run for office, unsuccessfully on a restitution platform. The song is largely chant about a slave auction, with some callous auctioneer saying “look at her flanks, she should be properly whipped.”
Brown, recently deceased, was a playwright and poet as well as a composer. He wrote over a thousand songs and a dozen musicals. Kicks & Co. is typical of his Afro-centric activism. He was kicked out of the Communist Party USA because he was too much of a black nationalist. He appeared on Steve Allen’s original The Tonight Show and Dave Garroway’s Today show. He has won Emmy awards.
For Linda’s Oscar Brown tribute show next Thursday, his daughter, jazz singer Maggie Brown will be in attendance and will perform also.
Linda Kosut will present Long As You’re living Nov. 16 at Jazz at Pearl’s, 256 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco. There will be two shows at 8 and 10 pm. Tickets ($15, two-drink minimum; $100, VIP, champagne, reserved table for both shows) can be reserved at (415) 291-8255 or through www.jazzatpearls.com.
