Marina Pacowski Scats with the Best of Them

This past March, Summit Records released Inner Urge, an album featuring French vocalist Marina Pacowski. If her scat singing has not yet ascended to the heights of Ella Fitzgerald at her most inventive, Pacowski shows sign of achieving that elevation. The only downside to her vocal work involves singing lyrics, not only in English but also in her native French. The timbre tends to be “top-loaded” with an excess of upper harmonics, leading to sonorities that are more evocative of Betty Boop (or Helen Kane, who inspired Boop’s creation by Fleischer Studios) than of Fitzgerald.

The good news is that, when Pacowski’s singing falls short of the mark, her accompanying instrumentalists fill in with their own imaginative improvisations. The bad news is that, at least according to the information on the Amazon.com Web page, the album does not have either a back cover or a booklet, meaning that there is no good way to keep track of which instrumentalists are playing what. On the other hand, the only serious lack of background information involved Pacowski’s scat improvisations for “Donna Lee,” which may (or may not) have been inspired by Charlie Parker or Miles Davis or both. Sadly, this is one of the shortest tracks on the album; but it is definitely worth the price of admission!