All that JAZZ

Above: Claire Martin by Kate Eastman

Above: Claire Martin by Kate Eastman

IF ASKED to name some popular current jazz singers, the average person on the street might come up with Norah Jones, perhaps Jamie Cullum, maybe Michael Bublé or at a push Diana Krall. They’re unlikely to conjure up the name Claire Martin, unless the street in question happens to be the one near Hove seafront that Martin herself calls home. But to those in the know on the UK jazz scene, there are few who come close to her in terms of style, repertoire and her golden voice. She has recorded 13 albums, been accompanied by the Halle Orchestra and the Laurence Cottle Big Band, travelled the world, presents her own show on BBC Radio 3 and was the only European artist to ever reach number one in the prestigious US Gavin Charts. In her scene, Claire Martin is a superstar, but the idea of breaking out into the world of crossover jazz like the Kralls and Bublés of the world has never really appealed to her.

“I did a couple of albums with a sort of crossover style in the late Nineties,” she says, relaxing at home on a cold January morning. “But at that time, pop fans didn’t get to hear this sort of stuff and the jazz fans were just confused by it, so I decided not to do that again. I like Norah Jones’ voice, and I listen to a little Diana Krall just for research, but none of that stuff really lights me up. I’d rather do my own thing, and I’m proud that I’ve done what I’ve done more through persistence and willpower than music industry marketing.”

Quality music
Claire Martin grew up in Wimbledon. Her father was a carpenter, her mother a hairdresser and the family as a whole loved music, particularly easy jazz of the Frank Sinatra ilk. Claire’s mother also adored Judy Garland and so at an early age Claire too became a bit of a fan. “I was lucky because I was surrounded by classy music,” she recalls. “I didn’t really get heavily into jazz myself until I was about 19, though. I don’t think I appreciated the quality of that music until I tried to do it. Singing along to Ella Fitzgerald really puts you in your place.”

Claire went to performing arts school from the age of five, but that was no guarantee of a career path. At 19 she found herself behind a desk doing a secretarial course in Carshalton (“nine months of hell, but at least I learned to type so I’m good on my Apple Mac now!”). Unable to face a life of typing memos and call screening, Claire decided she had to pursue her talent for singing, became the singer in a holiday camp band near Bournemouth for a while and then auditioned and got a job singing on the QE2, sailing out of Southampton. It sounds like an über-glamorous lifestyle. “Well, the days we worked were bloody hard!” she laughs. “We had to do lunchtime round the pool, then four o’clock tea, then the captain’s cocktails at six, then ten till whenever – they were long hours! But then when we docked we had two days off in Jamaica and places like that, so it all balanced out.”

Still, after 18 months at sea, the 21-year-old Claire found herself back in London looking for the next stage of her singing career, waitressing and teaching to get by. It was quite a culture shock, when the week before she had been on a beach in Bermuda, “getting tips from rich Americans for singing The Way We Were. “You have to get off at some point,” explains Claire. “Cruise ships are not a career move, you just float round and round. At some point you need to get back on dry land and get on with things.”

In 1991, when Claire was 23, she was discovered by a producer called Elliott Meadow, singing in a London jazz club. Meadow worked with Scottish label Linn Records and after he suggested they see her perform, Martin was offered a one-album deal. But that deal was to be the beginning of something much bigger than that for the singer and the label, a marriage which has now brought more than a dozen albums into the world, garnered a hatful of  best vocalist gongs from the British and BBC jazz awards and seen her playing all over the world – from Europe to Australasia. Her band was the first jazz act to play in Vietnam. “I’m really proud of that,” she says. “I’m not sure people knew what to make of us – we were asked to drop in some Beatles songs for familiarity, so I’d be doing some clever scatting and I’d have to burst into Hey Jude! But it was an amazing adventure.”

