Daily Dose Of Jazz…
On May 12, 1964 Audrey Silver was born and raised in New York City, New York. She graduated from Brown University, where she founded The Higher Keys, the school’s first a capella singing group. After stints working in marketing for CBS Masterworks (now Sony Classical) and Chesky Records, she returned to school and earned an MBA from Columbia University Business School.
Beginning her singing career in earnest in 1998, she teamed with Jon Raney, son of pianist Jimmy Raney and produced her first demo with the help of Ronnie Zito and Jay Leonhart. In the meantime, she honed her craft through private study with singers Sheila Jordan and Mark Murphy. Building a respected career performing around the city’s jazz clubs and music venues, she also performed at national festivals and venues around the country.
She released her debut album Here In My Arms in 2004 and has since released three more, the last being before the pandemic. Silver was a 2016 semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. As a songwriter, it was her four year old son that opened that door for her and the stories began to pour out.
Vocalist Audrey Silver credits Bill Evans, Annie Lennox and Arnold Schoenberg as influences as she continues to grow her catalogue of originals and performing around the world.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Milton Suggs was born on April 15th in Chicago, Illinois as a third generation musician. While growing up in Atlanta, Georgia he was continually exposed to music of varying styles, especially with his church choir at the age of seven. He recognized music as a gift from a young age; it was later that he would accept it as a calling. While in elementary and middle school, he gravitated toward the upright bass and later played the alto saxophone and drums, however, it was not until after high school that he committed to the pursuit of music as his life’s work.
Returning to Chicago, he began studying piano with the legendary Willie Pickens, while also honing his craft as a vocalist and performer. In 2012 Milton moved to New York City where he immediately took to performing throughout the city, branching out internationally as a performer and educator.
His voice and approach to music are a reflection not only of his direct lineage, but of the many great voices in Black American Music and culture from the past century and beyond. Firmly rooted in the blues Milton sports a rich baritone with the breadth and power reminiscent of Joe Williams, Donny Hathaway, and Nat King Cole.
Downbeat Magazine’s annual critc’s poll has been repeatedly voted a top 10 rising star male vocalist. Sugg’s fixture in jazz is cemented having worked with artists and bands such as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Orrin Evans, Wycliffe Gordon, Ulysses Owens, and Marquis Hill among others.
Vocalist Milton Suggs has produced four albums to date and is continually developing new projects with new ensembles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alfred Wesley Hall was born on March 18, 1915 and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He played cello and tuba early in life before settling on bass at the age of 17. Moving to New York in 1936, Al played at different times through and into the Forties with Billy Hicks, Skeets Tolbert, and Teddy Wilson in both big band and small ensemble format.
Following time with Ellis Larkins and Mary Lou Williams, Hall took a job as a staff musician at CBS, working in Paul Baron’s orchestra on the Mildred Bailey Show. He also worked in Broadway theater pit orchestras for the next several decades. In 1946, he founded his own label, Wax Records, which was bought by Atlantic Records in 1949. He led five numbers on his own label in the mid Forties and four on Columbia Records Europe in 1959.
Hall had an extended partnership with Erroll Garner, playing with him intermittently from 1945 to 1963. He also played later in life with Benny Goodman in 1966, Hazel Scott, Tiny Grimes, and Alberta Hunter from 1977 to 1978, and Doc Cheatham. He recorded with Helen Merrill, Paul Quinichette, Duke Ellington, Harold Ashby, Eddie Condon, Della Reese, Teddy Wilson and numerous others.
Double bassist Al Hall, who recorded thirty albums as a sideman but none as a leader, transitioned on January 18, 1988.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carri Coltrane was born Carrie Thompson in Phoenix, Arizona on March 14, 1953. Singing professionally since childhood, she was only nine when she joined Wallace & Ladmo, a children’s program that was founded by her father. The program aired in the Phoenix Area from 1954 to 1989 and she remained with the show until she reached adolescence and outgrew her role as a little girl singer.
She moved to Seattle, Washington in 1979 and went on to sing with various rock and pop bands as an adult, and did quite a few jingles for commercials along the way. While living in Seattle she met Eugene McDaniels who really encouraged her to explore straight-ahead jazz. Carri eventually became friends and partners with McDaniels and formed Numoon Publishing with him. They have put out several allbums on the Numoon label that included jazz, contemporary pop and Christmas music.
Carri released her self-titled debut album in 1980 under her birth name. It wasn’t until 1986 that she started going by Carri Coltrane as an homage to the tenor saxophonist. She moved to New England in 1987.
Vocalist Carri Coltrane, whose subtle waifish introspection continues to perform, record and publish her music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ann Burton was born Johanna Rafalowicz on March 4, 1933 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. When she was 3 years old her mother married a diamond worker and in 1938 her surname was changed to her stepfather’s and she became Johanna de Paauw, which was her official name until 1971, when she again changed it back to Rafalowicz.
During World War II her family faced Jewish persecution under the German occupation and she went into hiding while her mother and stepfather survived the Nazi concentration camps. However, the family became disrupted when her stepparents were deprived of parental power. Johanna, who had Polish nationality, acquired Dutch nationality in 1957.
Johanna never had singing lessons, but she had listened to American singers like Doris Day, Jo Stafford, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. Later, Billie Holiday and Shirley Horn influenced her. She wanted to get into the music world and so in about 1955 she took the name Ann Burton inspired by the Welsh actor Richard Burton.
Ann Burton began her career as a singer with a quintet in Luxemburg. She sang with bandleader Johnny Millstonford and performed in clubs with the orchestra of Ted Powder for American soldiers in Germany.
In the summer of 1958 she sang in the quartet of pianist Pia Beck in Scheveningen and in 1960 they toured with saxophonist Piet Noordijk in Spain and Morocco. Returning home she continued singing and in 1965 she made an EP for Decca Records with the nl:Frans Elsen Trio. Later she joined Ramses Shaffy’s group Shaffy Chantant.
The late sixties saw Ann getting noticed by John J. Vis, the director of the record company Artone, who produced her first album Blue Burton in 1967. She became popular and the album received an Edison Award in 1969. A few more records in 1969 and 1972 were released in collaboration with John Vis.
In 1973, she toured Japan, where she became the most popular jazz singer, second only to Ella Fitzgerald. She made numerous albums with Masahiko Sato and Ken McCarthy and others. In the late seventies she worked in New York, where she made several albums, some of which were with Grady Tate and Buster Williams with singer Helen Merrill producing the albums. For “New York State of Mind” Burton also received an Edison award.
In the eighties she founded her own record label, Burtone, that produced her albums. During the period 1986–1988 she taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory.
Vocalist Ann Burton, who recorded twenty-one albums, transitioned at the age of 56 due to throat cancer on November 29, 1989 in Amsterdam.
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