Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Della Griffin was born June 12, 1925 in Newberry, South Carolina but grew up in New York, the 19th of 20th children. She greatly admired and was influenced by Count Basie, Charlie Barnet, and most specifically Billie Holiday. She began singing when she was 12 and a few years after her graduation in 1943 from Jamaica High School in Queens, New York, she began singing professionally.
1950 found Griffin and Frances Kelley forming one of the first all female R&B singing group that played in small clubs whenever they could for about a year. In 1951, Della invited Jerry Blaine, the owner of Jubilee Records, to hear the group perform. So impressed by the group that he signed them the next day and in January 1952 Jubilee released “The Enchanters” first record, they began touring, dropped their second record and two members left the group.
Della and Kelley were determined to continue their careers and replaced the two members becoming the “Dell-Tones” after lead singer and drummer Della. They went on to record with Brunswick and Rainbow record labels, and toured with Jimmy Forrest. By 1957 the Dell-Tones slowly began to drift apart and Della left to perform on her own.
Over the years Griffin migrated towards jazz touring with and playing in support to many artists including Sonny Stitt, Benny Green, Illinois Jacquet, and Etta Jones. She began performing again in New York City clubs including the Blue Note and The Blue Book where she stayed for years.
In 1984, Della was hit by a car and took a break from singing. She came back as a featured singer that garnered her more attention than her drumming. Recording with Houston Person, she began performing overseas at age 88, she has since all but ceased her performances and appearances. While singing remained her passion, vocalist Della Griffin, who was also proficient on the drums, alto saxophone, and piano, transitioned in New York City on August 9, 2022, at the age of 100..
Inspire A Young Mind
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nanette Natal was born on June 10, 1945 in Brooklyn, New York. She started her professional career as a classical singer in 1960 and during this period she was a member of the Helen Hayes Young People’s Theater Guild. In the early ’60s, she performed numerous concerts in New York with that group. She then went on to work the Bitter End Coffee House Circuit, performing her own material, which developed into blues and rock, singing and playing guitar and performing at universities and concert halls throughout the country.
By the ’70s, she recorded for Vanguard and Evolution Records, worked with Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, Bonnie Raitt and Rick Nelson along with TV appearances, most notably with Barbara Walters on The Today Show. She was also active on the club circuit playing such venues as the Gaslight and the Au Go-Go.
Unhappy with the constrictions of the record companies, it was in the mid-Seventies that she dissolved her recording contracts and set herself upon a path to develop her musical expression and in 1977 she turned to jazz as that vehicle. Nanette’s defining moment in her mind to pursue a jazz career occurred during a demo recording session for Columbia Records. She was asked to record a pop record and she sang Duke “Sophisticated Lady”. Dramatically changing the phrasing she was subsequently told by the engineer that she was not a pop singer, but a jazz singer.
From 1977 to the mid-’80s, Natal became a strong influence on the downtown loft scene. It was at this time that she started to teach privately, setting up her production company and label, Benyo Music Productions, and releasing five albums from 1980 to 1995.
Nanette Natal, one of the more creative jazz singers continues to perform and teach in New York and work on such interesting and daring projects as a one-woman opera. She also writes a monthly column “Creative Fire-Singing as a Spiritual Practice” which expresses her views on the art and techniques of jazz vocalizing.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
Harry Warren composed the music and Mack Gordon, the lyrics for the now jazz standard, I Had the Craziest Dream, for the 1942 film Springtime In The Rockies. The film starred Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda, John Payne, Cesar Romero, Harry James and His Music Makers and the vocal group Six Hits and a Miss.
The Story: Broadway partners Vicky Lane and Dan Christy have a tiff over Christy’s womanizing. Jealous Vicky takes up with her old flame and former dance partner, Victor Price, and Dan’s career takes a nosedive. In hopes of rekindling their romance and getting Vicky back on the boards with him, Dan follows her to a ritzy resort in the Canadian Rockies, where she and Victor are about to open their new act. But things get complicated when Dan wakes after a bender to find that he’s hired an outlandish Latin secretary, Rosita Murphy, which makes Vicky think he’s just up to his old tricks again.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emilie-Claire Barlow was born June 6, 1976 in Toronto, Canada to professional musician parents, so she grew up in recording studios. By age seven she had begun a career singing television and radio commercial
Encouraged by her parents to sing and study several instruments Emilie chose piano, cello, clarinet and violin. She went on to study voice at the Etobicoke School of Arts and music theory and arranging at Humber College. She lists Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder amongst her musical influences.
