Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Barbara Dane was born May 12, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan. Out of high school she began singing regularly at demonstrations for racial equality and economic justice and while still in her teens, she sat in with bands around town and won the interest of local music promoters. Getting an offer to tour with Alvino Rey’s band, she turned it down in favor of singing at factory gates and in union halls.
Moving to San Francisco,California in 1949, Dane began raising her own family and singing her folk and topical songs around town as well as on radio and television. When a jazz revival was then shaking the town by the 1950s she became a familiar figure at clubs along the city’s Embarcadero with her own versions of women’s blues and jazz tunes. New Orleans jazz musicians like George Lewis and Kid Ory and locals like Turk Murphy, Burt Bales, Bob Mielke and others regularly invited her onto the bandstand.
Her first professional jazz job was with Turk Murphy at the Tin Angel in 1956. Ebony Magazine did a seven page spread on the alto voiced songstress who would moan of trouble, two-timing men and freedom aided and abetted by some of the oldest names in jazz who helped give birth to the blues, with photos of her performing with Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Clara Ward, Mama Yancey, Little Brother Montgomery and others.
By 1959 she appeared with Louis Armstrong on the Timex All-Star Jazz Show hosted by Jackie Gleason. She went on to tour the East Coast with Jack Teagarden, appeared in Chicago with Art Hodes, Roosevelt Sykes, Otis Spann and others, played New York with Wilbur De Paris and his band, and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson as a solo guest artist. She would guest perform on The Steve Allen Show, Bobby Troop’s Stars of Jazz, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
In 1961, the singer opened her own club, Sugar Hill: Home of the Blues, on San Francisco’s Broadway in the North Beach district, with the idea of creating a venue for the blues in a tourist district where a wider audience could hear it. There Dane performed regularly with her two most constant musical companions: Kenny “Good News” Whitson on piano and cornet and Wellman Braud, former Ellington bassist.
During the Sixties while working as a solo performer on the coffeehouse circuit Barbara also became an activist in the peace and civil rights movements, touring around the nation and performing at demonstrations and anti-war establishments worldwide and became the first U.S. musician to tour post-revolutionary Cuba.
In 1970 Dane founded Paredon Records with husband Irwin Silber, a label specializing in international protest music. She produced 45 albums, including three of her own, over a 12-year period. The label was later incorporated into Smithsonian-Folkways, a label of the Smithsonian Institution, and is available through their catalog. Arhoolie Records, Tradition Records, Runt Distribution, and DBK Works label have issued a compact discs of her music within the last twenty years. She as well has released her earlier blues and jazz recordings on CD on the Barbara Dane CDs site.
At 90 years old vocalist Barbara Dane has retired from music but has left these accolades in her wake: Jazz critic Leonard Feather wrote “Bessie Smith in stereo,” in the late 1950s, Time Magazine stated “The voice is pure, rich … rare as a 20 karat diamond” and quoted Louis Armstrong’s exclamation upon hearing her at the Pasadena Jazz Festival: “Did you get that chick? She’s a gasser!”
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
April Barrows was born on April 28, 1954 in Milford, Connecticut and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area where she moved with her family when she was five. The first music she heard came from listening to her mother’s collection of boogie-woogie 78s by such pianists as Meade “Lux” Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pinetop Smith. Singing along with the records and imitating the sounds she learned the formats. She became a record collector herself as a teenager and was always interested in older styles.
She played violin for a few years and in high school sang and played rhythm guitar. Barrows performed duets with a country singer, frequently performing roots music, and learned both steel guitar and electric bass. For a time she had a regular day job as a chemist but her main dream was to become a professional musician.
In the late ’70s she spontaneously quit her job and headed for Nashville where her talents were quickly recognized. She played electric bass in a variety of bands for the next six years working with the Judds’ first band, the Memphis Horns, Vassar Clements, and even Woody Herman. In 1985 she switched her focus and became a songwriter and while she had success writing country, bluegrass, and blues songs, her true love was writing and performing her own new swing tunes.
In addition to her jazz inspirations of Ella Fitzgerald, the Boswell Sisters, Mildred Bailey, Louis Armstrong, Ivie Anderson, Bing Crosby, Ruth Etting, Annette Hanshaw and Cliff Edwards, she listened to Bob Dylan, country music and rock of the ’60s. While continuing in the commercial field, she has recorded as a leader, her debut release of original swing tunes on My Dream Is You followed by her sophomore project All You Need Is the Girl. Vocalist, guitarist and composer April Barrows is currently working on a third project with clarinetist Evan Christopher and cornetist Duke Heitger, and continues to compose and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kirk Stuart was born Charles Kincheloe Stuart on April 13, 1934 in Charleston, West Virginia. He studied at a conservatory before accompanying singers such as Billie Holiday in 1956, Della Reese from 1957–59 and for another two years with Sarah Vaughan beginning in 1961. He also arranged and conducted for these singers.
Stuart led his own unit in Los Angeles, California later in the 1960s, and recorded with Al Grey and once more with Reese along with a few 45 rpm records as a leader on the Josie and Jubilee labels during the decade. In later years he led ensembles in Las Vegas, and accompanied Joe Williams at the Smithsonian Institution in 1982.
