Biography
Renee Manning delivers the same bold, soul-infused presence found in Ernestine Anderson, Marlena Shaw, and Dee Dee Bridgewater, projecting a jazz voice steeped in blues and R&B. On brisk numbers and jazz-blues pieces she projects a brassy, aggressive edge that turns gritty and hard-swinging, yet she shifts without strain into a sensitive, inward mode when interpreting ballads. Attentive listeners sometimes detect Billie Holiday’s phrasing in those slower performances, though Manning’s instrument is larger and her overall approach far more robust than Lady Day’s; were she a tenor saxophonist she would align more closely with Houston Person or Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis than with Stan Getz, and were she a male singer she would invite comparisons to Joe Williams or Kevin Mahogany rather than Chet Baker. While her core orientation remains bop and she has absorbed the lessons of Carmen McRae and Ella Fitzgerald, her influences extend beyond that idiom. Holiday herself emerged from jazz’s pre-bop period, and Manning occasionally channels the spirit of earlier jazz-inflected classic blues figures such as Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and Ma Rainey; one staple she performs live is Blue Lu Barker’s risqué “Don't You Feel My Leg.”
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Manning studied at New York’s Music and Art High School during her teens and, throughout the 1970s, contributed vocals to recordings by hard-bop and soul-jazz artists including tenor saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman and cornetist Nat Adderley, brother of alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. Her most prominent affiliation occurred in the 1980s, when she served for five years as featured vocalist with the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. Manning issued her debut solo album, As Is, in 1991 on the small New York independent jazz label Ken Music; Ken later issued her follow-up recording Uhm…Uhm…Uhmmmm, drawn from sessions taped in 1986, 1989, and 1991.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Manning studied at New York’s Music and Art High School during her teens and, throughout the 1970s, contributed vocals to recordings by hard-bop and soul-jazz artists including tenor saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman and cornetist Nat Adderley, brother of alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. Her most prominent affiliation occurred in the 1980s, when she served for five years as featured vocalist with the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. Manning issued her debut solo album, As Is, in 1991 on the small New York independent jazz label Ken Music; Ken later issued her follow-up recording Uhm…Uhm…Uhmmmm, drawn from sessions taped in 1986, 1989, and 1991.
Albums