The Quarantined Jazz Voyager
The Delta variant is causing a rise in new cases of Covid~19 and is much easier to contract. The modus operandi of the day is continuing my exercise of social distancing, quarantining myself at home and wearing my mask whenever I am in public places. I hope you are doing the same.
I offer up my latest selection is the tenth album and sixth on Concord from Nnenna Freelon. It is her 2005 album Blueprint Of A Lady: Sketches Of Billie Holiday. It was her tribute to the late great vocalist. The album was recorded March~April 2005 at the Fantasy Studio in Berkeley, California, and released on the Concord Jazz label that same year.
Though her arrangements may not reflect the melodies we are historically familiar with, Freelon has an inimitable way of taking us on a journey that brings her own sensibilities to interpret these songs with refreshing renditions that may appeal to old fans and hopefully garner new enthusiasts.
Track Listing | 1:02:46
- I Didn’t Know What Time It Was (Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers) ~ 4:18
- What a Little Moonlight Can Do (Harry M. Woods) ~ 5:13
- Don’t Explain (Billie Holiday, Arthur Herzog, Jr.) ~ 4:03
- God Bless the Child (Holiday, Herzog) ~ 5:21
- Strange Fruit (Abel Meeropol) ~ 2:20
- Willow Weep For Me (Ann Ronell) ~ 2:52
- Balm in Gilead (Traditional) ~ 4:49
- Them There Eyes (Maceo Pinkard, Doris Tauber, William Tracey) ~ 5:09
- Only You Will Know (Nnenna Freelon, Brandon McCune) ~ 3:41
- You’ve Changed (Bill Carey, Carl Fischer) ~ 5:24
- Now or Never (Billie Holiday, Curtis Reginald Lewis) ~ 2:55
- Lover Man (Jimmy Davis, Roger (Ram) Ramirez, James Sherman) ~ 4:14
- Left Alone (Billie Holiday, Mal Waldron) – 5:02
- Little Brown Bird (Interlude) (Nnenna Freelon, Brandon McCune) ~ 1:32
- All of Me (Gerald Marks, Seymour Simons) ~ 5:53
- Nnenna Freelon ~ arranger, producer, vocals
- Brandon McCune ~ arranger, fender rhodes, Hammond B3, piano, trumpet
- Beverly Botsford ~ arranger, percussion
- Wayne Batchelor ~ arranger, acoustic bass guitar, acoustic bass
- Kinah Boto ~ drums
- André Bush, Julian Lage ~ guitar
- Doug Lawrence ~ tenor saxophone
- Christian Scott ~ trumpet
- Jessica Ivry ~ cello
- Mary Fettig ~ alto flute, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, rhythm arrangements
- John Clayton ~ horn arrangements
- Nnenna Freelon/Ed Keane – producer
- Josiah Gluck – engineer, audio engineer, mixing
- Jesse Nichols – assistant engineer, mixing
- Nick Phillips – audio production, producer
- George Horn – mastering
- Abbey Anna – art direction
- Terri Apanasewicz – hair stylist
- Rudy Calvo – make-up
- Danielle Brancazio – package design
- Randee Saint Nicholas – photography
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kay Star was born Catherine Laverne Starks on July 21, 1922 on a reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma, to an Iroquois Native American father and an Irish/Native American mother. The family moved to Dallas when her father got a job at the Automatic Sprinkler Company,and herer mother raised chickens, whom the young girl serenaded in the coop. When her aunt Nora heard her 7-year-old niece she arranged for her to sing on a Dallas radio station, WRR. Finishing 3rd one week in a talent contest, she placed first every week thereafter. When given a 15-minute radio show, she sang pop and country songs and by age 10 she was making $3 a night during the Great Depression.
The family moved to Memphis, Tennessee where she continued performing on the radio singing Western swing music and a mix of country and pop. While working for Memphis radio station WMPS, misspellings in her fan mail inspired her and her parents to change her name to “Kay Starr”.
By the age of 15, she was singing with the Joe Venuti Orchestra, then went on to work with Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller, who hired her to replace the ill Marion Hutton. After finishing high school, she moved to Los Angeles, California and signed with Wingy Manone’s band. In 1943 she sang with Charlie Barnet’s ensemble, retiring for a year after contracting pneumonia and later developing nodes on her vocal cords as a result of fatigue and overwork.
