Some years ago it stated to be a form of appreciation
of a jazz singer to say he ( or she -usually she) used
his voice like an instrument. I was never happy about it
; to start with, it ran counter to the accepted theory
that the basis of jazz instrumental inotation was using your
instrument like a voice, and a Negro voice at that--wide vibrato
, thick, rasping, and so on.

Secondly, it seemed an attempt to devalue the words of a song:
if the object of a singer of the words 'I love you' was not to
make you think she (or he) loved you, but rather to skitter around
the notes on which these words were scored , then something had
gone wrong with jazz singing. One remembered, too, Lester Young's
dictum that the best way to improvise on a song was to think of its while you
were doing so.

12 June 1971