Singing Guide: The Jolson Story
Vocal technique, exercises, tips and relevant resources
Al Jolson was a legendary performer known for his skillful use of vibrato, a technique that uses rapid fluctuations of pitch to create a unique and distinctive effect. To learn to sing like Jolson, one needs to develop their vibrato technique by practicing vocal exercises that focus on pitch accuracy, breath control, and resonance.
First, start with Singing Carrots' Vocal range test to determine your natural vocal range and compare it to Jolson's. This also helps select the right key for the songs in Al Jolson's range.
Next, focus on breath support and control using exercises like the Farinelli breathing technique. This will help prepare the diaphragm for the style of singing that Jolson excelled in.
For warmups, a great place to start is the Three Minute Warmup exercise. Then, work on vocal onsets and offsets using the glottal onset exercise. Once warmed up, you can work on achieving a hard-hitting chest voice using the singing comfort zone and chest voice exercises.
Al Jolson also used a unique vocal technique known as the nasal twang, which creates a distinctive tone in his singing. To learn that, you may want to try the Twang exercise.
Another feature of Jolson's singing was his use of vibrato; it's essential to work on your vibrato technique to capture his unique style. Singing Carrots has several exercises that help to develop and improve your vibrato, such as the Diaphragm Bounce.
Jolson's most famous song is, of course, "Mammy." It's a classic example of his unique technique, with a call and response style that emphasizes his vibrato and resonant vocal quality. Other songs that showcase Jolson's style include "California Here I Come" and "Toot Toot Tootsie (Goodbye)".
To learn other vocal techniques used by Al Jolson, Singing Carrots offers several relevant articles, such as "Singing with Vibrato," "Resonance in Singing," "Nasality," and "Chest Voice Explained." The website also has an extensive songbook with lyrics and sheet music for almost any song to perform, plus its search tool enables you to find songs matching your vocal range, difficulty, and genre preference.
To perform like Al Jolson, one must also focus on stage presence and embrace the emotion and drama behind each song. Therefore, Singing Carrots offers tips on stage fright, performance, and emotion control in front of the audience.
Overall, practicing the key techniques and songs used by Al Jolson will help develop the unique vocal style he was known for, and Singing Carrots are an excellent resource to help you along the way with its training tools, songbook, and educational articles.