Legendary venue
Claire is also one of just a handful of British jazz singers to make a name for themselves in the US, where her residency at the legendary Oak Room in New York last year met with ecstatic reviews. “Proof positive that jazz can be sung with a British accent,” cooed one NYC newspaper, while the promoters have invited her back on an annual basis. “You need to have the real industry wheels behind you to crack the States,” says Claire. “I haven’t had that. I’m with a small label, but I do get artistic control over my music and I would much rather have that, quite frankly.”

Over the years, Claire Martin’s connections on the jazz scene have grown and grown. But no one has been more important to her career than respected composer and pianist Richard Rodney Bennett, who wrote the sleevenotes for her first record and with whom she has collaborated many times, including a whole album together in 2005 called When Lights Are Low. “Oh, I love him, I really do,” says Claire fondly. “He has been such a champion for me. All he wants to do is sing great songs and hang out in jazz bars. He’s always emailing me with lists of songs I might like – he’s sent me two emails today, in fact – and he’s such a part of jazz history. He’s a great laugh too – charming to work with, a total gentleman and a real inspiration. I adore him.”

Legendary crooner Tony Bennett is another high profile Claire Martin fan. He was at the opening night of her Oak Room residency, almost a decade and a half after she opened for him at a jazz festival – one of her very first big gigs. And she has even sung with Noel Gallagher of Oasis. She howls with laughter about that encounter: “It was just really flukey. The producer of one of my records was the keyboard player in Oasis at the time and set it up. It was just a bit of fun – we did Help! by the Beatles, but it was hardly what you might call a musical leap.”

Claire is rather more proud of her most recent album, He Never Mentioned Love – a tribute to her favourite singer Shirley Horn, who died in 2005 after a long illness. Made up of Claire’s own stripped-down, intimate versions of Horn favourites, along with one original song called Slowly But Shirley, it has garnered some of the most fervent critical acclaim of her career. “I never met her,” says Claire. “But she really was the one singer I would choose as my absolute favourite. She embodied everything I think a really great jazz musician should be: her phrasing, her choice of material, the emotional impact she sang with. Everything she did is so classy. I had to make that album because she played a big part in my learning to be a jazz vocalist.”

When she was 28, Claire decided to ditch the London lifestyle to be by the sea and chose Hove to make her new home. She regards it as one the best decisions she ever made. “At the time, the property prices weren’t London prices and I could afford it,” she says. “I used to come down here as a child and I loved it, so it was an obvious choice and my life here is great, I’ll never go back up to London – to open my door and smell the sea is amazing. My friends call me up from London and I tell them I’m about to go on my rollerblades down the seafront to Shoreham docks to buy some fresh fish and they’re so jealous!”

Claire lives with her partner, BBC Southern Counties Radio DJ Phil Jackson, and her five-year-old daughter Amelia, who is already showing signs of following in her mum’s footsteps. “I’m nurturing it but I’m not pushing her.”
These days, Claire divides her time between being a mum, performing gigs and presenting BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Line- Up show on Saturdays.

Broadcasting is yet another thing she is effusive about. “I’ve been doing it for eight years now and I just love it. I get sent records, I get sent jazz publications so I’m in the loop, it’s brilliant – I hardly have to go shopping!”
She adds: “At the moment I do feel like my life is a dream come true. Last week I sang at Ronnie Scott’s and it was brilliant. Yesterday I interviewed Pat Metheny, who’s a real hero of mine, for the radio show. I’ve just done a sell-out gig in Ireland this week, too. I’m starting to think that after 20 years of real graft I’m starting to reap the rewards of it. I really am starting to feel like a confident woman with a real grip on my career.”
So, what next for Claire Martin? If she’s at the pinnacle of her working life, what’s left to do? “I’m happy to keep doing what I’m doing,” she says. “I love my band and I love the gigs. I would like to do more European festivals – I’ve got a few lined up.

“I’d also like to do more in America as Amelia grows up, but there’s no point going over just for one gig. Generally though, I just want to keep on keeping on. I’m really, really lucky to make my living the way I do.”