Daily Dose OF Jazz…
Blossom Dearie was born April 28, 1924 in East Durham, New York and as a child she studied Western classical piano but switched to jazz in her teens. After high school Dearie moved to New York City to pursue a music career and began to sing in groups such as the Blue Flames with the Woody Herman Orchestra and the Alvino Rey’s Blue Reys before starting her solo career.
She moved to Paris in 1952 and formed a vocal group, the Blue Stars of Paris, which included Michel Legrand’s sister Christine and Bob Dorough. In 1954 the group had a hit in France with a French version of “Lullaby of Birdland”. The Blue Stars would later evolve into the Swingle Sisters. Interestingly, on her first solo album released two years later, she plays the piano but does not sing.
After returning to the U.S. Blossom, Dearie made her first six American albums as a solo singer and pianist for Verve Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s, mostly in a small trio or quartet setting. In 1962, she recorded a radio commercial for Hires Root Beer. Through the Sixties she recorded with orchestra, performed in supper clubs around New York, appeared at Ronnie Scott’s in London and recorded four albums in the UK.
After a period of inactivity, by the ‘’70s she established her own label, Daffodil Records, lent her voice to “Mother Necessity” and “Figure Eight” on “Schoolhouse Rock!” and she collaborated with Johnny Mercer on one of his final songs “My New Celebrity Is You”. Her voice and songs have been featured in such films as Kissing Jessica Stein, The Squid and the Whale, My Life Without Me and The Adventures of Felix.
Blossom Dearie, vocalist, pianist and one of the last remaining supper-club performers, continued to perform in clubs until shortly before she passed away on February 7, 2006 at age 84 in Greenwich Village, New York.
Dose A Day-Blues Away