Hollywood On 52nd Street
I Fall In Love Too Easily is a 1944 song composed by Jule Styne with lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Frank Sinatra introduced the song in the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh. The film won an Academy Award for its music; the song was nominated for Best Original Song but lost. The other stars of the film were Kathryn Grayson and Gene Kelly.
The Story: Two Navy sailors, Joe Brady and Clarence Doolittle on a four-day leave in Hollywood. Joe has his heart set on spending time with his girl, the unseen Lola. Clarence, the shy choirboy turned sailor, asks Joe to teach him how to get girls. Enter Susan, aunt to a small boy who wants to join the Navy and Clarence is smitten with her at first sight. Susan goes on to tell them that she has been trying to find work in music, and longs to perform with José Iturbi. Trying to impress her with Clarence, Joe tells her that he has arranged an audition. That night, they go out to a cafe, where Clarence meets a girl from Brooklyn, and they hit it off.
With no audition in sight they decide to come clean. Susan gets her screen test on her own, it’s successful and in they end all is forgiven and the lovers kiss as a choir sings the theme song.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Maggie Nicols or Nichols, as she originally spelt her name as a performer, was born Margaret Nicholson on February 24, 1948 in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the age of fifteen she left school and started to work as a dancer at the Windmill Theatre. Her first singing engagement was in a strip club in Manchester a year later. At about that time she became obsessed with jazz, and sang with bebop pianist Dennis Rose. From then on she sang in pubs, clubs, hotels, and in dance bands with some of the finest jazz musicians around.
In 1968, Maggie went to London and joined an early improvisational group, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, and performed at Berlin’s new avant-garde festival. In the early 1970s she began running voice workshops at the Oval House Theatre, acted in some of the productions and rehearsed regularly with a local rock band. Shortly afterwards she became part of Keith Tippett’s fifty-piece British jazz/progressive rock big band Centipede. She joined Brian Eley and formed the vocal group Voice, and around the same time began collaborating with the Scottish percussionist Ken Hyder and his band Talisker.
By the late 1970s, Nicols had become an active feminist, co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group, organized Contradictions, a women’s workshop performance group in 1980 and dealt with improvisation. Over the years, Nicols has collaborated with other women’s groups, such as the Changing Women Theatre Group, and even wrote music for a prime-time television series, Women in Sport.
Nicols has also collaborated regularly over the years with Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer and French bassist Joelle Leandre, touring and recording. She continues her duo collaboration with Ken Hyder, pianists Pete Nu and Steve Lodder, with her own daughter, Aura Marina, with avant-gardists Caroline Kraabe, Charlotte Hug and lighting designer Sue Neal. She performs throughout Europe and internationally at a variety of creative and improvised music festivals.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kellye Gray was born in Dallas, Texas on February 22, 1954. Beginning her career on Austin’s Sixth Street, she provided a rare jazz experience that attracted the college crowd as well as the more sophisticated up-and-coming baby boomers.
In 1990 her first album, Standards In Gray soared to #12 on the Gavin Report. Three years later, another chart-topper, Tomato Kiss helped her move into the national spotlight. An induction into the Texas Jazz Heritage Society along with moving to San Francisco continued to raise the bar and legitimized her as a career jazz vocalist
Her career stalled in 2000 after bereavement and divorce. Not one to be driven too far off-track, in 2002–03 Kellye produced the double live album Blue and Pink. By early 2007 she had put a new team together and released the concert recording, Live at the Jazzschool recorded in Berkeley.
2008 opened with another live recording, KG3 Live! at the Bugle Boy an acoustic trio project featuring classical guitar, acoustic bass and jazz voice. In the summer of 2010 she was the Vocal Intensive instructor at Jazz Camp West in California.
Kellye Gray has performed for dignitaries and heads-of-state throughout the U.S. and Europe performing with a wide variety of jazz, blues and R&B stars. She continues to sing at festivals, concerts and nightclubs.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
10 Cents A Dance is a song originally written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the Broadway play Simple Simon, which became the inspiration for the 1931 romance-drama film of the same name. The film starred Barbara Stanwyck as a married taxi dancer who falls in love with one of her customers.
The Story: A beautiful streetwise taxi dancer named Barbara O’Neill works at a New York City dance hall called Palais de Dance. One of the dance hall’s wealthy patrons, Bradley Carlton comes to the hall and gives Barbara $100. Concerned about her unemployed friend and neighbor Eddie Miller, Barbara asks Bradley to give him a job, and he agrees. They fall in love, get married, Eddie philanders, they get divorced, they remarry, and then he wanders off to South America. Realizing their love is not strong enough she tries to get another divorce but gets denied by the judge. But after a fight and his gambling she packs her bags, goes to the dance hall and leaves with Bradley for France.
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Jackie Allen was born on February 19, 1959 in Brown Deer, Wisconsin and raised in McFarland. She first became interested in music through her father, Louis (Gene) Allen, an accomplished tuba player.[3] Growing up she sang in choirs and played French horn, but was not exposed to modern jazz until she attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Limited by the available majors offered at the time, she moved to Milwaukee where she performed five nights a week for four years in a duo with Mel Rhyne at the Wyndham Hotel.
Moving to Chicago in 1990 she began to compose and self-produced her first release, Never Let Me Go, for the short-lived Lake Shore Jazz label. Hitting the top twenty of the Gavin Jazz Charts where it drew the attention of Grammy winning producer Ralph Jungheim who brought her to Naxos Records. out to Los Angeles to record Which with Red Holloway, Gary Foster and Bill Cunliffe. Success sent Jackie on an Asian tour and made her the first jazz artist to perform at the Beijing Music Festival.
By the late 90’s Allen again began enjoying the interactive possibilities in duo settings. She began a collaboration with pianist Judy Roberts, started a series of successful holiday duet concerts, released “Autumn Leaves” the following year. In 1999 she began performing in a voice-bass duo with Hans Sturm and record for the Red Mark label.
Since 2002 Jackie Allen has performed and recorded primarily with the same core rhythm section of bass, guitar and percussion and adding piano, trumpet or woodwinds. She produced The Men in My Life, was picked up by the Chicago label A440, and followed with Love Is Blue. Again success brought her to Michael Cuscuna, Bruce Lundvall, John Clayton Frank Proto, Bill Cunliffe, Mark Buselli and Matt Harris. In 2008 Allen was approached by the Muncie Symphony Orchestra to create a project for their 60th Anniversary Season that resulted in the 2009 live release Starry Night.
Jackie has taught at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, the Old Town School of Folk Music, Elmhurst College, Roosevelt University, Ball State University, The Cornerstone Center for the Arts, E.B. Ball Center, Doane College, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has taught privately, conducted master classes and community outreach projects teaching small groups of adult students learn to sing in public. She continues to record, perform and tour.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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