"I was too pop for jazz and too jazz for pop" is how she explains why the limelight failed to find her. But find her it did, through - surprise, surprise! - film.
Then again, what's the surprise? For those who came before Dianne Reeves, who, with that incredibly mellifluous voice, managed to upstage George Clooney, David Strathairn, even the dreamy cinematography in Good Night And Good Luck, make up a surprisingly long list.
What was Jolson - jazz or pop? Sure, the picture was called The Jazz Singer, but those Tin Pan Alley ditties he crooned had more Grade A tin in them than Jack Haley's get-up in The Wizard Of Oz. No matter. Audiences flocked to see it, and Jolson's jazz-pop (circa 1929) legitimized sound film.
Louis, he was jazz all the way, pops - at least at first, when all the movies would give him were the odd cameo or cartoon hybrid. By the time he was feature material, he too had made concessions to the music of the day (remember High Society?).
The Velvet Fog. Again (and, I suppose, appropriately for a fog,) gray area. Some Mel Torme CDs are a jazz lover's dream; on others, he aspires to the mantle of Crosby and Sinatra. And in his most memorable film performance, he sings Benny Carter's "All That Jazz," a boppy number that splits the difference, in the well intentioned but unsuccessful A Man Called Adam.
The fact is, jazz, pure jazz, has never really cut it in the movies (with the exception of concert films, of course.) Oh, there have been some memorable soundtracks, but even there, pop wins the day; how is it, for example, that nobody remembers Sonny Rollins' virtuosic theme for Alfie but a deaf music hater with one lung can easily go into the Burt Bacharach add-on?
It simply doesn't sell, at least, not when compared to the soundtrack green to be made from pop.
But now, now Diane, who, thanks to director Clooney asking her to cut pop ties, at last brings jazz, real jazz, to commercial filmmaking.
Benny Golson, the ages-old sax man, is enjoying a second career thanks to five minutes of screen time in Spielberg's The Terminal. Dianne, whose singing takes up one third of Good Night, should enjoy much more - and moviegoers, thanks to her, a lot more jazz.
