Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carrie Louise Smith was born August 25, 1925 in Fort Gaines, Georgia. Her mother moved her to Newark, New Jersey to escape an abusive husband but left her to be raised by an older cousin when she joined Father Divine’s church.
Leaving school after the eighth grade, Carrie taught herself to play piano, began singing in church and worked a number of jobs including train announcer at Newark’s train station. She became a member of the Back Home Choir that performed at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. She first gained notice singing with Big Tiny Little in the early 1970s, but became internationally known by 1974 when she played Bessie Smith (no relation) in Dick Hyman’s Satchmo Remembered at Carnegie Hall.
This was when Smith launched a solo career, performing with the New York Jazz Repertory Orchestra, with a sextet led by trombonist Tyree Glenn in 1973, Yank Lawson in 1987, and then with the World’s Greatest Jazz Band. In addition to recording numerous solo albums, she starred in the Broadway musical Black and Blue from 1989 to 1991.
Though not well known in the U. S. she had a cult following in Europe and recorded thirteen albums between 1976 and 2002 as a leader. She also recorded with Art Hodes, Buddy Tate, Doc Cheatham, Hank Jones, Winard Harper, Dick Hyman, Clark Terry, Bross Townsend, Bob Cunningham and Bernard Purdie among others over the course of her career.
Jazz and blues vocalist Carrie Smith, lauded by jazz critics Rex Reed, Leonard Feather, Richard Sudhalter and John S. Wilson, passed away of from complications due to cancer at the age of 86 in Englewood, New Jersey on May 20, 2012.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anna Mae Winburn was born Anna Mae Darden on August 13, 1913 to a musical family in Port Royal, Tennessee and along with her three sisters migrated to Kokomo, Indiana, at a young age. Her first known publicized performance was singing with the studio band of Radio WOWO, Fort Wayne, Indiana. She worked at various clubs in Indiana, at times appearing under the pseudonym Anita Door.
From there she moved to North Omaha, Nebraska where she sang and played guitar for a variety of territory bands, or groups whose touring activities and popularity were geographically limited to several adjoining states, that were led by Red Perkins. During that time Winburn was a collaborator of Lloyd Hunter, frequently singing with Lloyd Hunter’s “Serenaders”. She also led the Cotton Club Boys out of Omaha, a group that at one point included the amazing guitarist Charlie Christian.
When many of the musicians were lost to the World War II draft she left for Oklahoma City and led bands for a short while. It was there that she led Eddie Durham’s “All-Girl Orchestra”, which eventually earned her an invite to join the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Durham had been the composer for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm for two years before leaving to join Count Basie’s band.] After being recommended by Jimmie Jewel, who owned North Omaha’s Dreamland Ballroom, Anna Mae became the leader of the band in 1941. She was reportedly hired for her attractive figure, with the intention of doing little actual composing or singing but was the leader of the band until it folded in late 1949.
Vocalist and bandleader Anna Mae Winburn, who flourished beginning in the mid-1930s and led the all-female big band International Sweethearts of Rhythm, that was perhaps one of the few and one of the most racially integrated dance-bands of the swing era, passed away in Hempstead, New York on September 30, 1999.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kat Gang was born on August 9, 1980 in Boston, Massachusetts. She developed a passion for jazz at Berklee School of Music in her hometown and while matriculating received the Berklee College of Music Judges’ Choice Award and the Outstanding Vocalist Award. Honing her skills further at New York University, she earned a Bachelor’s degree while majoring in drama and voice.
A singer/songwriter, Kat takes on the traditional standards but is no stranger to interpretations of Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Arctic Monkeys or Oasis as she works as a duo with jazz guitar or piano. She is also known to work with many of Europe’s leading musicians in big bands, nonets, or as part of an eight piece Ella Fitzgerald tribute.
