David Remnick: For every music lover, I think there are two basic forms of pleasure. The huge satisfaction of something you love done just perfectly, and then the thrill of hearing something altogether shockingly new. When an artist does both things at once, your head comes open a little bit, which is what happened when I first heard Cécile McLorin Salvant.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: I Lost My Mind]

Here am I, lounging on the sands of my hourglass,

Feeling my mind slip off a cliff.

I lost my mind.

Can you help me find my mind?

David Remnick: She's a jazz singer for sure, someone on the level of Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald, but her repertoire and her approach to performing are totally her own. A standard from the American songbook might be followed by a tune from hundreds of years ago and across an ocean, as we'll hear shortly, and no two shows are ever alike. I once went to see her expecting things like How High the Moon and How Deep is the Ocean, but the first thing out of her was a century-old Murder Ballad, some half an hour long.

Wynton Marsalis has called her the kind of talent who comes along only once in a generation or two. Cécile McLorin Salvant has been touring the country and in between shows came to talk and to sing in our studio at WNYC.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: Don't Rain on My Parade]

Don't tell me not to live

Just sit and putter

Life's candy and the sun's

A ball of butter

Don't bring around a cloud

To rain on my parade

Don't tell me not to fly

I've simply got to

If someone takes a spill

It's me and not you

Who told you you're allowed

To rain on my parade?

I'll march my band out

I'll beat my drum

And if I'm fanned out

Your turn at bat, sir

At least I didn't fake it

Hat, sir, I guess I didn't make it

But whether I'm the rose

Of sheer perfection

A freckle on the nose

Of life's complexion

The cinder or the shiny apple of its eye

I gotta fly once

I gotta try once

Only can die once, right, sir?

Ooh, life is juicy

Juicy, and you see

I gotta have my bite, sir

Get ready for me, love

'Cause I'm a "comer"

I simply gotta march

My heart's a drummer

Don't bring around a cloud

To rain on my parade!

I'm gonna live and live now

Get what I want--I know how

One roll for the whole shebang

One throw, that bell will go clang

Eye on the target--and wham--

One shot, one gunshot, and bam!

Hey, Mister Fortner, here I am!

I'll march my band out

I will beat my drum

And if I'm fanned out

Your turn at bat, sir

At least I didn't fake it, hat, sir

I guess I didn't make it

Get ready for me, love

'Cause I'm a "comer,"

I simply gotta march

My heart's a drummer

Nobody, no, nobody

Is gonna rain on my parade!

David Remnick: Oh, man.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I don't know what I did there.

David Remnick: Wow. I am so excited to have you here today. I have gone to see you at any number of places around New York, and not enough, because every time I go, I leave so happy and so surprised by what you've decided to sting on a given night. What goes into those decisions?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It's very nice to hear you say that you're surprised because that's my first priority, I think. I just love to be surprised in life in general, by people, by the musicians I play with, by myself. That's huge for me when I'm looking for songs or listening to songs, and even just as a fan of art and artists.

David Remnick: This song is so associated with one singer in particular, maybe Barbra Streisand, and you take it on head-on. Then on another night, I'll go see you, and you're singing-- I don't know how many verses that was, we were just discussing this before we came in. It must have been 40-verse-long blues song that no one had probably heard.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes, I did--

David Remnick: I think it was like a half an hour long.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was a half an hour-long blues-

David Remnick: It was.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: -called Murder Ballad that Jelly Roll Morton did for Library of Congress years ago.

[MUSIC - Jelly Roll Morton: The Murder Ballad]

Let me tell you one of the things that I’ve said

Cécile McLorin Salvant: This woman who murders her boyfriend's lover, and then goes to prison. There's a lot of profanity, and I had always wanted to sing it. I sat on it for 10 years thinking, where could I ever possibly do it and who would I do it with? Then I had a Valentine's Day concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and I thought, "Wouldn't that be for date night?

[laughter]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Wouldn't that just be great?"

David Remnick: A date night with a little murder involved.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes.

[MUSIC - Jelly Roll Morton: The Murder Ballad]

David Remnick: Well, let's start from the beginning. You grew up where?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I grew up in Miami, Florida.

David Remnick: What were you listening to at home and who was filling the home with music?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I was listening to whatever my mom was listening to, and she loves everything. Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde, we were listening to Youssou N'Dour from Senegal, we were listening to Los Trios Paraguayos, which is like Paraguayan folk music. We were listening to French music. We were listening to some jazz, mostly Sarah Vaughan, a little bit of Nancy Wilson, Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin. We were listening to folk music, some bluegrass. I could go on and on, actually, a lot of Brazilian music.

David Remnick: That's all due to your mother?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: She has a huge, wide ear, and she traveled a lot in her childhood. I think she brought back those travels in some way, or that traveling sort of feeling.

