Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Rita Reys was born into an artistic family as Maria Everdina Reijs on December 21, 1924 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She grew up listening to classical music and as a teenager entered and won many local talent competitions.

In 1943, Rita met her first husband, jazz drummer Wessel Iicken, who introduced her to the jazz scene. Forming Rita Reys & The Wessel Ilcken Sextet, she regularly performed at the Sheherezade jazz club in Amsterdam and as her reputation grew began to tour and perform around Europe and Africa between 1945 and 1950.

In 1950, the then Rita Reys Sextet celebrated continued success in The Netherlands, played American army bases and dance clubs in England, and settled in Stockholm, the city known as the jazz center of Europe in the early Fifties. She made her first recordings there for the Artist record label, would follow up with a session with Ove Lind, and others such as Quincy Jones, Clifford Brown, Art Farmer. She would go on to meet Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson and Lester Young.

Reys accepted an invitation by Columbia record producer George Avakian to visit the United States and after arrival recorded The Cool Voice of Rita Reys with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers featuring Horace Silver, Hank Mobley and Donald Byrd. She had a swinging quality of her phrasing that opened the doors of the Village Vanguard for several performances. She has performed with Oscar Pettiford, Zoot Sims, Clark Terry, Herbie Mann, Milt Hinton, Osie Johnson, Jimmy Smith and Lester Young to name a few luminaries.

Vocalist Rita Reys has won France’s Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival; in 1969 she was the first Dutch jazz singer to perform at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, became a Citizen of Honor of New Orleans in 1980, won the Edison Award, the Bird award and has eight gold records.

Throughout the next three decades she would continue to perform, record and tour, returning to the Great American Songbook, paid tribute to George Gershwin and Antonio Carlos Jobim, has published her life story Rita Reys, Lady Jazz, has recorded nearly four-dozen albums since 1957, perform at festivals around the world and was named Europe’s First Lady of Jazz, a title she carries to this day. Vocalist Rita Reys passed away on July 28, 2013 in Breukelen, Netherlands.

More Posts: vocal