Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carmen Mercedes McRae was born on April 8, 1920 in Harlem, New York City to Jamaican immigrant parents. She began studying piano at eight and the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington filled her home. Drawing inspiration from Billie Holiday, whom she met at 17, she developed and established her own distinctive voice. As a teenager she came to the attention of longtime Holiday collaborator Teddy Wilson and his composer wife, Irene Kitchings Wilson and through their influence Billie recorded her early composition “Dream of Life”.
In her late teens and early twenties, McRae worked as a secretary, sang as a chorus girl, played piano at Harlem’s famous Minton’s Playhouse where she met Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke. By 1944 she was playing piano with Benny Carter, working with Count Basie and made her first recording as a pianist with Mercer Ellington between 1946-47. But it was her meeting of Milt Gabler that got her signed to Decca and over the next five years she produced twelve albums.
A four-year stint in Chicago from 1948 to 1952 gave her, in her own words, “Those years in Chicago gave me whatever I have now… That’s the most prominent schooling I ever had.” Upon her return to New York she landed the record contract that launched her career and got her voted best new female vocalist by Down Beat magazine.
Carmen McRae enjoyed an opulent career that would span fifty years producing memorable albums with composer Noel Coward, Sammy Davis Jr., Dave Brubeck, George Shearing, Louis Armstrong, Cal Tjader and Betty Carter. She never performed without singing at least one song associated with Lady Day and recorded tribute albums to Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and Sarah Vaughan. She sang in jazz clubs throughout the U.S. and around the world, performed at the North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals and was a seven-time invitee to the Monterey’s Jazz Festival. She recorded over 60 albums and it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretations of lyrics that made her memorable.
Refusing to quit smoking, she was forced to retire in 1991 due to emphysema and on November 10, 1994 Carmen McRae, singer, composer, pianist and actress died in Beverly Hills, California from a stroke following complications from respiratory illness. She was 74.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billie Holiday was born Elinore Harris on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a single mother who often left her to be raised by relatives. Surviving a tumultuous childhood in and out of reform schools, it was while working in a brothel at fourteen that she first heard the songs of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. She soon teamed up with tenor saxophonist Kenneth Hollan and changing her name to Billie Holiday, her first taken from an actress she admired and taking her father Clarence last name. For the next two years played clubs like Grey Dawn, Pod’s and Jerry’s and the Brooklyn Elks Club. Replacing Monette Moore in 1933 at Govan’s gave producer John Hammond his first opportunity to hear her and he quickly set up a recording session with Benny Goodman who had heard her two years earlier.
By 1935 she was recording with Teddy Wilson which produced “What A Little Moonlight Can Do” and Miss Brown To You” and established Billie as a major vocalist. Under the Brunswick label during the 1930’s and 40’s, Wilson and Holiday revolutionized improvising melodies to fit the emotion of the lyric and these recordings caught singers attention nationwide who began imitating Billie’s light, rhythmic style.
Among the musicians who accompanied her frequently was her friend tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who dubbed her “Lady Day” and she in turn nicknamed him “Prez”. She also worked with Count Basie and Artie Shaw during this period; the latter arrangement of working with an all-white band went against the tenor of the times. Throughout her career she co-wrote notable jazz standards “God Bless The Child”, Don’t Explain”, Fine and Mellow”, “Lady Sings The Blues” and made “Easy Living” and “Strange Fruit” her signatures. Turbulence followed her from her childhood into adulthood with failed marriages, drug addiction, incarceration and the revocation of her cabaret card prohibiting her from working in New York City.
Arrested for drug possession while she lay dying of cirrhosis of the liver in New York City’s Metropolitan Hospital, she passed away on July 17, 1959. Billie Holiday’s well-trained ear, distinct delivery, masterful improvisation and infallible technique left a profoundly essential impressive catalogue of music that has influenced countless generations of jazz singers.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
I Married An Angel opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theater on May 11, 1938. Running for three hundred and thirty-eight performances, the musical starred Dennis King, Audrie Christie, Vera Zorina and Vivienne Segal. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart composed the score from which emerged Spring Is Here as another jazz standard.
