# Can you think of any raspy voiced opera singers???



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Unlike most of you very likely I also like pop music and many pop singers have what I'd call a raspy sound. My voice hurts very quickly if I try to mimic this but they make whole careers with this sound. Singers with this sound include Aretha, Michael McDonald, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Durante, Sylvester, Loletta Holiday, the lead male singer with Lime. Michael Bolton did his pop renditions of opera arias with this type of sound, but of course he was miked. The only singer I can think of who's sound approached this in the opera world might have been very early Marilyn Horne when her vibrato was impossibly fast. Can any of you think of anyone? I know this is an odd question.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Gerhard Stoltze made a virtue out of his raspy voice. He sang Mime (for Solti and Karajan) and other character roles. Mind you, one reviewer said, "Hearing Stoltze's whining, snivelling Mime makes one wonder what possessed him to become an opera singer!"


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Unlike most of you very likely I also like pop music and many pop singers have what I'd call a raspy sound. My voice hurts very quickly if I try to mimic this but they make whole careers with this sound. Singers with this sound include Aretha, Michael McDonald, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Durante, Sylvester, Loletta Holiday, the lead male singer with Lime. Michael Bolton did his pop renditions of opera arias with this type of sound, but of course he was miked. The only singer I can think of who's sound approached this in the opera world might have been very early Marilyn Horne when her vibrato was impossibly fast. Can any of you think of anyone? I know this is an odd question.


for pop singers, Bonney Tyler comes to mind immediately

to answer your question, most Wagner sopranos come off kind of raspy to me (well, more like screechy, like they're making sound by scraping 2 pieces of steel together....yuck!)


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> for pop singers, Bonney Tyler comes to mind immediately
> 
> to answer your question, most Wagner sopranos come off kind of raspy to me (well, more like screechy, like they're making sound by scraping 2 pieces of steel together....yuck!)


Bonney Tyler definitely. I don't understand how they make this sound. Flagstad was never raspy;-)


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Pop/rock singer Rod Stewart but don't know any opera singers who sound like that.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Stewart actually has an album of old standards and is really quite good singing them. I wonder if someone with a voice like Stewart had received vocal training for the operatic stage if that signature raspy sound would vanish. I don't know if it is a natural or a cultivated sound. Thanks for putting up with my musings.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Stewart actually has an album of old standards and is really quite good singing them. I wonder if someone with a voice like Stewart had received vocal training for the operatic stage if that signature raspy sound would vanish. I don't know if it is a natural or a cultivated sound. Thanks for putting up with my musings.


Not a case of 'putting up' with your musings. I think we opera fans are usually interested in anything connected with the voice. I know I'm fascinated by singers' voices.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

I know Louis Armstrong didn't start out as a singer primarily, but I've always been bemused by why anyone finds that awful phlegmy sound remotely acceptable as a singing voice. Jimmy Durante's fine by me though- he was a comedian, so nobody listens to his records for the sensual pleasure of a beautiful voice. Plenty of singers suffered from hoarseness in their later years, but I don't think that's what the OP means. The one name that suggests itself is Dmitri Smirnov, whose voice always reminds me of a rusty hinge. Other people don't seem to notice his raspiness, or else it doesn't seem to bother them, so perhaps it's me, but it stops me listening to his records more than once in a blue moon.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Another one: Tadeusz Leliwa, though really only on the low notes. (Not an uncommon problem for tenors to have low notes that were less powerful and/or beautiful than the rest of the voice.) Of course, we can probably assume that Smirnov and Leliwa sounded better in the theatre than they do on records.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Not aware of any raspy opera singers, but the raspy voice is an asset in some non-classical such as Johnny Winter.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Always think of Rochester when this comes up. Can't remember him singing anything...


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

I always thought Bob Dylan had a raspy voice and only approximated singing. But a conductor friend pointed out to me recently that he hits the note then trails off in a very deliberate musical device. I haven't cared enough to go back and listen again, because of whole batch of new CDs has arrived, , but I defer to my friend's musical judgment.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Stewart actually has an album of old standards and is really quite good singing them. I wonder if someone with a voice like Stewart had received vocal training for the operatic stage if that signature raspy sound would vanish. I don't know if it is a natural or a cultivated sound. Thanks for putting up with my musings.


