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"Endless Love," by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie It remained at the top of the charts for four weeks straight before it went on to win a Grammy Award. It’s the kind of choice that helps Joy put her own stamp on familiar material and make it her own.This is an upbeat ballad from the 1977 album Rejoice that was written by two members of Earth, Wind & Fire. But it puts you in a mood that says, ‘Not only that, I kind of feel like I’m in this other world.’ “ She’s singing ‘I get misty,’ which is about crying, basically. “That’s a whole tone scale,” Pierson points out, “which is this open-sounding, spacey kind of vibe. Inspired by a Fitzgerald version of “Misty,” for example, and working with pianist Ben Paterson, Joy added a wordless scale to the introduction. “When you have a performance that inspires you and it’s like, ‘I love the way Carmen does this, or Ella does this,’ and you think, ‘OK, now what do I have to say with this that’s my own, and how do I do that?’ ” “It was tough toward the beginning, because all I wanted to do was copy,” Joy says, laughing. But her intention has been to draw inspiration and insight from each, without being a copyist. Her early models were the giants: Vaughan, Carmen McRae (of the Monk album), Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter. You know, that’s normally what happens.”Īt every turn, it seems, Joy, as a young, celebrated virtuoso, has been able to avoid “what normally happens.” “I was, like, I don’t want to do a ‘Carmen Sings Monk’ tribute, as great as that album is. She found “Worry Now Later” when researching a Thelonious Monk project. She discovered “This Is the Moment” through classmates. She originally wrote her “Nostalgia” vocalese as an exercise for Faddis. Intense listening and intense study followed. At SUNY, she found “my classmates are so into this and they’re so passionate about it, and I’m from New York and I don’t even know anything about this music!” “I was never exposed to this style of singing,” she says over Zoom from a tour stop in Toulouse, France. But at SUNY she found herself in a hothouse of talent - fellow students who were deeply into jazz, and teachers such as drummer Kenny Washington and trumpeter John Faddis. The Bronx-born Joy did not pursue jazz seriously until she got to college. “She was very young, still a student at SUNY Purchase, but it was clear that she was a generational talent.” “I was immediately blown away by her talent,” says veteran producer Matt Pierson, a judge at the Vaughan competition and, now, Joy’s manager. In the standards and not-so-standards alike, Joy established not only her musical acumen - delivered with a warm, capacious vocal instrument, breathtaking technique, and unmannered charm - but also a singular point of view, informed by tradition but not bound by it.
![Love is blue vocal version](https://kumkoniak.com/21.jpg)