Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Dinah Washington was born Ruth Lee Jones on August 29, 1924 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A blues, R&B and jazz singer, Dinah gained an early reputation for singing torch songs. In 1962 she hired a trio of musicians and vocalists that called themselves the Allegros, consisting of Jimmy Thomas on drums, Earl Edwards on sax, and Jimmy Sigler on organ and their vocals created “effective choruses”.

Garnering the title “Queen of the Blues”, over the course of her career Dinah recorded for Keynote, Mercury, EmArcy and Roulette Records, winning a Grammy for “What A Difference A Day Makes”. She was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, with her recordings inducted into the Grammy, Big Band, Jazz and the Rock and Roll Halls of Fame. She had a U.S. Postal commemorative stamp; had a street in Tuscaloosa and a park in Chicago named in her honor.

Known for her amorous personality, Washington was married eight times and divorced seven times, while having several lovers in between marriages. However, it was very early on the morning of December 14, 1963, that Dinah Washington passed away from a lethal combination of secobarbital and amobarbital. Her eighth and final husband NFL player Dick “Night Train” Lane discovered her body. She was 39.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joya Sherrill was born on August 20, 1924 in Bayonne, New Jersey and originally aspired to be a writer. While still in high school her father arranged for an introduction with Duke Ellington in 1942, aged 17. Six months later she joined the orchestra fronting the band as his vocalist. Leaving briefly to attend Wilberforce University, she returned to the group from 1944 to 1946. She had a hit with Ellington’s tune “I’m Beginning to See the Light”.

Subsequently, she worked as a soloist, performing with Rex Stewart, Ray Nance and others into the 1960s. She returned to Ellington for 1959’s A Drum Is A Woman. She toured the U.S. in 1959 and then took a role in the Broadway show “The Long Dream”. She toured with Benny Goodman in the USSR in 1962 and then returned to sing with Ellington in 1963.

One of the first Blacks to host a television program, from 1970 to 1982 she had a children’s television show, “Time for Joya”, later called “Joya’s Fun School. Although she only taped a few years worth of original episodes, the show would be seen in reruns for twelve years. Late in the 1980s she hosted a children’s show in the Middle East.

Joya Sherrill, jazz vocalist, died of complications from leukemia on June 28, 2010 in Great Neck, New York at the age of 85.

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Daily Dose of Jazz…

Mary Stallings was born August 16, 1939 in San Francisco, California, one of the eldest of 11 children growing up in the Laurel Heights district, where she still lives, starting as a gospel singer at the First AME Church. Her professional singing career began before she graduated from Lowell High School. Encouraged by her uncle, saxophonist Orlando Stallings, she listened closely to the great jazz singers.

As a teenager, Stallings was appearing in Bay Area nightclubs performing with Ben Webster, Cal Tjader, Earl Hines, Red Mitchell, Teddy Edwards and the Montgomery brothers. Before graduation from high school she joined R&B pioneer Louis Jordan’s Tympani Five. One night in the early Sixties at San Francisco’s Black Hawk nightclub, Dizzy Gillespie invited Ms. Stallings out of the audience and onto his bandstand to sing. By the time she was 26, Mary was playing the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival together with Gillespie in 1965.

The vocalist is perhaps best known for her 1961 collaboration with vibraphonist Cal Tjader on Cal Tjader Plays, Mary Stallings Sings on Fantasy, however, she went on to tour Asia, South America and perform stateside sharing billing with Billy Eckstine, Joe Williams, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald. From 1969 – ’72 she held a three-year residency as the Count Basie Orchestra girl singer.

After a short semi-retirement Stallings returned to full-time singing at the end of the eighties and finally came to the attention of the national jazz audience with her 1994 release of the aptly titled “I Waited for You” with the Gene Harris Quartet. She followed with Fine and Mellow, Spectrum, Manhattan Moods, Live at the Village Vanguard and Remember Love.

Over the years Mary has worked with jazz luminaries Monty Alexander, Paul Humphries, Ron Eschete, Hendrik Meurkens, Dick Oatts, Geri Allen, Ben Wolfe and Andy Simpkins. She has performed at major festivals being backed by the likes of Marcus Shelby’s Jazz Orchestra, Eric Reed Trio and Wycliffe Gordon and is the recipient of San Francisco’s SF Jazz Beacon Award. She continues to perform, tour and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lorez Alexandria was born Dolorez Alexandria Turner on August 14, 1929 in Chicago, Illinois and began as a singer in churches in her teens, spending 11 years as part of an “a cappela” choir. Turning to jazz, she worked the local Chicago club scene before moving to Los Angeles in 1962 to further her career.

Although Alexandria never made the anticipated breakthrough to a wider audience, but she was highly regarded as a jazz singer by those who knew her work, whether as critics, musicians or fans. Over the course of her career Lorez recorded with such musicians as King Fleming, Ramsey Lewis, Howard McGhee and Gildo Mahones.

Lorez had an attractive voice, a good feel for jazz phrasing, and a cleanly enunciated delivery that was always highly sensitive to the import of the lyric she was singing. 

 She remains best known for her album Alexandria the Great released in 1964 that featured her in a variety of contexts ranging from big bands to small groups, including several tracks with the Wynton Kelly Trio.

She recorded several albums, including This is Lorez Alexandria with the King Fleming Quartet 1957; Deep Roots 1960; A Woman Knows 1978 and Harlem Butterfly 1984.

Retiring from performing in 1996, she suffered a stroke shortly afterwards, remaining in failing health. Vocalist Lorez Alexandria succumbed to complications from kidney failure on May 22, 2001 in Los Angeles, California.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jimmy Witherspoon was born on August 8, 1920 in Gurdon, Arkansas. He first attracted attention singing with Teddy Weatherford’s band in Calcutta, India, which made regular radio broadcasts over the U. S. Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II. Witherspoon made his first recordings with Jay McShann’s band in 1945.

By 1949 Jimmy was recording under his own name with the McShann band and had his first hit and signature tune with “Ain’t Nobody’s Business”. In 1950 he had several more with “No Rollin’ Blues” and “Big Fine Girl”, as well as “Failing By Degrees” and “New Orleans Woman” recorded with the Gene Gilbeaux Orchestra. These Gilbeaux recordings are from a live performance on May 10, 1949 at a “Just Jazz” concert in Pasadena, CA sponsored by Gene Norman.

Witherspoon’s style of the “blues shouter” became unfashionable in the mid-1950s, but he returned to popularity with his 1959 album, “Jimmy Witherspoon at the Monterey Jazz Festival” featuring Roy Eldridge, Woody Herman, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines and Mel Lewis among others.

The early 60s saw Witherspoon touring Europe with Buck Clayton, recording in the UK, the 70s recording with Brother Jack McDuff in London, with Eric Burdon, toured with his own band with a host of players such as Joe Sample, Cornell Dupree, Thad Jones and others.  He continued to record and perform well into the Nineties with Gerry Mulligan, Leroy Vinnegar, Teddy Wilson, Pepper Adams, Junior Mance and the list jazz luminaries goes on and on.

Vocalist Jimmy Witherspoon died of throat cancer in Los Angeles, California on September 18, 1997.

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