Hollywood On 52nd Street
Days of Wine and Roses is a popular song and jazz standard from the 1962 movie of the same name. Henry Mancini composed the music with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. They received the Academy Award for Best Original Song for their work. The song is composed of only two sentences, one for each stanza. Though the best-known recording of the song was by Andy Williams in 1963, several others have recorded the song, including the composer Henry Mancini, Perry Como, Wes Montgomery (1963: Boss Guitar), Lenny Breau, and Joe Pass and Ella Fitzgerald on their Pablo Records album Easy Living.
Sponsored By
www.whatissuitetabu.com
More Posts: hollywood,instrumental,vocal
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billie Pierce was born Wilhelmina Goodson on June 8, 1907 in Marianna, Florida. She was born into a family of pianists with both parents and seven-sisters playing, notably her sister Ida Goodson.
Early in the 1920s, Billie played with Bessie Smith and later in the decade played in the bands of Alphonse Picou, Emile Barnes and George Lewis. By the 1930s she was playing the Blue Jay Club, where she met trumpeter De De Pierce; the two fell in love, married, and co-led their own ensemble, which served as the house band at Luthjen’s Dance Hall in the 1950s.
She played in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and was a regular on the New Orleans jazz scene in the 1950s through the early Seventies. Pianist and singer Billie Goodson died on September 29, 1974 in New Orleans, Louisiana at the age of 67.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
More Posts: vocal
Hollywood On 52nd Street
My Shining Hour and One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) are from a 1943 musical comedy movie titled “The Sky’s The Limit”. Harold Arlen composed the music and Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics. It starred Fred Astaire and Joan Leslie.
My Shining Hour was introduce by Sally Sweetland and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. It is believed that the opening line “this will be my shining hour” to have been a reference to Winston Churchill’s famous rallying call to British citizens during the war: “This will be our finest hour”.
One For My Baby (And One For More The Road) took two and a half days to shoot, after seven days of full set rehearsal. After a drunken rendition of the song, he furiously tap dances up and down the bar, pausing only to smash stacked racks of glasses and a mirror. The number was first performed in the film by Fred Astaire but popularized by Frank Sinatra.
Sponsored By
www.whatissuitetabu.com
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Morgana King was born Maria Grazia Morgana Messina on June 4, 1930 in Pleasantville, New York but grew up in New York City at 145th & Amsterdam. Around 13, she began studying acting with the Shubert Theatre family, discovered her vocal talents and received a scholarship to the Metropolitan School of Music.
By sixteen she heard jazz and fell in love with the big bands of Benny Goodman, Harry James but they became overshadowed by Duke Ellington, Erskine Hawkins and Benny Carter. It was during this period she changed her name to Morgana King and her professional career began on a stage in Greenwich Village.
Morgana’s unique phrasing and multi-octave range has made her a formidable interpreter that was expressively evident on her 1956 debut release “For You, For Me, For Evermore”. Her singing career would go on to span four decades with such albums as “It’s A Quiet Thing”, “Wild Is Love” and “Gemini Changes” and headlining clubs, concert halls and hotels throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and South America with a limited list of musicians she has performed and recorded with.
She is also known for her acting debut playing Carmela Corleone in The Godfather, singing “Eh, Cumpari” and reprising the role in the Godfather Part II. Retiring from show business in 1993, her body of work that includes over thirty albums exhibits her four-octave range, her lyrical signature and her refined ease of evoking a sentiment not just in jazz but also throughout her expanded genres. Morgana King passed away on March 22, 2018 in Palm Springs, California leaving us with her catalogue of music that includes her 1964 signature song “A Taste of Honey”.
Inspire A Young Mind
More Posts: vocal
Hollywood On 52nd Street
A Second Chance comes from a 1962 film Two For The Seesaw adapted from the Broadway play written by William Gibson. Robert Wise directed and Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine played the lead roles. Andre Previn composed the music with lyrics by Dory Langdon.
The Story: Nebraska attorney Jerry Ryan (Mitchum) recently separated from his wife gets away from it all by moving into a shabby New York apartment. While struggling with the divorce, he meets struggling dancer Gittel Mosca (MacLaine) at a party. They instantly get along, begin to fall in love but the relationship is rocky and hampered by their differences in background and temperament. Gittel has a fling and Jerry can’t separate himself from his ex though the divorce is final. He decides to move back to Nebraska.
Sponsored By
www.whatissuitetabu.com