Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Helen Merrill was born Jelena Ana Milcetic on July 21, 1930 in New York City to Croatian immigrants. The internationally renowned jazz vocalist began singing in jazz clubs in the Bronx at the age of fourteen. By the time she was sixteen, she had taken up music full time and in 1952 made her recording debut when asked to sing “A Cigarette For Company” with the Earl Hines Band that was released on their Xanadu album.

As a result of this exposure she received two subsequent singles recorded for Roost Records and was then signed by Mercury for their new Emarcy label. In 1954, she recorded her first and one of her most acclaimed LP simply titled “Helen Merrill” featuring legendary jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown and bassist/cellist Oscar Pettiford, among others. The album was produced and arranged by Quincy Jones, who was then just twenty-one years old. The success of the album got her signed to an additional four-album contract with Mercury.

Her follow-up 1956 album Dream of You arranged by Gil Evans was the precursor to the musical foundations for his Miles Davis years. By the 60s she was in Europe touring and enjoying greater commercial success than in the States. Developing a following in Japan that remains strong to this day, she not only recorded in Japan, Merrill became involved in producing albums for Trio Records and hosting a show on a Tokyo radio station.

Helen returned to the U.S. in 1972 and has continued recording and regular touring since then. Her later career has seen her experiment in different music genres, recording a bossa nova album, a Christmas album a Rodgers and Hammerstein album, as well as resurrecting “Dream of You” in 1987 with fresh arrangements titled “Collaboration” and co-producing “Billy Eckstine Sings With Benny Carter” and singing on duet on two ballads. By 1995 she recorded “Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown in tribute to the late trumpeter.

Helen Merrill’s career has spanned six decades with no fade in her popularity and has recorded and performed with some of the most notable figures in the American jazz scene such as Chet Baker, San Getz and Romano Mussolini, among many, many others.

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