Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lurlean Hunter was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on December 1, 1919 and  was taken to Chicago, Illinois when she was two months old. She attended Englewood High School in Chicago.

Her first paid singing performance came when she appeared with Red Saunders and his orchestra at Club DeLisa on Chicago’s South Side. Hunter was signed by Discovery Records in 1950 and subsequently was a featured performer with George Shearing and his quintet at Birdland in New York City.

In 1951 Lurlean was among a group of rising young stars of jazz, that were presented at the Streamliner night club in Chicago. She performed at the Cloister Inn, where an initial four-week booking turned into a 2.5-year stay. She went on to work in New York and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Leaving Discovery, she began recording for Atlantic Records in 1961, with Blue and Sentimental as her first album for that label. She later recorded for RCA Victor. By 1963, Hunter became the first Black performer hired by WBBM radio in Chicago. After a successful on-air audition, she became a member of the staff of the all-live Music Wagon Show. Five years later the National Educational Television jazz broadcast featured her, accompanied by the Vernel Fournier Trio.

In 1958, she sued RCA Record Division after it used her image and her name on the cover of its, not her Lonesome Gal record album. The suit alleged “unfair competition, infringement of trade name, unfair business practices, unjust enrichment and invasion of the right of privacy.” Though the court acknowledged that the album contained the song “Lonesome Gal”, and that the use of one song’s title for an album’s title was common practice in the recording industry, it  ruled in Hunter’s favor on the basis that she was the first person to “adopt and establish the name Lonesome Gal as a personality” and that name was exclusively associated with her. Damages of $22,500 were awarded to Hunter, and the company was ordered to destroy all material containing Hunter’s likeness in conjunction with “Lonesome Gal”.

Vocalist Lurlean Hunter, who was a contralto and made commercials for products such as peas and telephone directories, transitioned on March 11, 1983 in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

GRIOTS GALLERY

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HARRY CONNICK JR.

GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning musician, singer, composer, legendary live performer, and multi-platinum best-selling artist, Harry Connick, Jr., invites you to celebrate the holidays with him and his band as he crosses the country in concert this holiday season.

Long regarded as one of America’s finest vocalists and pianists, Harry has continued to establish himself as one of the most beloved artists performing holiday music to date, thrilling audiences around the world for decades with his definitive take on Christmas classics, as well as his own originals and fan favorites like “(It Must’ve Been Ol’) Santa Claus” and “When My Heart Finds Christmas.”

Harry Connick, Jr. has exemplified excellence in every aspect of the entertainment world. He has received recognition with multiple GRAMMY and Emmy Awards as well as Tony nominations for his live and recorded musical performances, his achievements on screens large and small, and his appearances on Broadway as both an actor and a composer. He has sold millions of holiday albums, which have become the soundtrack to Christmas for fans around the world.

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JOHN BROWN LITTLE BIG BAND FEATURING NNENA FREELON

Six-Time Grammy Award Nominee Nnenna Freelon is known worldwide as a compelling and captivating live performer. The John Brown Big Band is a professional large jazz ensemble made up of top musicians, specializing in performances of traditional compositions from the Great American Songbook and today’s cutting-edge arrangements. Together, these two forces will bring an unforgettable evening of music to the JPAC as they perform all your favorite Holiday favorites such as “Let it Snow, “Jingle Bells” and “Silent Night.” John Brown ~ Bass.

Doors Open: 6:45 PM

John Brown “Little” Big Band Featuring Special Guest Nnenna Freelon Holiday Show – Pre-Concert Hors d’oeuvres Reception** ~ $35.00 | 5:30

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Albennie Jones was born on November 29, 1914 in Errata, Mississippi. She grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi where she sang in the Mount Holy Baptist Church, before moving to New York City in 1932. Her first professional engagement was at Elk’s Rendezvous Club, where she was so successful that she was retained for nine months. She also sang in other clubs, including Club Harlem, Village Vanguard and Murrains Café.

She first recorded, as Albinia Jones, for National Records in late 1944, with a band that included electric guitarist Leonard Ware and pianist Cliff Jackson. The following year, her accompanists also included jazz greats, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, saxophonist Don Byas and pianist Sammy Price. She was promoted at the time as the “New Queen of the Blues”, and toured widely with Blanche Calloway, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Tiny Bradshaw and the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra.

As Albennie Jones, she recorded again with Price for Decca Records in 1947 and 1949. One of her last recordings with Price in 1949 was a rocking R&B number, Hole in the Wall, co-written by record producer Milt Gabler and featuring the line “we’re going to rock and roll at the Hole in the Wall tonight”, a notably early use of the phrase.

Following an onstage fall in the early 1950s, she had to use a crutch at her club performances, and shortly afterwards retired from the music business. Albennie Jones, also credited as Albinia, after suffering from leukemia, transitioned on June 24, 1989 in the Bronx at the age of 74.

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TONY HIGHTOWER

Singer/Songwriter Tony Hightower is taking up the mantle to be a bridge that ushers R&B audiences into Jazz…Real Jazz. With years of experience as a musical performer and actor with familiar roots that place him firmly within the music’s firmament, Atlanta-native Hightower is still just getting started on this benevolent turn in his journey. And he is bringing a lot of young people with him.

​His sophomore project, LEGACY, finds Hightower exploring Jazz vocal stylings from a dazzling prism of angles. The 10-song album moves confidently and assuredly from original compositions such as the soulful scat-laced “All to the Good,” the seductive Brazilian bossa nova of “Rendezvous” and the tender carnal Jarreau-esque love beg “I Need You” to swingin’ covers of Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic Skip Scarborough-penned “Can’t Hide Love,” a mean shuffle boogie groove through Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” and a smoldering upright bass accompanied tiptoe through the 1929 Andy Razaf standard “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You” made further famous in 1944 by one of Hightower’s greatest and earliest Jazz vocal heroes, Nat “King” Cole. That one’ll make the women wiggle.

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