Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sylvia Syms was born Sylvia Blagman on December 2, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. As a child she contracted polio but overcame it and by the time she was a teenager she was hanging in the infamous jazz haunts on 52nd Street. She received informal training from Billie Holiday and in 1941 she made her debut at Kelly’s Stable.
In 1948, performing at the Cinderella Club in Greenwich Village she was seen by Mae West, who gave her a part in a show she was doing. Among others who observed her in nightclubs was Frank Sinatra who considered her the “world’s greatest saloon singer.” Sinatra subsequently conducted her 1982 album, Syms by Sinatra.
Signing a redocrd deal with Decca Records in 1956, Sylvia had her major success with a recording of I Could Have Danced All Night selling over a million copies garnering a gold disc. She would appear regularly at the Carlyle in Manhattan, at times, impromptu, while enjoying a cocktail in the bar of the Carlyle, she would walk on stage and perform with the cabaret’s other regular, Bobby Short.
She had a lung removed in 1972, despite which, she shortly thereafter performed as a well received Bloody Mary in South Pacific for several months at the Chateau de Ville Dinner. Vocalist Sylvia Syms, who recorded seventeen albums, appeared in six films and guested on The Tonight Show, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas, Dick Cavett, Playboy’s Penthouse, and American Masters, passed away of a heart attack while on stage at the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel in New York City at age 74 on May 10, 1992.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hoagy Carmichael was born Howard Hoagland Carmichael on November 22, 1899 in Bloomington, Indiana. He was named Hoagland after a circus troupe “The Hoaglands” who stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother’s pregnancy. His mother was a versatile pianist who played accompaniment at silent movies and for parties and by age six, he started to sing and play the piano, easily absorbing his mother’s keyboard skills.
Never having formal piano lessons by high school, the piano was the focus of his after-school life, and for inspiration he would listen to ragtime pianists Hank Wells and Hube Hanna. By eighteen he was living in Indianapolis, working in manual jobs in construction, a bicycle chain factory, and a slaughterhouse to help out the family’s income. During this period he befriended the Black bandleader and jazz pianist Reg DuValle, the elder statesman of Indiana and Rhythm King, who taught his jazz improvisation.
Carmichael went on to attend Indiana University and Indiana University School of Law graduating with a bachelor degree and law degree, respectively. He played with Bix Beiderbecke who introduced him to future collaborator, Louis Armstrong.
He began to compose song like Washboard Blues, Boneyard Shuffle and Riverboat Shuffle. In 1927 Hoagy composed and recorded Stardust, one of his most famous songs. His first major song with his own lyrics was Rockin’ Chair recorded by Armstrong and Mildred Bailey. He recorded it himself in 1930 with Beiderbecke, Bubber Miley, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Bud Freeman, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti and Gene Krupa.
He would go on to team up with Johnny Mercer and Frank Loesser, composing Georgia On My Mind, Up A Lazy River, In The Still Of The Night, Skylark, I Get Along Without You Very Well, The Nearness Of You and Baltimore Oriole among some many other jazz standards.
With his financial and social condition improved dramatically he began hobnobbing with George Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Duke Ellington and other music giants in the New York scene. He appeared in fourteen films, always performing one of his songs, appeared in numerous television roles, hosted musical variety radio and television programs, received Academy Awards for Best Original Song, was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Indiana University, inducted into the Gennett Records Walk of Fame, recorded with Annie Ross and Georgie Fame, and penned two autobiographies.
Composer, pianist, singer, songwriter and actor, Hoagy Carmichael, passed away of heart failure in Rancho Mirage, California on December 27, 1981.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born Mary Louise Tobin on November 14, 1918 in Aubrey, Texas and at age fourteen in 1932 she won a CBS Radio Talent Contest. Following a tour with society dance orchestras in Texas, she joined Art Hicks and his Orchestra in 1934. At that time, Harry James was playing first trumpet in the band and a year later she and James were married.
Tobin brought Frank Sinatra to James’ attention in 1939 after hearing him sing on the radio. James subsequently signed Sinatra to a one-year contract at $75 a week. While she was singing with trumpeter Bobby Hackett at Nick’s in the Village, jazz critic and producer John Hammond heard her and brought Benny Goodman to a performance and soon joined the Goodman band.
Louise went on to record There’ll Be Some Changes Made, Scatterbrain, Comes Love, Love Never Went To College, What’s New? and Blue Orchids. Johnny Mercer wrote Louise Tobin Blues for her while she was with Goodman and was arranged by Fletcher Henderson. In 1940 Tobin recorded Deed I Do and Don’t Let It Get You Down with Will Bradley and His Orchestra.
By 1945 Tobin was recording with Tommy Jones and His Orchestra, Emil Coleman and His Orchestra and through the decade performed and recorded with Skippy Anderson’s Band at the Melodee Club in Los Angeles, and with Ziggy Elman and His Orchestra.
Taking a long hiatus to raise her children, Louise came back in 1962 at the Newport Jazz Festival, met second husband Peanuts Hucko, acquired a regular gig at Blues Alley on Washington, DC and moved to Denver, Colorado and opened the Navarre Club as co-owners. They would go on to lead and sing with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, touring worldwide with Louise singing and recording various numbers with the band.
In 2008 Tobin donated her extensive collection of original musical arrangements, press clippings, programs, recordings, playbills and photographs to create the Tobin-Hucko Jazz Collection at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marlene Ver Planck was born Marlene Paula Pampinella on November 11, 1933 in Newark, New Jersey. She grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald on the radio and started singing at age 19., working with Tex Beneke and Charlie Spivak in the Fifties, the latter band is where she met her husband, composer, arranger and conductor Billy Ver Planck.
Her first big break came in 1955 at the age of 21 when she teamed up with pianist Hank Jones, flutist Herbie Mann, trumpeter Joe Wilder, bassist Wendell Marshall and drummer Kenny Clarke and recorded I Think Of You With Every Breath I Take for Savoy Records. Singing went on to sing with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra in New York City and after Tommy’s death pursued studio work with Sinatra, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Blood Sweat & Tears and Kiss.
Marlene’s voice was recognizable by millions of people outside the jazz world doing jingles in the ’60s: “Weekends were made for Michelob… Yeah!”, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!” and “Mmm good, mm-mm good, that’s what Campbell’s Soups are/mm mm good.” After thousands of commercial jingles and hours and hours of studio session work in New York, she decided to settle down with her husband in their house in Clifton, New Jersey and began performing and recording together.
They would go on to work with composer Loonis McGlohon, Alec Wilder, Mel Torme, Eileen Farrell, Glenn Miller Orchestra, George Shearing and Marian McPartland among others. Over the course of her career she recorded two-dozen albums and appeared on several television shows.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patricia Barber was born on November 8, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois to professional musician parents and raised in South Sioux City, Iowa. She began playing classical piano at age six and by the time she graduated high school jazz was completely in her blood.
She enrolled in the University of Iowa with a double major of classical music and psychology but the jazz voice in her head grew louder. In 1984 she returned to Chicago and landed a five night week gig at the Gold Star Sandine Bar and since the mid-90s performs regularly at the Green Mill.
Starting her professional career as a pianist, as Barber’s stock rose, she then began to add vocals to her repertoire, centered in a fairly low register and a traditional blues-jazz style. Mixing original compositions and standards with classic rock covers, she has recorded and released a dozen compact discs, including a three CD box set covering her 1994-2007 years. She has released a classic Cole Porter collection of his songbook in her unique way of interpretation.
Vocalist, pianist and songwriter Patricia Barber has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and teaches master classes worldwide in between her performing, touring and recording.
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