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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Linda Sharrock was born Linda Chambers on April 2, 1947 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began singing in church choirs as a child. Interested in both folk music and jazz, she studied art while in college and became interested in avant-garde music.
She performed with Pharoah Sanders in the mid-1960s and late in 1966 she married Sonny Sharrock and professionally began using the spelling Lynda. She worked with him and Sanders into the early 1970s, as well as with Herbie Mann.
One of her best-known performances is on the 1969 Sonny Sharrock album Black Woman, released on Vortex Records. She toured Istanbul, Turkey in 1973 and recorded with Joe Bonner in 1974. After her divorce in 1978 she returned to using Linda, though she kept his surname.
A move to Vienna, Austria saw Sharrock working with Franz Koglmann, Eric Watson, and Wolfgang Puschnig well into the 1990s. She worked with ensembles such as the Pat Brothers, Red Sun, and AM4 in the 1980s, and with Harry Pepl in 1992.
Suffering a stroke in 2009 which left her partially disabled and aphasic, she briefly withdrew from the scene before returning in 2012. Since then the avant-garde and free jazz vocalist Linda Sharrock has appeared and recorded in France, Austria, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Slovenia, with various ensembles under the Linda Sharrock Network label.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Miriam Klein was born on March 27, 1937 in Basel, Switzerland and after a training at the music school in Vienna, Austria she went back to Switzerland and has been singing since 1963 in groups formed with her husband Oscar Klein. She, however, became famous when she appeared in Paris, France with Pierre Michelot, Don Byas and Art Simmons in the 1950s.
In the 1960s and 1970s she became internationally known as a singer and during this period recorded an album of Bessie Smith tunes. In 1973 the breakthrough came with the album Lady Like dedicated to Billie Holiday. She was accompanied by musicians Roy Eldridge , Dexter Gordon and Slide Hampton. She also recorded a record with Albert Nicholas.
Klein worked with the Fritz Pauer Trio in 1977, with Sir Roland Hanna and George Mraz in 1978 on their album By Myself. At the Frankfurt Jazz Festival 1980 she was accompanied by Hans Kollers International Brass Company. Through 1981/82 she toured with Kenny Clarke, Hanna and Isla Eckinger.
2001 saw Miriam involved in the recording of the album My Marilyn by her son David Klein. Though she fashioned her vocal style after Billie Holiday, she found herself not copying her but singing the way Billie did but in her own way. Vocalist Miriam Klein occasionally continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nicole Henry was born on March 17, 1974 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in a musical family in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She pursued the arts from a young age, singing in school and church, and studying cello and ballet, ultimately graduating from the University of Miami. Her musical inspirations were Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan.
Launching her career as an entertainer was successful both as singer and actress. Early on Nicole appeared in commercial acting roles and voiceover assignments. Her passion for singing was recognized when the Miami New Times named her Best Solo Musician 2002.
In 2004, Henry released her debut recording, The Nearness of You, on Banister Records. Though she reached #1 in Japan with Teach Me Tonight and was named HMV Japan’s Best Vocal Jazz Album of 2005, her sophomore project didn’t arrive until four years later. The Very Thought Of You reached #7 on Billboard’s jazz chart. Followed by her 2009 Teach Me Tonight, 2011’s Embraceable and a live recording in Japan Set For The Season in 2012.
In 2013 Nicole released So Good, So Right: Nicole Henry Live with new renditions of Seventies hits and has since released a single and an EP. She has had the honor to perform the National Anthem at several sporting event, solo for the candlelight service of Nine Lessons and Carols at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan and took home the Soul Train award for Best Traditional Jazz Performance. Vocalist Nicole Henry continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ina Ray Hutton was born Odessa Cowan on March 13, 1916 in Chicago, Illinois. She began dancing and singing in stage revues at the age of eight and by the age of 13, Odessa was considered so advanced that she skipped eighth grade and went straight to high school at Hyde Park High School.
By the time she was 18 years old, Odessa became Ina Ray Hutton for the stage and was already a seasoned performer, having starred in Gus Edwards’ revue Future Stars Troupe at the Palace Theater, Lew Leslie’s Clowns in Clover. On Broadway she performed in George White’s revues: Melody, Never Had An Education, and “Scandals”, and then went onto The Ziegfeld Follies.
In 1934, she was approached by Irving Mills and vaudeville agent Alex Hyde to lead an all-girl orchestra, The Melodears, featuring trumpeters Frances Klein and Mardell “Owen” Winstead, pianist Ruth Lowe Sandler, saxophonist Jane Cullum, guitarist Marian Gange,and trombonist Alyse Wells during its existence. Hutton and her Melodears were one of the first all-girl bands to be filmed for Paramount shorts, including Accent on Girls and Swing Hutton Swing, as well as Hollywood feature films.
The group disbanded in 1939 and the following year she led an all-male orchestra that was featured in the 1944 film Ever Since Venus. This group disbanded in 1949. During the 1950s, she returned to the all-girl format for a variety television program, The Ina Ray Hutton Show, which ran from 1951 to 1956 on Paramount Television Network’s flagship station KTLA in Los Angeles, California.
Vocalist and bandleader Ina Ray Hutton retired from music in 1968 and passed away in Ventura, California on February 19, 1984 of complications from diabetes, at the age of 67.
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