David Allen

This vocalist launched his professional path under the name David Allen before adopting David Allyn, an adjustment that reflected an alphabetical shift in spelling. The alteration may have stemmed from irritation over the crowded field of David Allens active across multiple disciplines, encompassing rock drummers, record producers, jazz horn players, a film special-effects wizard, and one of the planet’s premier stick carvers. Although he had already been performing since the late ’30s, the name change did not occur until the ’70s. His most prominent associations were with trombonist Jack Teagarden and the innovative ensemble led by Boyd Raeburn, whose work influenced progressive jazz bandleader and composer Charles Mingus, among others. Family surroundings shaped his earliest musical leanings: his mother sang and his father played French horn, yet the young performer emulated Bing Crosby once he started singing professionally in high school.

He joined Teagarden’s group in 1940, a tenure halted by military service. During the first World War he earned a Purple Heart, and after discharge he entered the orchestra of Van Alexander. His subsequent engagement came with the outstanding band of Henry Jerome, a largely overlooked unit whose ranks included tenor saxophonist Al Cohn and Johnny Mandel as an arranger. After appearing as a vocalist on multiple radio stations, Allen was engaged as frontman for the Raeburn orchestra, once again with Mandel supplying arrangements. He then moved to the West Coast and began cutting a distinguished series of recordings for the Discovery label. Producer Dick Bock supervised those sessions and later persuaded Allen to resume recording in the ’70s. In the intervening years the singer set music aside to work with drug addicts inside a treatment program. The new ’70s sessions appeared under the Allyn spelling and introduced additional collaborators such as pianist Barry Harris. Allen/Allyn remains one of those vocalists whom jazz instrumentalists particularly esteem, owing to distinctive phrasing, superb intonation, and frequently ingenious timing.