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  Biography...






“It’s so nice to finally hear someone who knows what they’re doing!”


—Legendary jazz vocalist Laurel Watson
(Basie, Ellington, Sonny Stitt)





E. J. Decker


New York City in the mid- to late-’90s produced an amazing group of talented jazz vocalists. After years of supporting each other's gigs, helping each other network and find new clubs and talented sidemen, singers such as Kendra Shank, Diane Hubka, Jody Sandhaus, Barbara Sfraga, Dena DeRose, Mary Pearson and Roseanna Vitro are all enjoying well-deserved accolades.

Now, E. J. Decker, another from this group, emerges with a stunning debut album entitled While the City Sleeps..., released on the Candela Records (EJ9265) label.



What most likely sets E. J. apart from other singers today is that voice. E. J. possesses one of the most powerful and resonant baritone voices on the jazz scene today. Or perhaps, it’s that 6’5” frame of his. Either way, listeners are pulled into an artist’s vision of life’s joys and heartaches. One that's as compelling to feel as it is pleasurable to listen to. Few male singers today can match either E. J.’s commitment to telling the story within the lyric or that gorgeous voice.

Stylistically, E. J. is often compared to Arthur Prysock, Billy Eckstine or Johnny Hartman. Vocally, he has been compared to the rock baritones, such as Elvis Presley and Bill Medley (of the Righteous Brothers). However, E. J. has created a rich sound and sensibility completely his own, sliding smoothly from penthouse to roadhouse.



Born in 1950, E. J. describes growing up in a musical household:

“I was just born at a very lucky time for a singer. My mother played piano, and my father was a big band singer and sang briefly with Tommy Dorsey before WWII. That's where I got the pipes from. So, I grew up with ‘30s and ‘40s music around the house all the time. My dad made sure we heard everything. That's why I ended up dragging my date and a bunch of friends to go see Duke Ellington after our high school prom! It was towards the end of his life, so I didn't care; I wasn't gonna miss seeing Duke Ellington for anything!


"Because of my older brothers, I heard lots of ‘50s R&B and early ‘60s rock and jazz and folk music. And that's even before all the Soul and Psychedelic music I listened to when I hit my teens. So, yeah, as a singer I’ve had close to seventy years' worth of music to draw on here. And if you grew up in the New York area when I did, you heard all those styles on the radio. I mean, WNEW-AM, WHN, and the rock stations, WMCA and WABC, and later, the FM stations. Up and down the dial: Ella Fitzgerald, The Flamingoes, Odetta, Sammy Davis Jr., The Beatles, or Dick Haymes or The Chambers Brothers or Roger Miller—it never seemed to matter. You heard it all! And it all just fit together...

"Great example—one night, I saw Procol Harum at the Fillmore East; then, driving home, I'm listening to Mel Torme on the radio. It was all just music. And I was a sponge, just soaking it up.

“There was one time—I was a kid, about fourteen, I think,” E. J. added, laughing, “I remember listening to Tommy Roe on the car radio as my oldest brother and his friend dragged me to this concert, and forced me to hear Thelonius Monk, the Dave Brubeck Quartet and Jimmy Smith—all three playing on the same bill! Whew! Try explaining all THAT to the kids in school the next day.”



Striking out on his own, E. J. spent years singing lead in rock bands and soul groups, and spent a number of years in the early Seventies on the folk music circuit, playing festivals and cafes. He also spent years acting in theater and on television, appearing regularly in the early Eighties on NBC's now-departed soaper, Texas.

As he matured, however, E. J. slowly came 'round to his father's material.


Indeed, today E. J. glides easily from jazz through pop to standards to rock to folk to ‘50s R&B to blues—and may well be the strongest, purest male interpreter of ballads of this generation—while maintaining a consistency of sound and feel that marks it immediately as an E. J. Decker piece. As reviewers and fans alike maintain, he definitely has his own sound. When he performs live, any given set may contain songs by composers as diverse as the Gershwins, Cole Porter or Billy Strayhorn. Or just as possibly, Ivory Joe Hunter, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams or the Beatles, or even one of the many songs he has written himself—all filtered through E. J.'s unique sensibility. Misquoting Billy Joel with a smile, E. J. says, “It’s all rock ‘n’ roll to me.” Given his background, it’s no surprise then that E. J.’s style has been described as “biker Gershwin.”



Somewhat more reclusive in recent years than his peers, E. J. has sung in most of the jazz venues of New York, including: both the uptown and midtown Birdlands, J’s, The Garage, The Cornelia St. Cafe, Cleopatra’s Needle, The Squire, Triad, The Savoy, Chez Suzette, The Redeye Grill and Zinno’s, among others. He is also one of the rare vocalists ever booked into that legendary Columbia University jazz haunt, Augie’s, which is now the jazz club Smoke. He’s had the honor to sing with such talents as Randy Sandke, David Lahm, Manny Duran, Dena DeRose, Bob Kindred, Joe Vincent Tranchina, Ratzo Harris, Eric Lewis, Don Friedman, Peggy Stern, Les Kurtz, Sean Smith, and the late Terri Thornton and Johnny "Tasty" Parker—again, among many others.




E. J. was deeply honored years ago when Danny Traynor, the owner of the famous Chelsea-area club, The Squire, asked him—out of all of the talented artists who had played there over the years—to sing the final song on the club’s closing night. Said Danny, “I like the way you sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ and I want that to be the last song I ever hear in here!” E. J. gladly obliged. When the last night found the club piano-less, but filling quickly with musician friends, E. J. organized an impromptu voice / trumpet / bass rendition of "Amazing Grace" which sent The Squire off to its fitting glory.



The September Concert is a non-profit organization which places free music in parks, shops and restaurants across New York City each September 11th—to commemorate what's been lost, and to embrace the future. In 2005, E. J. was asked to produce the first-ever jazz component for S.C.'s fifth anniversary, and assembled over 30 top NYC jazz musicians, who donated their time and talents over the course of a 7-hour concert.

E. J. also is a member of Actors' Equity Association and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).

E. J. currently serves as the New York president of the Jazz Vocal Coalition.



Now, we have the release of E. J.s debut album, While the City Sleeps... (EJ9265) on the Candela Records label.

"This is a 'night' album. So, more important than anything else, I think, was getting the ‘feel’ right—that’s the prime driver, ‘the truth,’ if you will, of the night. The joy; the sorrow; the sex; the loneliness; the romance; the possibility; the sheer anonymity of it.

"I'd like to think we captured some of that."



While the City Sleeps...

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