I have a bit of a "thing" for Rod Stewart's voice and own one of his "American Songbook" CDs (the one on which he and Cher sing "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" -- very entertaining!). I agree with you that he does a great job with those songs. That said, I don't think you'll find any raspy voiced opera singers because, as you suggest, classical training discourages any rasp or breathiness. The most you'd find, I think, is a singer who occasionally gets hoarse because of allergies or forcing.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Heh-heh. Joe Cocker, anyone?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Steatopygous said:


> I always thought Bob Dylan had a raspy voice and only approximated singing. But a conductor friend pointed out to me recently that he hits the note then trails off in a very deliberate musical device. I haven't cared enough to go back and listen again, because of whole batch of new CDs has arrived, , but I defer to my friend's musical judgment.


Well, a lot of his 90s and 2000s stuff was pretty raspy with his smoke-damaged voice. I was suprised that his voice sounds much better with his recent album of Frank Sinatra songs. Maybe he quit smoking a few years ago and it improved.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I will ask my sister the opera singer what she thinks. I just got a reply and she said a trained voice would never sound that way.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

Figleaf said:


> I know Louis Armstrong didn't start out as a singer primarily, but I've always been bemused by why anyone finds that awful phlegmy sound remotely acceptable as a singing voice. .


Beautiful diction, masterful rhythm and full of character. I hadn't realised his was a 'marmite' voice.

You can say what you like about Luis, but in my company it had better be complimentary! 

Wonderful quirky version of arguably the greatest popular song of all. And yes kids he uses a word that was not invented by Deep Purple in the 1970's.






Back to the tread. I feel many of these types of voices in popular music are whites trying to sound 'soulful' and to my mind Cocker and Tyler to name just two, sound forced and obviously acted. I love the young Rod Stewart but even he admits he was trying to sound like Sam Cooke. Dylan is a wonderful one off but it's hardly "bel canto".


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Belowpar said:


> Beautiful diction, masterful rhythm and full of character. I hadn't realised his was a 'marmite' voice.
> 
> You can say what you like about Luis, but in my company it had better be complimentary!
> 
> ...


That Stardust performance is interesting because his phrasing is that of a distinguished musician, but the voice is one that I would have assumed was by common consent suitable only for comedy/novelty purposes. I was obviously wrong about the common consent part, perhaps misled by his 'selling out' in later years and making bad pop records such as 'What a Wonderful World'. (I once lived above an eccentric medical student who would play that record ON A LOOP for ages but would complain vociferously if I ever played John McCormack.) My favourite Stardust is a 1930s one by Bing Crosby (who was influenced by both Armstrong and McCormack inter alia, and also later sold out to a far more outrageous extent than Louis ever did) and though his voice is not entirely innocent of rasp, he uses it as a device rather than a constant feature, so it doesn't bother me to the same extent.

I totally agree about the white singers trying to sound black thing. Bad idea, always comes off as affected- although I'm not enough of an aficionado of post 1940s pop to know whose influence is being channelled, and until this thread had no idea why Rod Stewart put on that silly voice. (Still waiting for an explanation of the hairstyle. ) I was trying to think of an example from pop music of a black singer trying to sound white and came up with only one, Leslie 'Hutch' Hutchinson. Goodness knows how his sound was arrived at, but I don't think African American music can take much of the credit/ blame!


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

I'm sure Hutch was singing for his audience and his material benefitted from excellent diction. Two others you could add to that school Bobby Short (although he retained his rasp) and the extraordinary Mabel Mercer. I saw Bobby Short and it was truly amazing - never seen so much energy.






However the apotheosis of this was surely 25 years ago. All the white kids where I live were talking as they imagined kids in Harlem did. Meanwhile the biggest star in the world Michael Jackson was applying 'whiteface', employing rock drummers and had truly left the Church.

I detest Wonderful World and All the Time..It really saddens me that people associate them with Louis.

I'm not being deliberately obtuse but I must confess, my blindspot is Bing! Will try again

Do you prefer 31 or 39?


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## Tedski (Jul 8, 2015)

Florestan said:


> but the raspy voice is an asset in some non-classical such as Johnny Winter.


TV and radio commercial producers evidently value it also. That's the one thing that always grates on me when I hear male singers extolling the virtues of beer or automobiles. They always use sandpaper-voiced singers to suggest mucho macho manliness.


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