The Story: The musical tells the story of a banker and ladies man who breaks off his engagement, swearing he will marry an angel. A real angel promptly flies into his life and he marries her. But her angelic honesty causes no end to problems for him until his sister teaches the angel the way of the cynical world. His sister also bribes a cab driver to delay creditors until a way is found to save her brother’s bank.
Jazz History: On the Street of Jazz musicians, jazz lovers, college students and big businessmen—everybody knew that this was “The Street that Never Slept,” the street where every night was New Year’s Eve. Here, for the price of a drink or two, you could walk through the whole history of jazz. Hot jazz was born and raised on The Street, as were the big swing bands of the thirties and the modern “cool” jazz combos of the forties. Comics like Alan King and Joey Adams got their start here, as did musicians like Erroll Garner, Jack Teagarden, and Coleman Hawkins.
Bessie Smith performed on the Street, as did Count Basie, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Sarah Vaughn, the Dorsey Brothers, Artie Shaw, and other jazz greats. The Street gave birth in Prohibition-era speakeasies, where musicians jammed for gin or just for the fun of it and its post-Repeal blossoming as the center of the jazz universe. The Street lined up and down on both sides with tiny, smoke-filled rooms where black and white musicians played to capacity crowds long before its postwar decline to become a tawdry tenderloin of strip and clip joints.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Rouse was born on April 6, 1924 in Washington, DC. He played tenor saxophone and flute, developing a distinctive nasal tone complimenting a bop-oriented style. Rouse moved very little, looked straight-ahead and wore a solemn expression when he played. He became highly influential by association with Thelonious Monk from 1959 to 1970. He would later become a founding member of Sphere, a band that paid tribute to Monk’s music.
Throughout the forties Rouse worked with Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, made his recording debut with Tadd Dameron, and as the 50’s opened he was a part of Count Basie’s octet, and worked with Clifford Brown and Oscar Pettiford. He co-led the Jazz Modes with Julius Watkins and would go on to work with Mal Waldron. He would record, as a leader gaining some recognition by the eighties; with Carmen McRae on her classic Carmen Sings Monk project, and his last recording would be a Monk tribute concert.
The hard bop tenor and flautist died of lung cancer at the age of 64 in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1988. Coincidently, Monk’s patroness NIca de Koenigswarter died the same day in New York City.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Stan Levey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 5, 1926, the son of a car salesman and boxing promoter. A self-taught prodigy, at age 16 Levey went to a local club where Dizzy Gillespie was headlining and convinced him to let him sit in on drums. So impressed was Dizzy that he offered the youngster an opportunity to join the group full-time. Taking some heat for recruiting a white, Jewish 16 year old to anchor his band, Dizzy simply responded – “show me a better black drummer and I’ll hire him”.
Levey joined the group, relocated to New York City with Dizzy, joined a small band led by Coleman Hawkins featuring Thelonious Monk, cut his first recording session with Art Tatum, played with Ben Webster and sat in with Woody Herman’s First Herd when regular drummer was unavailable.
In 1945 Levey joined Charlie Parker’s Quintet and when Dizzy and Charlie joined forces later that year they kept Levey and brought in bassist Al Haig and pianist Curly Russell. Considered the first and most innovative bebop lineup in history and it was during this period that classic standards like “A Night In Tunisia”, “Manteca” and Groovin’ High” were written.
During the late 40’s Levey toured with Norman Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic, in 1951 returned to Philly and formed his own band, worked five years with Stan Kenton, settled on the West coast joining Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All Stars and his drumming would influence the emerging West Coast jazz sound. He increased his session playing backing the likes of Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Holiday and Streisand. He played on over three hundred soundtracks for television and film, and turned his passion for photography into shooting a number of record covers.
Levey retired from music in 1973 to pursue his love of photography and he covered everything from fashion spreads to industrial photos to record jackets. On April 19, 2005 he passed away in Van Nuys, California at the age of 79. He never returned to music.
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