Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Holly Cole was born November 25, 1963 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada to a noted radio broadcasting father on the CBC Stereo network. Seeking a musical career, in 1983 she travelled to Toronto, Canada and three years later she founded a trio with bassist David Piltch and pianist Aaron Davis. It took two more years to get offered a record deal and in 1989 the Holly Cole Trio released an EP, Christmas Blues. The following year she released her debut album Girl Talk.
A succession of releases followed through the early 1990s covering r&b, blues, rock, country and show tunes with a jazz arrangement. In 1993 Holly’s hit single cover version of the Johnny Nash song I Can See Clearly Now earned a Juno Award nomination for Best Video and won a Juno Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, in 1994.
During the Nineties decade she appeared in film and television, releasing a track on the soundtrack of the Due South series. From 1993 to 1998 she recorded and released an album a year, took a break from recording, coming back in 2000 and recorded four more albums until 2007. In 2010, Cole contributed a track for the World Jazz For Haiti charity album.
In 2012 she got her original band back together again, added John Johnson on horns, guitarist Rob Piltch, Davide DiRenzo on drums and recorded a live album and dvd. She has been featured in several music specials which have rendered her multiple awards.
Vocalist Holly Cole, who has released 17 albums and received an honorary degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Judi Marie Canterino was born on December 18, 1942 in New York City, New York. She began her musical training at the age of seven with classical piano and performed at the Juilliard School of Music through her thirteenth year. Then she turned her studies to voice, training classically through high school.
At 19 she turned her attention to jazz singing and was introduced to Lennie Tristano, with whom she began studying. As part of my jazz training, she would listen to Lennie Tristano perform at the Half Note. Early in her career she sat-in at the club with Zoot Sims, Al Cohen, Wes Montgomery, Buddy Tate, Bud Johnson, Jimmy Rushing, Van Dickenson, Major Holly, Milt Hinten, Doc Cheatham, Roy Eldridge, Ross Thompkins, Bobby Hackett and others.
Her style came from mentorship of those previously mentioned and the influences of singers Jimmy Rushing, Billie Holiday, Maxine Sullivan, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O’Day and Frank Sinatra. She took time off from performing to raise a family but remained active in the jazz world, resuming her career with guitarist Joe Puma. She’s appeared around New York and New Jersey.
I have been working with jazz greats Warren Vache, Scott Hamilton, Norman Simmons, Chuck Folds, Clark Terry, Mark Shane, Rio Clemente, Joe Cocuzzo, Phil Bodner, Spanky Davis, Bucky Pizzarelli, Kenny Daverne, Kenny Asher and before their deaths, the great Doc Cheatham and Red Richards.
Her debut as a leader was titled Gee Baby and her sophomore project is Live At Maureen’s jazz Cellar. Vocalist Judi Marie Canterino, the Swing Jazz Singer, is still taking the stage to this day.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cleopatra Brown was born on December 8, 1909 in De Kalb, Mississippi. She moved to Meridian, Mississippi when her father took a position as pastor and in his church she played piano as a child.
In 1919 her family moved to Chicago, Illinois and she began learning piano from her brother who worked with Pine Top Smith, playing boogie-woogie for dances. Around the time Cleo was 14 she worked in vaudeville, as well as taking gigs in clubs. In 1935, she replaced Fats Waller as pianist on New York radio station WABC.
From the 1930s to the 1950s she toured the United States regularly, recording for Decca Records among other labels along the way and recording many humorous, ironic titles such as Breakin’ in a New Pair of Shoes, Mama Don’t Want No Peas and Rice and Coconut Oil, When Hollywood Goes Black and Tan, and The Stuff Is Here and It’s Mellow.
Cleo’s stride piano playing was often compared to Fats Waller and she is credited as an influence on Dave Brubeck, who played during the intermissions of her shows, and on Marian McPartland. She played regularly at clubs in Chicago, toured widely, and recorded for both Decca and Capitol Records.
Brown began to shy away from singing bawdy blues songs because of her deepening religious beliefs. In 1953, she was baptized, retired from music, and became a nurse in 1959. Jazz biographies frequently listed her as deceased due to her absence from music. The song Sweet Cleo Brown was recorded by Brubeck in tribute.
From the mid-1970s until 1981, she performed under the name of C. Patra Brown on radio shows in Denver, Colorado. She replaced boogie-woogie music with slower, inspirational music. She returned to record again, and performed on National Public Radio.
Pianist and vocalist Cleo Brown, who was the first woman instrumentalist to receive the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship, and also performed and recorded under the name of Cleo Patra Brown, died on April 15, 1995, in Denver, Colorado.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Connee Boswell was born Constance Foore Boswell on December 3, 1907 in Kansas City, Missouri but raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. With sisters Martha and Helvetia “Vet”, she performed in the 1920s and 1930s as the trio The Boswell Sisters. They came to be well known locally while still in their early teens, making appearances in New Orleans theaters and on radio. The girls started their career as instrumentalists but became a highly influential singing group via their recordings and film and television appearances.
They made their first recordings for Victor Records in 1925, which featured Connee singing in the style of her early influence, Mamie Smith. The sisters became stage professionals that year when they were tapped to fill in for an act at New Orleans’ Orpheum Theatre. This led to a gig in Chicago, Illinois and then on to San Francisco, California. The desk clerk at the recommended hotel was Harry Leedy was part owner of Decca Records, became their manager on a handshake and later Connee’s husband.
The next stop was Los Angeles, California where they performed on local radio and “side-miked” for the soundies. National attention came with a move to New York City in 1930 and the making of national radio broadcasts. After a few recordings with Okeh Records, they recorded for Brunswick Records from 1931 to 1935.
Connee recorded as a solo artist and had several successful singles. In 1935, the sisters had a No. 1 hit with The Object of My Affection, and the group signed to Decca Records, but after just three releases two sisters called it quits in 1936. Connee, however, continued to have a successful solo career as a singer for Decca but also later recorded for the new Apollo label, RCA Victor, and Decca subsidiary, Design.
During the Forties she was a co-star on NBC Radio’s Kraft Music Hall, starred in her own radio show on the NBC Blue Network, The Connee Boswell Show, and featured on CBS Radio’s Tonight On Broadway, among numerous other radio appearances and films. She was a favorite duet partner of Bing Crosby, and they frequently sang together on radio, as well as recording several hit records as a duo in the 1930s and 1940s.
Vocalist Connee Boswell, who recorded ten albums as a leader and had fifteen hits reach the top 12 on the Billboard list, died on October 11, 1976 from stomach cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City at age 68.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Guy Edgar Kelly was born in Scotlandville, Louisiana on November 22, 1906. In his early career he performed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a band led by Toots Johnson before going to New Orleans, Louisiana to play in Papa Celestin’s band in 1927-1928. While residing there he would regularly perform in trumpet duels with Red Allen.
In 1929 he went on tour as a member of Kid Howard’s band, and then joined Boyd Atkins’s band in the summer of 1930. By 1931 Kelly had moved to Chicago, Illinois where he was working with Cassino Simpson and Erskine Tate.
In the 1930s he worked with banjoist Ed Carry, pianists Dave Peyton, Tiny Parham, Albert Ammons, violinist Carroll Dickerson, and clarinetist Jimmie Noone,. Guy appears on the Noone classic composition The Blues Jumped A Rabbit, recorded Chicago on January 15, 1936.
Trumpeter and singer Guy Kelly died February 24, 1940.
