Sharing a love of American standards

Carr, the daughter of big band-era musicians Nancy Carr and Nick Capezuto, grew up in Hingham taking her parents’ music for granted while she warmed to the pop music of her own day - bands like Jeff Beck and Aerosmith. Hadley, a Braintree “townie’’ who can’t remember when he wasn’t playing drums, came of age in an era of burgeoning rock, soul, R&B, and pop music excitement.

“I freaked out watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show,’’ he said.

As a drummer and band leader, he has toured nationally and internationally with artists ranging from Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie to Van Morrison and the Drifters.

As they grew as people and musicians, both Carr and Hadley developed a taste for the rich trove of show tunes and standards called “the Great American Songbook’’ - a musical tradition characterized by class, sophistication, and what Carr termed “complicated emotions.’’

Great names credited on “Common Thread’’ include George and Ira Gershwin (“They all Laughed’’), Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (“Small Hotel’’), Irving Berlin (“The Song is Ended’’), and Gillespie (the instrumental “I Waited for You’’), among other less famous but deserving songwriters.

Carr, called “a true jazz singer in a time of wannabes’’ by critic Nat Hentoff, and Hadley’s smooth 16-piece jazz band perform material made popular by such recording stars as Peggy Lee (“It’s a Big Wide Wonderful World’’), Frank Sinatra (“End of a Love Affair’’), Blossom Dearie, Nat King Cole (“I Understand’’), and Ella Fitzgerald (“No Moon at all’’). New arrangements were contributed by the highly regarded Adi Yeshaya.

The two have collaborated before, with Hadley producing two albums - “Tender Trap’’ and “Soon’’ - with small ensemble backing for Carr. The latter caused Hentoff to write two years ago in the Wall Street Journal, “I’ve rarely heard a jazz singer fuse so naturally and pleasurably with what are ordinarily called ‘sidemen.’ ’’ The new recording is their first album with a full big band.

The collaboration goes back seven years when Carr, who had been singing popular music in clubs, decided she wanted to get serious about her career and the way to do that was to perform the material that spoke to her. “I was older, I had more depth as a person. This genre had more for me,’’ Carr said. “The deeper you can look into [the standards], the more they have.’’

She asked Hadley, who was leading his own big band in addition to other projects, to produce her recordings, help her choose and arrange material, and serve as her jazz mentor. “He’s such a great educator,’’ she said.

Hadley said the excitement of working with someone who was a natural for big band material has made him reconstitute his band after mothballing it through most of a decade. “She sounds natural singing the standards. She has a great voice. She’s very subtle, has great instincts.’’

Another quality is her classic good taste, Hadley said. “She doesn’t oversing.’’

Hadley began his career by taking a year off college and going straight to work in clubs, developing his chops, listening to drummers from pop and jazz genres, and learning about swing-era bands like Duke Ellington’s. “I was totally in love with that music,’’ he said.

That admiration led him to form his big band in 1979. Recording with Carr in the last five years motivated him to revive it.

Carr’s love for the music led her this year to form a nonprofit organization called the American Big Band Preservation Society, whose mission is to educate young performers in the genre, promote the music through performances, and make publicly available unpublished big band arrangements.

For more information, go to www.americanbigband.org. Robert Knox can be reached at rc.knox2@gmail.com.