David Remnick: Where did she grow up?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: She grew up in Tunisia. She lived throughout Africa. She lived in Senegal. She lived in Cuba. She lived in Dominican Republic. She lived in Honduras, in Haiti.

David Remnick: What was the lingua franca at home, English, French, or both?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Franca.

[laughter]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was Franca. It was French. It was French at home.

David Remnick: From what I understand, in fact, from a profile in The New Yorker some years ago, there was a time when you were a kid, you thought you were going to study law.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Not so much when I was a kid. It was more after high school, I really didn't know what to do and there was this political science prep school in this small town in France. My cousin was going. They had a law option, first-year law.

David Remnick: A beautiful place, in Aix-en-Provence.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: In Aix-en-Provence. I said, "Oh, why not?"

David Remnick: What a good deal.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was a great deal. My cousin was there. I've always liked school.

David Remnick: Off you go as a teenager to the south of France to study law, politics, history, and then something happened.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: [chuckles] I always studied music alongside my other school activities.

David Remnick: Did you play any instrument?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Piano.

David Remnick: You were playing classical, jazz, everything?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I guess I was playing classical, but I was not really playing much. I was not practicing. I had to be bribed every week [crosstalk]-

David Remnick: You were having a good time.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: -with doughnuts-

David Remnick: [laughs]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: -to go to piano class. I just didn't like it, but I did it for 15 years.

David Remnick: And singing?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Singing, it's funny. I think singing for me is so social. I don't sing when I'm alone, or I sing very rarely when I'm alone.

David Remnick: Not in the shower, not-

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Not so much.

David Remnick: -walking down the street?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: No, no, no. It's very social. It's very communicative. It's about being with other people and telling them a story or telling them a secret.

David Remnick: While you're studying in France, at a certain point, you start performing as a singer with a jazz quintet. How did that happen? How did you have the skills and the nerve to do that all of a sudden?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was really my teacher at the music school, Jean-François Bonnel. I had sung for him a Sarah Vaughan song. He was adamant that I join the jazz class. I was probably the only native English speaker there, so maybe it gave me a little bit of an edge with singing the standards. He was just like, "I got us a gig. We're doing a show," within like two months of me starting in his class. It was in a small jazz club. It was a tiny jazz club and Aix-en-Provence with like five people in the audience, but it was horrifying.

David Remnick: Tell me about the first night. What did you sing?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I sang, It’s Only a Paper Moon.

[MUSIC - Ella Fitzgerald and The Delta Rhythm Boys: It’s Only a Paper Moon]

Say it's only a paper moon

Sailing over a cardboard sea

But it wouldn't be make-believe

If you believed in me

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I sang Body & Soul. I sang Lover Man. I sang You're Just Too Marvelous for Words in my best and most intense Ella Fitzgerald impression mixed with some Sarah Vaughan.

[MUSIC - Ella Fitzgerald: Too Marvelous for Words]

You're just too marvelous

Too marvelous for words

Like glorious, glamorous

David Remnick: I get the feeling that at a certain point early on, you're kind of like a magpie of different styles and voices that your teacher is giving you stacks of CDs to listen to. One week it's Sarah Vaughan week, and one week, it's Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday, or whomever. This is all coming in as information and none of them wins out, you don't become an imitator of any one of them do you think?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I think as I go through the phase with whoever it is, I am trying to sing as best I can like them. I think that's what was happening, but I was failing. You can never really sing like someone. Some people will figure that.

David Remnick: The failing is becoming yourself in a way.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: The failing is becoming yourself, yes. It's interesting, the singers that he had me listen to, yes, there were those big ones, the famous ones, but what was more interesting was all of the music by people that are completely unknown or not celebrated enough, people like Little Heart and Armstrong, if you're doing a Little Heart and Armstrong imitation, no one's going to really know because they don't know who she is, unfortunately.

David Remnick: My sources tell me that the song you're going to do next is pretty radically different. It's called Can she excuse my wrongs?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I would love to talk about this.

David Remnick: I want to know everything about it. It was written by an English musician who was born in the 16th century John Dowland. Tell me about the song.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: The lyric is attributed to this man named Robert Devereux. The music is John Dowland. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was Queen Elizabeth's 1st favorite, or one of her favorites. It's an interesting lyric because he talks about his desire. The desire can be read two ways, as a desire for her or a desire for power. What happened to the Earl of Essex is that he was found out in a plot against her and was then killed, like executed by the Queen for plotting against her. The song basically, it's just everything is there.

David Remnick: Now, how did you learn about this song? Flipping around on Spotify or car radio, what?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I was taking lute lessons years ago.

David Remnick: lute lessons?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I thought that I would maybe learn a little bit of lute, just for fun. This is a standard classic. This is Don't Rain on My Parade--

David Remnick: In the 16th century. [laughs]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: --in the 16th century lute.