Pianist, vocalist and educator Kirk Stuart, who taught at Howard University, passed away during spleen surgery on December 17, 1982.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Helen Forrest was born Helen Fogel in Atlantic City, New Jersey on April 12, 1917. Raised in a single parent household with three older brothers, the family relocated to Brooklyn while she was in her teens. Her mother remarried and with the new husband turned the family home into a brothel, which nearly saw her raped by her stepfather. This resulted in her living with her piano teacher who recognized her singing potential. Soon she dropped out of high school and pursued a singing career.
Returning to Atlantic City she began singing with her brother Ed’s band, soon after returning to New York City. By the age of 17 she was singing for WNEW and WCBS where she was known as Bonnie Blue and The Blue Lady of Song. Eventually she found a two year gig singing at the Madrillon Club, in Washington, D.C. This led to her joining Artie Shaw in 1938 and shared vocal duties with Billie Holiday. Two of Helen’s biggest hits with Shaw were They Say and All the Things You Are. With Shaw she became a national favorite until the band broke up in 1939
Forrest then joined Benny Goodman in December 1939 and recorded, among other hit songs The Man I Love, just one of 55 studio recordings with Goodman. But being a difficult man to work with in August 1941, she quit the orchestra to avoid having a nervous breakdown. Her departure led her to briefly recorded with Nat King Cole and Lionel Hampton.
In 1941, she approached Harry James, auditioned and was voted in by the band. It was with this band that she got the opportunity to sing verses as opposed to choruses in the middle of an instrumental. Her most popular numbers, 1941’s I Don’t Want to Walk Without You and I Had the Craziest Dream in 1942, preceded her appearance with the James Band in the Hollywood film Springtime in the Rockies, starring Betty Grable. In 1942 and 1943, Helen Forrest was voted the best female vocalist in the United States in the Down Beat poll.
Forrest left Harry James in late 1943 and embarked on a solo career, signed a recording contract with Decca and co-starred with Dick Haymes on a CBS radio show from 1944 to 1947. She recorded with Haymes and 10 songs reached the Top Ten including Long Ago and Far Away, It Had To Be You and I’m Always Chasing Rainbows. By the end of the Forties she was headlining theaters and clubs.
The Fifties saw Helen rejoining Harry james and recording a new swing album titled Harry James in Hi-Fi, which became a bestseller. By the end of the 1950s, her solo career waned as rock’n’roll became increasingly popular. She would go on to have a stint with the startup Bell Records, sang with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra, in the early 1960s and continue to make occasional records and perform in concerts. By the 1970s and 1980s, she was performing in supper clubs on big band nostalgia tours, doing a television reunion of herself, James, and Haymes on The Merv Griffin Show.
In 1980 she suffered a stroke, but recovered to resume performing and recording. She wrote an autobiography, I Had the Craziest Dream, and in 1983, Helen released her final album, entitled Now and Forever. She continued singing until the early 1990s when rheumatoid arthritis began to affect her vocal chords and forced her into retirement. Swing vocalist Helen Forrest, who sang with three of the most popular bands of the era and earned the reputation as the voice of the name bands, passed away on July 11, 1999, from congestive heart failure in Los Angeles, California at the age of 82.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Allan Harris was born on April 4, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York and was surrounded by music. His mother was a classical pianist, his aunt an opera singer who later turned to the blues. His aunt caught the attention of music producer Clarence Williams, who made Bessie Smith famous and he became a regular dinner guest bringing others with him like Louis Armstrong. This musical influence helped him choose the life of a musician early on especially when his mother insisted he sing Blue Velvet at school at the age of eight.
Harris has sung and recorded with Cyrus Chestnut, Bill Charlap, Eric Reed, Benny Green, Bruce Barth, Takana Miyamoto and Tommy Flanagan. He has toured Europe, Scandinavia and Israel, and has performed with the New York Voices, James Morrison, as well as a live recording with Jon Faddis and the Big Band de Lausanne. He has worked with Cassandra Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, Abbey Lincoln, Charenee Wade, Cyrille Aimée and an eight-piece band including bassist Mimi Jones.
He has recorded numerous CDs in tribute to Nat King Cole, Billy Strayhorn and the Black cowboys of the West. Allan’s recordings have featured Ray Brown, Mark Whitfield, Eric Reed, Clark Terry, Claudio Roditi and Nestor Torres. He has become Tony Bennett’s favorite new singer.
As an educator Harris is a master clinician and teacher and has taught master classes at JAS Aspen Academy working alongside Christian McBride and Loren Schoenberg, Berklee School of Music, The Jazz Vocal Coalition, City College’s Aaron Davis Hall, and Lausanne, Switzerland’s Jazz Music School, to name a few. He has sat on the Kennedy Center panel to choose the next U.S. Jazz Ambassador and has judged the Thelonious Monk Awards Vocal Competition.
Vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Allan Harris, whose album Cross That River was widely covered for its perspective on issues of ethnicity in the American western expansion and was the subject of a 2006 story on National Public Radio program All Things Considered, continues to perform, record and tour.
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