All the best of the unique “Whispering” Jack Smith, whose voice and style epitomise the spirit of the Twenties. A quintessential voice of the “Jazz Age”, American crooner Whispering Jack Smith (1896-1950) became just as popular in England as in the States, with his unique intimate half-singing, half-talking manner that, the story goes, he was forced to develop by an exploding gas shell in World War I.