Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Barbara Jordan was born on July 13, 1951 in Montreal, Canada and when she was in her last year of high school she realized her singing ability. Her high school music teacher, Iwan Edwards, encouraged her to audition for the lead role of Laurie in the musical Oklahoma. Getting the part she received her first lessons in stage presence and delivering a song. She joined the high school choir, and took a vocal music class in her last year of high school.
Joining an acapella choir outside of school, she also spent five years in this choir performing around Montreal and touring Western Canada and competed in the Eisteddfod in Wales. Her professional musical career began as a folk singer prior to becoming a multi-lingual vocalist with several leading disco, pop and country/western bands in and around the Montreal area.
Settling in Toronto, Canada she has acquired a reputation over the years singing traditional and swing. She has continuously performed in clubs around the Toronto area, New York, and New Orleans, as well as at various jazz festivals in Ontario, Montana, St. Petersburg and Sarasota, Florida; Newcastle, England and Paris, France.
Trad jazz, dixieland and swing vocalist Barbara Jordan, whose influences were Mildred Bailey, Peggy Lee and Lee Wiley, continues to lead her quartet and appear regularly.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Thomas Jordan was born on July 8, 1908 in Brinkley, Arkansas. His father, James Aaron Jordan, was a music teacher and bandleader for the Brinkley Brass Band and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. His mother died when he was young and his grandmother Maggie Jordan and his aunt Lizzie Reid raised him. At an early age he studied clarinet and saxophone with his father and by his teens he was a member of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and was playing professionally in the late 1920s.
In the early Thirties he was performing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City with Charlie Gaines. He recorded with Clarence Williams and was a brief member of the Stuff Smith Orchestra. Joining the Chick Webb Orchestra he sang and played alto saxophone, however, in 1938 he started a band that recorded a year later as the Tympany Five.
In 1942, Jordan and his band moved to Los Angeles, California where he began making soundies, the precursors of music video. He appeared on many Jubilee radio shows and a series of programs for the Armed Forces Radio for distribution to American troops overseas. Though a hernia condition kept him out of the war his recordings made him very popular with both black and white soldiers.
During the 1940s Jordan and the band became popular with such hits as Choo Choo Ch’Boogie, Knock Me a Kiss, Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby, and Five Guys Named Moe. Within a year of his breakthrough, the Tympany Five’s appearance fee rose from $350 to $2,000 per night. But the breadth of Jordan’s success and the size of his combo had larger implications for the music industry. His raucous recordings were notable for the use of fantastical narrative, best exemplified on Saturday Night Fish Fry, a two-part 1950 hit that was split across both sides of a 78-rpm record. It was one of the first popular songs to use the word “rocking” in the chorus and to feature a distorted electric guitar.
From July 1946 through May 1947, Jordan had five consecutive number one songs, holding the top slot for 44 consecutive weeks. In 1961, the IRS filed an income tax lien against Jordan and he had to sell property well below its value to pay off his debts. Musician Ike Turner stepped in and contacted and convinced the president of Jordan’s booking agency in Chicago, Illinois. to send Jordan a check for $20,000. He was unaware of this deed.
Over his career he charted dozens of singles, eighteen #1 and fifty-four in the Top Ten. He ranked fifth among the most successful musicians of the period 1942~1995, however, many he did not own the rights to, hence no financial benefit. Saxophonist, multi~instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader Louis Jordan suffered a heart attack and transitioned on February 4, 1975, in Los Angeles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kitty White was born Kitty Jean Bilbrew on July 7, 1923 in Los Angeles, California. Raised in a musical family, her parents were singers, and her uncle was a well-known vaudevillian and disc jockey. Her twin sister, Maudie Jeanette, also sang and briefly worked with Duke Ellington’s revue, Jump for Joy, but never pursued an active career. Their mother, known as A.C. Bilbrew, organized an all-black chorus that performed in the 1929 film Hearts of Dixie.
She started her career at the age of sixteen as a singer and a pianist, appearing in local nightclubs around Los Angeles. Branching out she opened at the Black Orchid in Chicago, Illinois and was introduced to the executives of Mercury Records, where she became a recording artist.
Kitty picked up her catchy jazz name legitimately by marrying songwriter Eddie White in the 1940s. She moved to Palm Springs, California in 1967 and sang at the Spa Hotel for sixteen years.
Recording mostly on the West Coast, she worked with Buddy Collette, Gerald Wiggins, Chico Hamilton, Bud Shank and Red Callender. She sang many demo recordings for her friend, Los Angeles blues composer Jessie Mae Robinson, including I Went To Your Wedding, a No. 1 hit for Patti Page in 1953. She was also the sole female voice on Elvis Presley’s song Crawfish from the King Creole film soundtrack.
Vocalist Kitty White, who recorded eight albums as a leader and had two compilations released, transitioned in Palm Springs, at the age of 86 on August 11, 2009 after suffering a stroke.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patricia Adams was born on June 28th in Westchester, New York. She earned a Bachelor of Science and a Masters in Business Administration degrees in the 1960’s. She studied music theory, harmony, and improvisation at the New England Conservatory in Boston and at the Performing Arts School of Worcester in the Nineties. Her continued studies have led her to Semenya McCord, Dominique Eade, Frank Wilkins, Jim Carson, Jeannie Lovetri, Sheila Jordan and Kirk Nurock.
Stepping onto a nightclub stage for the first time in 1992 at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston, many open mics and pro bono gigs later, she traded her thirty-five year career in human resources management for life as a full time artist. Her venues now attract those who enjoy the jazz and blues standards of the 1930’s and ’40’s. She plays with some of the world’s renowned jazz artists, including Ray Santisi, Marshall Wood, Bob Moses, Joe Hunt, Bill Wurtzel, John Repucci, Frank Wilkins, Fred Hunter, Ross Schneider, Joe Lovano, Stanley C. Swann, III and the late Jimmy Hill, so far.
As an educator she is at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts with her leadership skills workshop for the entrepreneurial musician. Vocalist and bandleader Patricia Adams, who is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, also served on the board of the New England Conservatory, continues to perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Litsa Jane Davies was born on June 27, 1963 in Hampshire, England. Growing up in Poole, Dorset, she attended Harry Harbin school where her music teacher recognized her vocal talent. At 14 she was singing with him on jazz gigs and appeared locally on television in 1977. By 1979 she was gigging with pianist Mike Hatchard and the following year began a six-year stint with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. While with NYJO she sang on three albums, notably Why Don’t They Write Songs Like This Anymore?, which featured her throughout.
She performs with her own quintet and has toured with the European Jazz Orchestra. She has sung on radio with the BBC Big Band, the bands Night Owls and Bone Structure as well as her own group. During the early and mid-80s Litsa played festivals with her quintet, and sang with the Burch Trio and saxophonist Iain Ballamy. The following year she joined the cast of the London West End musical Chess at the Prince Edward Theatre going on to play the lead until the show closed in 1989. She continued to sing on BBC radio.
In 1990 Davies concentrated on raising her children while singing backup for Tom Jones and performing with various bands including the Ian Pearce Big Band, the Ross Mitchell Dance Orchestra and the Mark Graham Dance Band. By 1995 she reappeared with a week-long engagement at Ronnie Scott’s club.
Vocalist Litsa Davies, gifted with fine interpretative skills and intelligent phrasing, continues to deliver ballads and up-tempo songs with swing.
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