velarized /l/ and Billy Holiday

[Herb Stahlke]

This afternoon I was listening to a recording of Billy Holiday singing
"Crazy he calls me."  In the line "The impossible will take a little
while" she has a schwa before the final /l/ of "impossible" and I
don't hear any distinctive velarization of the /l/.  There are several
other post-vocalic /l/s in the song, and they don't show much
velarization either.  Post-vocalic /l/ is a consistent problem for
American English singers, since the raising of the back of the tongue
towards the velum constricts the oral cavity and reduces the overall
resonance of the syllable coda.  Some voice teachers and choral
conductors will spend time training their singers to use only a
non-velarized /l/, as a number European languages widely represented
in the vocal and choral literature do.  My CD of Billy is, of course,
a copy, and I don't know how good the master was.  It's entirely
possible that the fidelity is not good enough to support much in the
way of diction comments, but my impression is otherwise.  Billy's
diction is superb.  Every word she sings is clear, even on a copy of a
copy of a 1949 recording.  Billy had little or no formal vocal
training, so the fact that she doesn't velarize /l/ much, if at all,
wouldn't be the result of vocal training.  Is it a feature of her
variety of AAE?  Is it idiosyncratic to her distinctive vocal style?

Herb

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