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
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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.
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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
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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.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
As our final installment on the musicals and the songs that have gone on to become classics in the jazz catalogue, Broadway has entertained millions of audiences from around the world and has touched every human emotion and story one can imagine. It has captured our hearts and taken us on journeys to unexpected destinations both visceral and intuitive.
The Broadway musical played an integral role in the creation of the Great American Songbook as songs from the legendary composers and lyricists like Gershwin, Porter, KernRodgers, Hammerstein, Van Heusen, Hart, Webber, Rice, Loesser, Bricusse, Newley, Styne, Comden etc. have filled the pages of our imaginations
The “blockbuster” musicals were so successful that they ran over a thousand performances. A small aggregation of only 17 comprised of Oklahoma (2,212), Annie Get Your Gun (1,147), Kiss Me Kate (1,077), South Pacific (1,925), Guys & Dolls (1,200), The King And I (1,246), The Pajama Game (1,063), My Fair Lady (2,717), How To Succeed In Business (1,417), Funny Girl (1,348), Hello Dolly (2,844), Fiddler On The Roof (3,242), The Sound Of Music (1,443), Mame (1,508), Promises, Promises (1,281), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1,604) and Evita (1,567).
To describe Broadway one would beg permission to borrow from Tevya in Fiddler On The Roof – “without tradition our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof!”
The lyrics and composition that were relegated to the amphitheaters of “The Great White Way” have received perpetual encores over the past century under the auspices of “The Street” and the songs continue to be honored by living legends, contemporaries and the “new breed” of jazz musicians and vocalists.
52nd Street, between Fifth and Seventh Avenues was known as “Swing Street” was equally attended by hundreds of thousands during its heyday between the 1930s and 1950s in just thirteen clubs. Equally blockbuster are the million selling albums of Miles Davis (Kind of Blue), Dave Brubeck (Time Out), John Coltrane (A Love Supreme, Blue Train), Herbie Hancock (Headhunters), Louis Armstrong (What A Wonderful World), Ella Fitzgerald (Best of the Songbooks).
To describe 52nd Street one would merely state that it was the epicenter of jazz in New York City and the connection between the musicians who played on Broadway and the legitimate clubs. It was the place where musicians who played for others earlier in the night, played for themselves on 52nd Street.