By 1946 Starr had a solo career and a year later signed a contract with Capitol Records, who also had Peggy Lee, Ella Mae Morse, Jo Stafford, and Margaret Whiting on their roster. In 1948 with a union strike she was left with old songs no of the female singers wanted to record.
In 1950 Kay returned home, heard a recording of Bonaparte’s Retreatby fiddler Pee Wee King. Contacting Roy Acuff’s publishing house in Nashville, got his permission to record the song, he wrote some lyrics and it became her bigget hit selling close to a million in sales. Signing with RCA Victor Records she hit the top ten with My Heart Reminds Me, then returned to Capitol and most of her songs had jazz influences.
After leaving Capitol for a second time in 1966, Starr continued touring the US and the UK, recorded several jazz and country albums on small independent labels including How About This, a 1968 album with Count Basie. By the late Eighties she performed in the revue 3 Girls with Helen O’Connell and Margaret Whiting, and in 1993 she toured the United Kingdom as part of Pat Boone’s April Love Tour. Her first live album, Live at Freddy’s, was released in 1997 and she sang with Tony Bennett on his album Playin’ with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues.
Vocalist Kay Starr, who recorded thirty~six albums, passed away from complications of Alzheimer’s disease on November 3, 2016 in Los Angeles at the age of 94. On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed her among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Buddy Clark was born Samuel Goldberg on July 26, 1912 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, He made his big band singing debut in 1932 as a tenor, with Gus Arnheim’s orchestra, but was not successful. Singing baritone he gained wider notice in 1934 with Benny Goodman on the Let’s Dance radio program. From 1936 to 1938 he performed on the show Your Hit Parade.
In the mid-1930s he signed with Vocalion Records, having a top-20 hit with Spring Is Here. He continued recording, appearing in movies, and dubbing other actors’ voices until he entered the military, but did not have another hit until the late 1940s. In 1946 he signed with Columbia Records, scoring his biggest hit with the song Linda. 1947 saw hits for Clark with How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”, Peg O’ My Heart, An Apple Blossom Wedding, and I’ll Dance at Your Wedding. A duet with Doris Day, Love Somebody, sold a million recordsand reaching #1 on the charts. Through the Forties decade he had nine more chart hits untilhis death.
Vocalist Buddy Clark, who was a popular crooner during the big band era, passed away in a plane crash on Beverly Boulevard in West Los Angeles, California on October 1, 1949.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ellen Radka Toneff was born on June 25, 1952 in Oslo, Norway. She was the daughter of the Bulgarian folk singer, pilot and radio technician Toni Toneff, and grew up in Lambertseter and Kolbotn. She studied music at Oslo Musikkonservatorium (1971–75), combined with playing in the jazz rock band Unis.
From 1975 to 1980 she led her own Radka Toneff Quintet, with a changing lineup including musicians like Arild Andersen, Jon Balke, Jon Eberson and Jon Christensen, among others. From 1979 she cooperated with Steve Dobrogosz, and in 1980 she participated in the Norwegian national final of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Parken by Ole Paus.
Toneff was awarded the Spellemannsprisen 1977 in the category best vocal for the album Winter Poem, and posthumously received the Norwegian Jazz Association’s Buddypris in 1982. The Radka Toneff Memorial Award is funded with royalties from the albums Fairytales and Live in Hamburg. A biography of her life was published in 2008.
Her 1982 album Fairytales was voted the best Norwegian album of all time. Vocalist Radka Toneff, considered one of Norway’s greatest jazz singers, committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills and was found in the woods of Bygdøy outside Oslo on October 21, 1982.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marilyn Montez Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 16, 1930. Her vocal style was similar to that of Billie Holiday’s, at twenty-six she recorded her only solo album as a leader in 1957 on the Bethlehem label titled Moody Marilyn Moore. With Jackie Paris she recorde another album titled Oh, Captain.
She was the first wife of saxophonist Al Cohn, who played on Moody Marilyn Moore, and the mother of guitarist Joe Coh. After she and Cohn separated and later divorced, Moore was left to raise her family and never recorded again.
Singer Marilyn Moore, whose short career was limited to activity during the 1950s, passed away on March 19, 1992 at the age of 61 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
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