Currently with her own trio and quartet, vocalist Kat Gang stays in constant demand to perform in theaters, clubs, restaurants and even bateaux on London’s River Thames.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Helga Plankensteiner was born on August 1, 1968 in San Candido, Italy and studied classical saxophone at the Conservatory in Innsbruck under Florian Brambock, then jazz at the Conservatory of Trento. She would go on to study in various jazz workshops with Dick Oatts, Steve Slagle, Bobby Watson, Bob Bonisolo, Heinrich von Kalnein and Sandro Gibellini.
Helga expanded her talents to include vocals in her theater experience of the Threepenny Opera in addition to performing as a saxophonist for several other plays. She has been chosen by Musica Jazz in 2009 as one of the top ten rising talents, won the AMJ Big Band competition, and performed with the Orchestra Laboratorio of Trento with Matthias Ruegg, Bruno Tommaso, Maria Schneider, John Surman and Carla Bley.
She plays with the all-female saxophone quintet Girltalk, the Helga Plankensteiner Walter Civettini Quintet and the Unit Eleven Jazz Orchestra and. She is a permanent member of the Carla Bley Big Band, The Torino Jazz Orchestra and solos with Tom Harrell, Dusko Goykovich, Valery Ponomarev, Francesco Cafiso, Uri Caine, the Dani Felber Big Band and the Italian Sax Ensemble.
In addition, she conducts the ensemble Sweet Alps featuring soloists Gianluigi Trovesi, Florian Brambock, Michel Godard, Gianluca Petrella and Matthias Schriefl. Alto saxophonist Helga Plankensteiner continues to compose, record and perform at festivals worldwide.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Margaret Eleanor Whiting was born in Detroit, Michigan on July 22, 1924 and her father Richard wrote popular hits such as Hooray for Hollywood, Ain’t We Got Fun? and On the Good Ship Lollipop. In 1929 when she was five years old, her family moved to Los Angeles.
In her childhood, Whiting’s singing ability had already been noticed, and at the age of only seven she sang for singer-lyricist Johnny Mercer, with whom her father had collaborated on Too Marvelous for Words. In 1942, Mercer co-founded Capitol Records and signed her to one of Capitol’s first recording contracts.
In the early years of her career Margaret would work with Freddie Slack and His Orchestra, Billy Butterfield’s Orchestra and Paul Weston and His Orchestra. By 1945 she began to record under her own name with songs like All Through The Day, In Love In Vain, Baby It’s Cold Outside and A Tree In The Meadow. She would work with Jimmy Wakely, Johnny Mercer, Bob Hope and Strange Sounding Names. Through to the mid-1950s she recorded for Capitol, but as hits waned she switched to Dot Records, then Verve Records, returned to Capitol in the early 1960s and finally signing with London Records by 1966. Her final solo albums were made for Audiophile in the Eighties and DRG Records in 1991. Her distinguished conductors and musical arrangers through the years included Buddy Bregman, Frank DeVol, Russell Garcia, Johnny Mandel, Billy May, Marty Paich, Nelson Riddle, Pete Rugolo, and Paul Weston.
Whiting would go on to co-star on the 15-minute radio musical programs The Jack Smith Show and Club Fifteen. She was a vocalist on The Eddie Cantor Show, was in the cast of The Philip Morris Follies of 1946 and The Railroad Hour. She was hostess on the Spotlight Revue and a featured singer on the transcribed Barry Wood Show and was casted as a young Sophie Tucker, in the Lux Radio Theater production No Time For Heartaches.
With her sister Barbara they starred as themselves in the CBS sitcom Those Whiting Girls produced by Desilu Productions, and was a regular over the years on tv variety shows The Big Record, The Bob Hope Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, The David Frost Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The George Jessel Show, The Jonathan Winters Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, The Nat King Cole Show, The Patti Page Show, The Red Skelton Hour, The Steve Allen Show, The Ford Show Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, among numerous others.
In the 2000s, Whiting was cast in several documentaries about singers and songwriters of her era, including Judy Garland: By Myself, Fever: The Music of Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, Johnny Mercer: The Dream’s on Me, The Andrews Sisters: Queens of the Music Machines and Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook.
Vocalist Margaret Whiting, who made her reputation during the 1940s & 50s, passed away of natural causes on January 10, 2011.
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