Wailing and Squalling

[Miguel]

So, does Haley "squall"?

"Squalling" has ties to Aretha Franklin and her father.

Various sources on the Internet say:

Squall singing is when you make high-pitched, whiny noises while you are singing. Aretha Franklin's singing is often referred to as squalling.

No such thing as squall, It's actually called Pitch Break. Breaking the pitch with forced air. Only an adult or fully mature larynx can do this safely and only in the singers mid range. It cannot be done successfully in your high range or low range.

Bobby Blue Bland was the singer’s singer. One of the biggest black hitmakers of the ’60s, he had little crossover success but influenced countless other vocalists. He personified the sturdiest bridge in the transition from blues to soul music.

...Bland didn’t truly come into his own until he added a device that was more of his own making. In the late 1950s, Bobby, like most black Americans, listened regularly to the sermons of Rev. C.L. Franklin of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, who was Aretha’s father and probably the most influential preacher within black America (by then, Franklin’s friend and civil rights ally Dr. Martin Luther King was well known outside the ghetto). Franklin was so popular that Chess Records released his sermons as albums; “The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest” was said to have sold gold several times over, though the label never submitted its sales figures for RIAA certification.



While listening to that landmark sermon, Bobby focused on a guttural, gargling sound Franklin utilized to emphasize his points, and adapted it to his own voice and needs. Thus was born The Squall, as he called it. He’d always used his swooping and soaring falsetto to dramatic effect, but The Squall provided an equally powerful, and more singular, tool.

The Squall first appeared on the 1958 hit “Little Boy Blue.” Bland’s first R&B chart record, the classic Texas shuffle “Farther on Up the Road,” which is still performed regularly by seemingly every blues-based band in the state...



...The casually vindictive “Cry, Cry, Cry,” one of Bland’s best-ever performances, feeds his fine and mellow voice on the verses into hair-raising gospel squalls on the bridge...

http://www.emusic.com/music-news/spotlig...rs-singer/

Bobby passed away last June. From the NYT obit:

His vocals, punctuated by the occasional squalling shout, were restrained, exhibiting a crooner’s delicacy of phrasing and a kind of intimate pleading. He influenced everyone from the soul singers Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett to rock groups like the Allman Brothers and The Band. The rapper Jay-Z sampled Mr. Bland’s 1974 single “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” on his 2001 album, “The Blueprint.”

Mr. Bland’s signature mix of blues, jazz, pop, gospel and country music was a good decade in the making. His first recordings, made in the early 1950s, found him working in the lean, unvarnished style of Mr. King, even to the point of employing falsetto vocal leaps patterned after Mr. King’s. Mr. Bland’s mid-’50s singles were more accomplished; hits like “It’s My Life, Baby” and “Farther Up the Road” are now regarded as hard-blues classics, but they still featured the driving rhythms and stinging electric guitar favored by Mr. King and others. It wasn’t until 1958’s “Little Boy Blue,” a record inspired by the homiletic delivery of the Rev. C. L. Franklin, that Mr. Bland arrived at his trademark vocal technique.

“That’s where I got my squall from,” Mr. Bland said, referring to the sermons of Mr. Franklin — “Aretha’s daddy,” as he called him — in a 1979 interview with the author Peter Guralnick. “After I had that I lost the high falsetto. I had to get some other kind of gimmick, you know, to be identified with.”

The corresponding softness in Mr. Bland’s voice, a refinement matched by the elegant formal wear in which he appeared onstage, came from listening to records by pop crooners like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Perry Como.

Just as crucial to the evolution of Mr. Bland’s sound was his affiliation with the trumpet player and arranger Joe Scott, for years the director of artists and repertory for Duke Records in Houston. Given to dramatic, brass-rich arrangements, Mr. Scott, who died in 1979, supplied Mr. Bland with intricate musical backdrops that set his supple baritone in vivid relief.

The two men accounted for more than 30 Top 20 rhythm-and-blues singles for Duke from 1958 to 1968, including the No. 1 hits “I Pity the Fool” and “That’s the Way Love Is.”

...Though only four of his singles from these years — “Turn On Your Love Light,” “Call on Me,” “That’s the Way Love Is” and “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” — crossed over to the pop Top 40, Mr. Bland’s recordings resonated with the era’s blues-leaning rock acts. The Grateful Dead made “Love Light” a staple of their live shows. The Band recorded his 1964 single “Share Your Love With Me” for their 1973 album, “Moondog Matinee.” Van Morrison included a version of “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” on his 1974 live set, “It’s Too Late to Stop Now.”



Mr. Bland himself broke through to pop audiences in the mid-’70s with “His California Album” and its more middle-of-the-road follow-up, “Dreamer.”



But his greatest success always came in the rhythm-and-blues market, where he placed a total of 63 singles on the charts from 1957 to 1985. He signed with the Mississippi-based Malaco label in 1985 and made a series of well-received albums that appealed largely to fans of traditional blues and soul music.

Mr. Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 1997.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/arts/m...d=all&_r=0