Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jacintha Abisheganaden also known as Jacintha or Ja was born on October 3, 1957 in Singapore of Sri Lankan and Chinese parentage, her mother and played piano. Educated at Marymount Convent School, Raffles Institution and the National University of Singapore, where she graduated with an honor degree in English. She then went to America where she studied creative writing at Harvard University. She studied piano and voice from her early teens and also sang in the Singapore Youth Choir, where she met her future collaborator Dick Lee. Growing up she listened to vocal jazz and traditional pop, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Miriam Makeba, Barbra Streisand.
She first came to prominence in 1976 winning a local television talent contest, Talentime, singing jazz. Continuing this winning streak in 1981, Jacintha nabbed the Best Female Performer award for her role as Nurse Angamuthu in General Hospital at the Drama Festival. She has worked as arts reporter, an actress, as well as a vocalist recording her debut album Silence in 1983 and two years later released her second album and played a series of live jazz shows at The Saxophone.
In 2004, Jacintha performed her own cabaret jazz show, The Angina Monologues at the Old Parliament House, Singapore. Since her debut album she has recorded eleven albums, dedicated a few to Ben Webster, Julie London, Johnny Mercer and Hollywood, and has released a compilation album in 2008. Vocalist Jacintha Abisheganaden continues to perform, acting and recording.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ann Richards was born Margaret Ann Borden on October 1, 1935 in San Diego,California. She began taking singing lessons at ten and was self-taught on the piano. Appearing on the West Coast music scene in 1954, she had a short stint with Charlie Barnet’s band only to be later brought to the attention of Stan Kenton by songwriter Eddie Beal.
Richards was only with Kenton’s band for a few months in 1955 before the two were married. Kenton helped her secure a contract with Capitol Records and she was paired with conductor Brian Farnon and arranger Warren Baker for her 1958 debut album, I’m Shooting High. A duet album with Kenton, Two Much, was released in 1961.
The two separated in 1961 after she created scandal posed for the June 1961 issue of Playboy. She subsequently signed a contract with the Atco Records division of Atlantic Records. She released seven albums as a leader, two of them with Kenton. The cover of her 1961 album Ann, Man! was taken from the shoot. Vocalist Ann Richards committed suicide from a gunshot on April 1, 1982 in Hollywood, California, passing away at age 46.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Teddi King was born Theodora King on September 18, 1929 in Boston, Massachusetts. She won a singing competition hosted by Dinah Shore at Boston’s Tributary Theatre and later began performing in a touring revue involved with cheering up the military troops in the lull between the Second World War and the Korean conflict.
Improving her vocal and piano technique during this time, she first recorded with Nat Pierce in 1949, later recorded with the Beryl Booker Trio and three albums with several other small groups recorded between 1954 and 1955 for the Storyville label. She then toured with George Shearing for two years in the summer of 1952, and for a time was managed by George Wein. King went on to perform for a time in Las Vegas.
Teddi landed a contract with RCA and recorded three albums for the label, beginning with 1956’s Bidin’ My Time. She also had some minor chart success with the singles Mr. Wonderful, Married I Can Always Get and Say It Isn’t So. Her critically acclaimed 1959 album All the Kings’ Songs found her interpreting the signature songs of contemporary male singers like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
In the 1960s, she opened the Playboy Club, where she often performed, however, after developing lupus, she managed to make a brief comeback with a 1977 album featuring Dave McKenna. She recorded two more albums for Audiophile that were released posthumously. She also recorded for the Coral, Inner City and Flare labels as well as having a compilation released on the Baldwin Street Music label. Jazz and pop standard vocalist Teddi King, who was influenced by Lee Wiley, Mildred Bailey and Mabel Mercer, passed away from lupus on November 18, 1977.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Teri Thornton was born Shirley Enid Avery on September 1, 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. She began performing in the local clubs of her home city in the 1950s. Moving to New York City in the 1960s, where she found work singing for television advertisements, and recorded for several different labels.
By the 1960s Thornton faded from public view and only decades later was discovered to have been singing on various song poem records in Los Angeles, California on the Preview label as Teri Summers. After moving back to New York City in 1983 she was back on the club circuit and in the Nineties fully revived her career. In 1998, she won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Vocal Competition in Washington, DC. performing against runners-up Jane Monheit, Tierney Sutton and Roberta Gambarini.
Thornton signed with Verve Records in 2000, releasing I’ll Be Easy to Find, working with Ray Chew, Norman Simmons, Lonnie Plaxico, Jerome Richardson, Dave Bargeron, Howard Johnson and J. T. Lewis.
She was a resident of the Actors’ Fund Home and diagnosed with bladder cancer, vocalist Teri Thornton passed away that same year on May 2, 2000 in Englewood, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Andrew Rushing was born on August 26, 1901 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma into a family with musical talent and accomplishments. His father, Andrew, was a trumpeter and his mother, Cora and her brother were singers. He studied music theory with Zelia N. Breaux at Douglass High School, and was unusual among his musical contemporaries, having attended college at Wilberforce University.
Rushing was inspired to pursue music and eventually sing blues by his uncle Wesley Manning and George “Fathead” Thomas of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. Touring the midWest and California as an itinerant blues singer in 1923 and 1924, he eventually moved to Los Angeles, California, where he played piano and sang with Jelly Roll Morton. He also sang with Billy King before moving on to Page’s Blue Devils in 1927. He, along with other members of the Blue Devils, defected to the Bennie Moten band in 1929.
When Moten died in 1935 Jimmy joined Count Basie for what would be a 13-year tenure. Due to his tutelage under his mentor Moten, he was a proponent of the Kansas City jump blues tradition as heard in his versions of Sent For You Yesterday and Boogie Woogie for the Count Basie Orchestra. After leaving Basie,, as a solo artist and a singing with other bands.
When the Basie band broke up in 1950 he briefly retired, then formed his own group and his recording career soared. He also made a guest appearance with Duke Ellington for the 1959 album Jazz Party. In 1960, he recorded an album with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, known for their cerebral cool jazz sound. Rushing appeared in the 1957 television special Sound of Jazz, singing one of his signature songs I Left My Baby backed by many of his former Basie band compatriots. In 1958 he was among the musicians included in an Esquire magazine photo by Art Kane, later memorialized in the documentary film A Great Day in Harlem.
In 1958 Jimmy toured the UK with Humphrey Lyttelton and his band, appeared in the 1969 Gordon Parks film The Learning Tree, and by 1971 was diagnosed with leukemia, that sidelined his performing career. On June 8, 1972 vocalist Jimmy Rushing, who was known as a blues shouter, balladeer and swing jazz singer, passed away in New York City. He was one of eight jazz and blues legends honored in a set of United States Postal Service stamps issued in 1994. Among his best known recordings are “Going to Chicago” with Basie, and “Harvard Blues”, with a famous saxophone solo by Don Byas.
Miami