Top Ten Male Vocalists – #8 – Jay Clifford
Jay Clifford is no doubt the least recognizable name on this list. He was the lead singer of Jump, Little Children (later renamed Jump), a North Carolina band that formed in the early 90s and played its last show in 2005. After the band’s break-up, he released a solo album in 2007.
Clifford’s voice was just one of the unique sounds in the Jump, Little Children lineup. The band’s instrumental make-up was guitar, accordion, cello, bass, piano and drums, with the occasional harmonica and mandolin thrown in for good measure. But Clifford’s vocals tied their great sound together.
One thing I’ve quickly realized in preparing this week’s blog entries is that I am incapable of describing a singing voice in any intelligible way. I find myself wanting to use words like “oak-y” and “crisp.”
A great voice works because your ears gobble it up — not like candy but like a full meal, a banquet. I can’t really articulate why one voice or another provides me with such a feast, but I’m happy to prepare the meal and let you try it for yourself.
A bittersweet melody is now mine to sing
Every precious memory
And broken-hearted tragedy
Will walk into eternity
but not fade away
If you will go and not return
Leave me some words of wisdom
If I cannot follow anymore
I promise to teach what I have learned
If you will go and not return
How do years so far away
So suddenly evaporate?
Fortune smiles with teeth of jade
And the greediest eyes
How I long for that embrace
The strongest arms and troubled face
Smokey air and awkward grace
That made me feel safe
If you will go and not return
Leave me some words of wisdom
If I cannot follow anymore
I promise to teach what I have learned
If you will go and not return
Who was it that said to me
That heroes will live forever?
And where are they now
Now that I’m standing alone?
If you will go and not return
Leave me some words of wisdom
If I cannot follow anymore
I promise to teach what I have learned
Meet Me In Montauk 
I don’t get this entry on your list. While I’m sure this guy’s voice may well be a good fit for his band’s music, I don;’t see anything particularly unique or special about his vocal quality. I go back to the test I articulated yesterday–if this guy were singing a lame or trite song–“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “New York, New York,” would that song be made one modicum better because of his vocals? I think not.
I know you strive on this list to inject the lesser known artists onto your loyal readers, but I can’t believe you couldn’t find a better known vocalist than this to occupy your list. If the likes of someone like Sting (and a few others I will not yet name) is not on your list, but this nobody is, I will be truly mystified.
I don’t think the “nobody” factor has anything to do with it. I love this guy’s voice, so he’s on my list. I’m not ranking based on popularity.
Sting doesn’t show up on my list. I like his voice well enough but I also find it occasionally annoying.
I’m not saying you should rank based on popularity. I’m suggesting that if you heard a song on the radio from this guy, you wouldn’t necessarily stop and say–wow, I love this guy’s voice. But perhaps you would?
And when do you find Sting’s voice annoying (not the songs or repetitive issue, because that isn’t his voice, that’s just the song)?
When I got Jump, Little Children’s album several years ago, his voice was the thing that jumped out at me immediately as special.
I can’t think of any specific Sting songs that I find annoying (apart from the repetitive stuff that you mentioned) but it’s more a matter of his voice in large doses starts to grate on me. The whispery raspiness of it, and the way he phrases things. I don’t know, I just like him better in small doses.
I’m not saying the guy doesn’t have a nice voice, it’s just that, in a world of truly great voices, this guy wouldn’t be anywhere near mine (and I suspect most people’s) top 10 list. Again, I think this is more about you wanting to diversify your list with some relatively unknown guy than truly measuring him up against the great voices out there.
No, this is about my list vs. yours or anybody else’s. 🙂
When I first came up with this theme week, Jay Clifford was the third or fourth name I thought of when writing down candidates. Not because I wanted to diversify the list but because he came immediately to mind when I thought about artists I liked primarily because of their voices.
Well, I think that there is a difference between a list which, as you described it, showcases your “favorite male vocalists in popular music” as compared to artists you like “primarily because of their voices.” I like David Byrne’s music because of his vocals in that I find his voice adds a uniqueness and interest to what he performs, but I would not list him as one of my favorite male vocalists in popular music.
Why not?
Again, it goes back to whether a vocal performance just works well for the particular style of music that artist is singing, as opposed to whether a vocalist would be my favorite even where he or she is singing something that I might not otherwise like or something out of the vocalist’s comfort zone (in terms of genre). David Bowie comes to mind as someone who not only sings his particular style of music well, but has a voice that transcends into other genres–as when he sings a Christmas song with Bing Crosby.
I’m using sort of the same criteria, in that I’m thinking of voices that I like as voices, as opposed to as voices that sound good matched with particular songs. But at the same time, I’m picking people whose voices really add to the specific music they perform. I don’t know if that makes sense.
In other words, I like Van Morrison’s voice well enough that I think he’d perform a fine ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’ but the reason he’s on my list is that his fine voice blended with the sort of music he writes becomes something even more special.
I think I see what you are saying, but the problem with that standard is that your list ultimately gets bootstrapped to the songs or collection of work you really like, from which you then pick out those where you feel the vocals were an enhancing factor.
My approach would be to consider and include the vocal appeal of someone where I might not necessarily rank their songs amongst my favorites. So, for example (and I know that I am revealing my list a bit here), I would place someone like Stevie Wonder on my list, even though I can’t say he would make my top 10 or maybe even top 50 favorite artists. I own some of his stuff, and like what I have (much like Van Morrisen), but there isn’t a song the man sings that isn’t made better by his singing it. Even songs of his that I hate (“I Just Called To Say I Love You”) are made more tolerable because of his vocals.
I thought about going in that direction, but it didn’t really change my list all that much, probably because I don’t really pay much attention to vocals in music I don’t listen to often. That said, a few of the people on this list aren’t very well-represented in my CD collection, so that probably puts them in the camp you’re talking about.
“Oak-y” and “crisp” suggest you’re not interested in the meal as much as the wine that accompanies it 😉
So I’ll be making analogies to pinot noir, chardonnay and the likes when I reveal my top contenders.
This guy’s voice, and this song, both strike me as immediately pleasant (or “buttery” and “aromatic”). Much like a chardonnay, I could certainly see enjoying this music if it were on in the background, but nothing about it grabs me on the first listen to say – Wow! This is an awesome voice/wine!!
Plus, I still can’t get over the fact that you own an album by a band called Jump, Little Children or a guy named Jay Clifford. Totally cool (thought slightly “nutty”) on both counts.
Three albums, in fact. 🙂
Funny how the same voice can work so well for one person and make little impact on another.
I just Googled “Jay Clifford’s voice” to see if I’m alone in my opinion and found this in a review:
“As skilled as his songwriting is, the strongest characteristic of Clifford’s work will always be his singing voice. Clifford sings in a silvery tenor with an improbably wide range that in a single note can emote bittersweet nostalgia and comforting optimism. At a recent opening gig for Howie Day in northern Virginia, I heard a man standing behind me in the audience comment, “if he wasn’t standing twenty feet in front of us, I might not believe that voice was real.”