Barlow’s first album Sings was released in 1998. She has been named Female Vocalist of the Year at the 2008 National Jazz Awards, has been nominated five times for Canada’s Juno Awards and won Best Jazz Vocal Recording for her album Seule ce soir in 2013. The album also won Album of the Year – Jazz Interpretation at the 2013 ADISQ Awards. The same year she also picked up Best Jazz Vocalist of the Year from Sirius XM Independent Album of the Year.
Beyond music Emilie has also provided voices for many animated television series, including Sailor Venus and Sailor Mars in Sailor Moon, Bakugan Battle Brawlers and Courtney in Total Drama Island.
To date the jazz singer, arranger, record producer and voice actress has released 10 self produced jazz albums on her own label and has voiced dozens of characters for animated television series. She has performed and recorded with Melanie Doane, Peter Appleyard, Matt Dusk, Jay Oliver and Dave Weckl to name a few. Emilie-Claire Barlow continues to perform, record and tour.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Valaida Snow was born on June 2, 1903 in Chattanooga, Tennessee into a family of musicians where her mother taught her and sisters Alvaida and Hattie, and brother Arthur Bush how to play multiple instruments. She was taught to play cello, bass, violin, banjo, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, saxophone and trumpet. By the young age of fifteen she was already a recognized professional singer and trumpeter and while her beauty attracted audiences, it was her incredible talent as a jazz trumpeter which truly captivated them. Obtaining the nickname, “Little Louis” due to her Louis Armstrong-like playing style, hitting those high C’s just like Louis.
Snow toured and recorded frequently in the United States, Europe and the Far East both with her own bands and other leaders’ bands. She took part in a session with Earl Hines in New York in 1933 and also performed with Count Basie, Teddy Weatheford, Willie Lewis and Fletcher Henderson at various places and times.
Not limiting herself to jazz she branch out to the stage and as an actress she debuted on Broadway in 1924 as Mandy in Eubie Blake and Noble Sissles’s musical ‘Chocolate Dandies.’ Later, she appeared on Broadway in Ethel Waters’ show, ‘Rhapsody in Black’ in 1934; she appeared in the London production of ‘Blackbirds’ in 1935 with Johnny Claes and also in its Paris production. She could be seen in ‘Liza’ across Europe and Russia in the 30’s and was also in the Hollywood films ‘Take It from Me’ in 1937, ‘Irresistible You,’ ‘L’Alibi’ and ‘Pieges’ in 1939 with her husband Ananais Berry. Valaida Snow shocked people in the USA, with her eccentric behavior. She traveled in an orchid colored Mercedes, dressed in an orchid suit, her pet monkey rigged out in an orchid jacket and cap, with the chauffeur in orchid as well.
Snow’s incarceration has been written about several times and debunked by a few that while touring through Denmark in 1941, she was arrested by the Nazis during the German occupation and kept at Vestre Faengsel (Western Prison), a Danish prison in Copenhagen that was run by the Nazis. She was released on a prisoner exchange in May 1942. What is know is that Snow stayed in wartime Denmark by choice, that she survived the Nazis and was never shy about using and stretching the truth to suit her purposes.
By the early 1950s Valaida recorded for the Derby label with the Jimmy Mundy Orchestra. The result was “Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone” and “When A Woman Loves A Man”. The record does nicely in certain areas, especially Philadelphia and St. Louis. The Derby release is her first real effort since her tragic imprisonment and it does well. She embarked on a tour of the Northeast and is a particular favorite at the Monte Carlo in Pittsburgh. In the fall she is at the 845 Club in New York and is held over. In a bit of a surprise she leaves Derby Records and signs with Apollo Records late in the year.
In February of 1951 she records “Porgy” and “The More I Know About Love” for Apollo with the Bobby Smith Orchestra. She continues her many in person appearances throughout the country, and in early 1952 embarks on a true R & B tour with Joe Liggins & His Honeydrippers up and down the West coast. Her records are sporadic, and after a well-attended stay at Chicago’s Crown Propeller Lounge in late 1953, Snow signed with that city’s Chess label. “I Ain’t Gonna Tell” and “If You Mean It” are released by Chess. The next two years are spent mostly appearing in the musical revues that have always been her first love.
It is just at this time that the final curtain descends on Valaida Snow, who spoke seven languages, was billed as “Queen Of The Trumpet”, performed in the top theatrical productions of her day, wrote and recorded her theme song, “High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm” and was the toast of Paris and London, passed away on May 30, 1956 of a cerebral hemorrhage backstage at the Palace Theater in New York. She left this world doing what she loved most, entertaining the public with her great talents.
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