David Remnick: That's what they were playing at the vanguard in the 16th century.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Exactly.

David Remnick: Got you.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: He says better a thousand times to die than for to live thus still tormented, dear but remember, it was I who for thy sake did die contented, and he does die. It's crazy.

David Remnick: Well, let's give it a go.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Okay. Let's see if I remember.

[MUSIC - John Dowland: Can She Excuse My Wrongs]

Can she excuse my wrongs with Virtue’s cloak?

Shall I call her good when she proves unkind?

Are those clear fires which vanish into smoke?

Must I praise the leaves where no fruit I find?

No, no; where shadows do for bodies stand,

That may’st be abus’d if thy sight be dim.

Cold love is like to words written on sand,

Or to bubbles which on the water swim.

Wilt thou be thus abused still,

Seeing that she will right thee never?

If thou canst not o’ercome her will,

Thy love will be thus fruitless ever.

Wilt thou be thus abused still,

Knowing that she will write

Me never know it,

Remember, it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented

Was I so base, that I might not aspire

Unto those high joys which she holds from me?

As they are high, so high is my desire,

If she this deny, what can granted be?

If she will yield to that which reason is,

It is reason’s will that love should be just.

Dear, make me happy still by granting this,

Or cut off delays if that I die must.

Better a thousand times to die,

Than for to live thus still tormented,

Dear, but remember it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented.

Better a thousand times to die,

Knowing that she will write me never,

Dear, but remember it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented.

Better a thousand times to die,

Than for to live thus still tormented,

Dear, but remember it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented.

[laughter]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I screwed up some lyrics. We're good.

David Remnick: Okay, this is what happens after each song, the recriminations begin. [chuckles]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: In the studio?

David Remnick: You screw something up--

Cécile McLorin Salvant: In the studio, always. It's funny enough, I was--

David Remnick: I'm speaking with the extraordinary singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, a three-time Grammy winner for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and Sullivan Fortner accompanies her on piano. Our conversation continues in just a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.

[music]

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with the singer Cécile McLorin Salvant. She's emerged as one of the great jazz artists of her generation. She was 21 when she entered the Thelonious Monk Jazz competition. That competition was about discovering the next generation of jazz masters. Winning is like getting the Heisman Trophy for jazz musicians, and she was a complete unknown.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I didn't think I would win. I had just lost a competition in France, in a small town in France. I mean, no knock to them, but I really didn't think I would make it past the semi-finals. I was even shocked that they kept my audition tape in the first place. I went there completely astounded by all of the musicians. Herbie Hancock was in the elevator with me.

David Remnick: Wow.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was scary and crazy. Everybody could scat, everybody was going to universities in the US. I felt like a little country girl, country bumpkin. [chuckles]

I wasn't expecting anything. Both my parents came with me. My mom kept saying, "I'm so sorry," because she's the one who signed me up for that competition. She kept saying, "I'm so sorry. This is crazy."

David Remnick: What were you going to sing?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: There were two rounds. For the first round, I sang Bernie's tune. I sang Monk's mood, and I sang a Bessie Smith song.

David Remnick: Which one?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: The one that she sings, called Take It Right Back.

[MUSIC - Bessie Smith: Take It Right Back]

You just leapin' in rollin' drunk

Smellin' just like you been with any old skunk

Take it right back to the place where you got it

Mama don't want a bit of it left here

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was a great experience because it was the first time anyone ever laughed at what I was singing. I thought, "Oh my gosh, understanding."

David Remnick: How much do you sound like yourself now? How much did you come into your talent and sense of originality?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I think it's very raw, but there is something there that is like, I can see where I went after. It was all there. The choice of odd repertoire, the intensely looking at the audience while I'm singing, but I was trembling and scared. Even for that time, I wasn't fully singing. You could hear the nerves. I can hear the nerves.

David Remnick: I interviewed in this room, in this studio at WNYC years ago, Rhiannon Giddens. To me, she does a lot of things, but she does two things at once in the sense that she's a great performer, but there's an element of her that she's also a scholar. She's a musicologist. She is an evangelist for all kinds of music. In her case wants to very much make the big point that country music is not purely white hillbilly music, but a confluence of Black American music meets white hillbilly music and all kinds of interesting things come out of it.

It seems to me with different music, you're doing a similar thing with what Rhiannon Giddens does is that you're introducing all kinds of things to the stage. Of course, you do standards and Broadway show tunes and things that we associate in our minds with what Sarah Vaughan did or Ella Fitzgerald, but so many other things are on your mind to give us.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It's funny you mentioned her. Rhiannon Giddens is somebody who I have to thank so much for a lot. I first heard about her through Carolina Chocolate Drops.

