What's An R&B Girl to Do? Deborah Cox and Amel Larrieux

What's An R&B Girl to Do?
by Mark Anthony Neal

Let me be clear upfront; there’s little that I personally find “girlish” about Deborah Cox or Amel Larrieux. They are, by all accounts, fully grown women. But grown-women—grown black women—seemingly are of little value in the world of contemporary R&B, and increasingly within commercial culture in general—unless they can sell cleaning products or deliver punch-lines with the panache of a tired cleaning woman. Thus the 30-somethings Cox and Larrieux find themselves out of favor to the fickle audiences that the music industry has coalesced around contemporary R&B and have to find new venues to ply their trade. While generational peers have either been musically born again (Kelly Price and Chante Moore) or steadfastly trying to compete with coquettish divas five or ten years their junior (Tamia, Brandy and Monica immediately come to mind), Cox and Larrieux have surprisingly staked out a claim in the world of jazz standards.

Deborah Cox has always possessed a lovely, if not strikingly distinct, vocal instrument. And while she never simply blended in with the crowd, she also is not the kind of artist that audiences, save hardcore fans, have missed. In this sense Cox’s decision to take on the legacy of Dinah Washington with Destination Moon entails less risk than it might have for vocalists on that next commercial tier and likely provides a genuine opportunity for Cox to develop a new audience. Washington is a formidable figure; her ability to brawl with the rhythm & blues boys of the late 1940s and sweetly nuance big-band arrangements on signature tunes (now standards) like “What a Difference a Day Makes” and “This Bitter Earth” made Washington one of the unique female vocalist of the 20th century. Cox wisely chooses the more softer tones in Washington’s oeuvre—covering the aforementioned “This Bitter Earth," “What a Difference a Day Makes,” and “Destination Moon”—though she does more than credible renditions of “Misery” and “Baby You’ve Got What it Takes.”

In this regard Destination Moon recalls an earlier Washington tribute album. Arguably Aretha Franklin’s Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington was the great Aretha album, before she broke through commercially 40 years ago this summer with I Have Never Loved a Man.

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