It's always hard to choose one singer, probably out of maybe 20,000 I've heard, and I'm sure I have recordings by over 2,000 or 3,000 different female singers.
I would have a very difficult time choosing my favourite from among Gloria Lynne, Dee Dee Warwick, Dionne Warwick, Sarah Vaughn, Barbara Green, Carmen McRae, Carolyn Crawford, Brenda Holloway, Natalie Cole, Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston, Lorraine Ellison, Etta Jones, Barbra Streisand, Minnie Ripperton, Jan Bradley..... It will have to be who I think of off the top of my head in my current mood. If you asked tomorrow it might be someone else.
1) Favourite Female Singer: Between
Gloria Lynne and Dee Dee Warwick. Gloria wins by .00000000000000001 today. Tomorrow might be Dee Dee.
2) Best singing voice: Between [[early)Dionne, [[early)Carmen, [[early)Sarah, Brenda and Gloria. Really hard to choose. Their voices were ALL fantastic to me. Blinky Williams had a fantastic voice, too. Again, the difference is really too small to matter. I'd have to add the two Houstons, too. If I choose one over the others its not really because her voice was slightly better, but rather that I probably rate all their voices as 100 out of 100, but that I like my favourite few songs by the one I choose better than my favourite few sung by the others. I'll go with early
Dionne Warwick by .0000000001 over Gloria Lynne. I'm probably forgetting a lot of my favourite singers, too.
3) Greatest career and genre crosser: totally depends upon the era. Whitney Houston, Natalie Cole, and Dee Dee Warwick all crossed genres well. But Dee Dee wasn't nearly as successful. Whitney was a bigger star, but I'd choose
Natalie Cole for highest quality singing in several genres.
Extra: Male best at using the voice as an instrument [[other than opera singers, and at least in the genres of music I've heard or like to hear) - I would pick Ray Pollard [[of The Wanderers and Hector Rivera's band).
Bookmarks