Kenny "Pancho" Hagood

[TheMusicalMarine]

Just perusing some of the posts over in Record Reviews. Am I the only guy here who enjoys this man's vocals? I can see why some might think they're less than stellar, but I honestly enjoy the few pieces that he does. I've only heard him on Birth of the Cool and the Wizard of the Vibes. Any one else not mind Hagood?

[Pete C]

Originally posted by TheMusicalMarine
Am I the only guy here who enjoys this man's vocals?

I'll put my money on yes.

[TheMusicalMarine]

Could someone tell me exactly why he is so reviled?

[stonemonkts]

Hagood is a throwback to the old cornball style associated with jazz singers uninfluenced by Louis Armstrong. At least this is my impression. I can't hit the skip button fast enough when the Monk Blue Note box plays the songs he appears on, in my opinion his singing is so awful the compilers should have sacrificed the completeness of the box by jetissoning his tracks.

However, this is subjective so please don't take offense by my opinion.

Brief anecdote....I remember a very close friend approaching me for advice on what to buy etc to introduce them to jazz. I said I'd be happy to make a few tapes of examples from across the decades, but that very day happened to be Monk's (and my own) birthday. I said, "hey! tune in to WKCR now!"

I swear, the very next selections played by that goofball Phil Schaap (radio announcer) were the takes with Hagood. My friend was on the phone with me and I could hear the dead silence as he pondered whether jazz really was something he wanted to pursue, or not. I practically shouted that if he listened to the birthday broadcast all day and night, these would be the ONLY crappy tracks he'd hear, cross my heart. I could have throttled that ponderous bore (Schaap, not my friend).

[TheMusicalMarine]

That's a pretty funny anecedote, Stone. Like you say it's all subjective, and your explanation helps clarify things. Obliged.

[mgjazz]

Surprised, in that I thought no one outside of Detroit really had heard of him. Of course there's limited stuff with Gillespie. I had the good fortune to catch Kenny numerous times in the '70s & '80s before he passed on. He worked a little with a bassist named Shoo-Be-Doo, drummer J.C. Heard bands (large & small,) and David Swain's Two-Five-One Orchestra. We have some pretty good documents of his work with a smaller ensemble or two live @ local festivals, maybe someday they will be released. There is a CD of him w/II-V-I. I never thought of him as a screwball ala Slim Gaillard, Babs Gonzalez or Cab Calloway. He was just a lot of fun, not wacky at all. He had a lot of soul and sang very precisely, but if anything, like Eddie Jefferson, his voice was not mass market crooning, and that was fine with "us" in the local community. He just didn't want the stardom & hassle. He was really a sweet man.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by mgjazz
He had a lot of soul and sang very precisely, but if anything, like Eddie Jefferson, his voice was not mass market crooning

Hey, sounds like he got a lot hipper than on those few recordings (Monk, Miles, Diz) where he was just a cloying crooner. Good to hear that, and that he had a satisfying local career.

[Al in NYC]

Y'know, back in my Detroit days Shoo-be-doo was a guy I used to see around a lot, and J.C. Heard was a personal friend of my father (he was the one who introduced Dad to Diz), but until this moment I had somehow never connected THAT Pancho Hagood to the guy on those old records.

As for those old records, I think that producers then, like producers now, knew that records with vocals sell better than records without -- especially if those vocals are in a current pop style. And in the late '40's for black male vocalists that meant trying to sound like Billy Eckstine. Never mind that most singers didn't have the right voice for it, or that it was often the wrong style to go with the music that was being played (leaving aside the question of there being ANY "right" style for singing over a Monk accompaniment), this romantic "crooning" style was what the execs thought record buyers wanted, and so it is the style that mars tons of records from that era. Of course we only notice those vocals that mar recordings still in print for other musical/historical reasons, while the rest are thankfully lost to history. I think the main problem with these vocal performances in our ears today is that the style itself has dated very badly -- so much so that even the wildly popular Eckstine's records are difficult to listen to today -- and they now sound very much out of place with the still-hip music.

But mgjazz is quite correct, the mature and real Hagood sound heard in Detroit was much more Jefferson than Eckstine, while still preserving the precise diction that was the hallmark of '40's band singers.