David Remnick: Her first band [crosstalk].

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Her first band. I learned about the banjo and what that instrument is and how it's a product of the African diaspora. I did not know. It felt affirming in a way as somebody who had always loved that music, but thought, "Oh, this is just some white music that I like." Much like the grunge is white music that I like, and then realizing through her in large part that, no, this is not just white music. This is actually music that originated with Black folks and with a mixture. She's huge to me. I actually sing one of her songs in my shows.

David Remnick: Which one is that?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It's called Build a House.

David Remnick: Oh, yes.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I love that song.

[MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: Build a House]

You brought me here to build your house, build your house, build your house

You brought me here to build your house and grow your garden fine

David Remnick: Do you feel that you have that in mind too? That it ain't just by chance that there's a project that you're building over time of introducing certain kinds of music to your audiences, whether it's in French or it's in English.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I think I have the spirit of a radio DJ/curator. It's almost like making a mix tape for someone and only putting deep cuts. That's how I feel a lot of times. If someone is to ask, "Oh, can you do a Cole Porter tribute?" I'll be like, "Okay, sure. I'll do a Cole Porter tribute, but I want to find the gems that haven't been sung and sung and sung over and over again and that we might love and fall in love with."

David Remnick: Yet, we began our conversation or you're being here with [unintelligible 00:24:00]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes. Huge hit.

David Remnick: Why do you want to do something that's so familiar and so associated with one singer?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: A lot of the decisions are very intuitive, but that song for me is not about the fact that it's associated with Barbara Streisand. It's just such an optimistic-

David Remnick: [unintelligible 00:24:24]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes. Also, she's just so strong in that lyric.

David Remnick: It's not enough that you sing across the centuries and so beautifully. You also write extraordinary songs.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Oh, thank you.

David Remnick: Tell me about the beginning of songwriting and how you went about it and what you were after?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I first started writing songs-- I think as a kid, I wrote one song in my own invented language with my cousin.

David Remnick: Can you sing it?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: [singing]

David Remnick: How old were you?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Who knows? 6.

David Remnick: Did you have a sense of what the lyrics meant?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Maybe at the time we knew what it meant. Now, I don't know what it means.

David Remnick: Lost to the mists of time.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Lost, yes. [chuckles] I heard Abbey Lincoln, I heard an album of hers called Wholly Earth and it made me want to write.

[MUSIC - Abbey Lincoln: Wholly Earth]

Oh the holy earth's a mural 

seen from way up high 

abstracted natural bas-relief

witnessed from the sky

Cécile McLorin Salvant: The very first song I wrote, or that I remember writing is a song called Woman Child, that was the title track of my second album. Then, yes, ever since then I've been writing.

David Remnick: You're writing them with the piano, not the lute.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Not the lute. Not yet. I'm writing with the piano--

David Remnick: Why do I have a feeling that that's coming?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: [laughs] No, no, no. With the piano and with the window. I like to look out a window.

David Remnick: How do you spend your days?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Long walk, a lot of writing in the morning. Then eventually get to the piano at some point and then embroidery, a lot of embroidery.

David Remnick: It's a lot of alone time.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes.

David Remnick: How does that inform the music?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Wow. That's a great question. It is very introspective music and it is music about solitude. A lot of it about solitude, about yearning, about desire. I think all of those feelings are clearly coming from the fact that it's so much alone time, which I need.

David Remnick: I think I may be pressing my luck, but I'm hoping you'll sing Moon Song-

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Sure.

David Remnick: -which is on the album Ghost Song from, I think, two years ago? Three years ago?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes.

David Remnick: Tell me about the song before we hear it.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It's a song I wrote about wanting to want and loving that feeling of desire and that feeling of before, before the big thing happens and almost not wanting the big thing to happen, just wanting to be in that prelude of it, because that's where all the excitement is, being far away from the object of affection and looking at them longingly.

David Remnick: It's a different than a 16th-century lute-based song. [laughs]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Maybe exactly the same as a 16th century. Maybe it's exactly, Can She Excuse My Wrongs?

David Remnick: Yes, they had desire in the 16th century. Okay.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: Moon Song]

If you should love me

Don't ever tell me

Show it

That's how I'll know it

In fact

It's better not to show me at all

Let me pine

Let me yearn

Let me crawl

Let me write you a song

And long to belong to you

Write you a song from a distance

Let me love you like I love the moon

Let me love you like I love the moon

David Remnick: I want to thank you so much for being here.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

David Remnick: This was great.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Thanks for having both of us.

Sullivan Fortner: Thank you.

David Remnick: Cécile McLorin Salvant, join me in the studio playing live at WNYC along with pianist Sullivan Fortner. She's playing this month in Phoenix, Burlington, Cleveland, and more before heading to Europe.

[music]

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.