GREGORY PORTER & NAJEE
Gregory Porter is a singer, songwriter and musician. He moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York in 2004, along with his brother Lloyd and worked as a chef at Lloyd’s restaurant Bread-Stuy (now defunct), where he also performed. Porter performed at other neighborhood venues including Sista’s Place and Solomon’s Porch, and moved on to Harlem club St. Nick’s Pub, where he maintained a weekly residency. Out of this residency evolved what would become Porter’s touring band.He has twice won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album: first in 2014 for Liquid Spirit and then again in 2017 for Take Me to the Alley.
Najee, is a smooth jazz saxophonist and flautist. After his studies at the New England Conservatory, Najee returned to New York City in the early 1980s. In 1983, he and his brother Fareed toured with Chaka Khan for the Ain’t Nobody Tour. His albums okyo Blue and Day by Day led to Najee winning two Soul Train Awards for Best Jazz Artist in 1991 and 1993.
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Requisites
The very first time I heard Shirley Horn sings and play piano was in the 1970s at the Bohemian Caverns in Washington, D.C. and I fell in love with her voice and style. By then she had recorded five albums and when I was on the radio she became a part of my regular playlist. Here’s To Life is a studio album recorded in September 1991 by the vocalist, and released in 1992. The album was arranged by Johnny Mandel who composed three of the songs on the album. He also received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocals on this album. It’s a quiet album of ballads that once again showcases Shirley’s talent. Johnny Mandel arranged and conducted the recording session for the Verve label.
The album opens with the title track with Here’s To Life which became her signature song. The music was written by Artie Butler and the poignant lyrics were written by Phyllis Molinary. The lyric, known world-wide as one of her finest works and the song is considered a modern day jazz standard. She followed with a medley of Come A Little Closer/Wild Is the Wind. The former song is about New Yorkers, the city and the cell phone that disputes a couple’s marriage. The song is paired with Wild Is The Wind which was written as the theme song for the 1959 film of the same name and recorded by Johnny Mathis. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song.
How Am I to Know? by Jack King and Dorothy Parker takes the third slot on the album. A Time for Love was written for the 1966 film An American Dream. The Begman/ Mandel tune, Where Do You Start tells the story of a couple breaking up and undecided about what belongs to whom. The next song You’re Nearer is a Lorenz Hart/Richard Rodgers composition for the Broadway musical Too Many Girls. Our next entry in Return to Paradise was written for the 1953 film of the same name by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington. Isn’t It A Pity was composed by the Gershwins for the unsuccessful 1933 musical Pardon My English, however, the song became a part of the Great American Songbook.
Quietly There is taken from the noir film Harper that starred Paul Newman as a detective. If You Love Me is an English adaptation of the popular French song “Hymne à l’amour of Hymn To Love. The album closes with Summer is the first English version of the Italian standard Estate. She ordered English lyrics after hearing Joao Gilberto’s version, which spread the song to worldwide fame.
Shirley Horn sings and plays piano and is joined by bassist Charles Ables and dummer Steve Williams as her core trio. She invited trumpeter Wynton Marsalis – to play on A Time For Love and Quietly There. Richard Todd plays the French horn on the title track. Reminding me of how precious life is and how much we should live and love, this has become my favorite album by this vocalist. I hope you enjoy it just as much as I.
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The Jazz Voyager
The Jazz Voyager is on his way to the Midwest to Chicago, Illinois for a stroll around Lakeshore Drive or taking the El across town. This is my town in the summertime and I’ll be arriving a day early to renew memories of Lakeshore Drive, the Field Museum, Millennium Park or take an afternoon cruise down the Chicago River.
However, this trip will be another first time visit to a new venue for this traveler but not for those patrons who have appreciated jazz since 1935 when they first opened their doors. Whether considered famous or infamous the Green Mill Jazz Club was a favorite haunt for mobster Al Capone who turned it into a speakeasy, had his own booth and had some of the most noted musicians of the era to perform. Today it still swings with notable local, national and international acts.
Not only is this a new venue for me but a new musician I’ve never heard before. Pianist and harmonic player Harold Levy will be on stage from 8:00pm to midnight with his trio of players Chris Siebold on guitar, Joshua Ramos on bass, and drummer Luis Ewerling.
The venue is located at 4802 N. Broadway Avenue, 60640. For tickets and more info go to https://notoriousjazz.com/event/howard-levy-4.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clora Larea Bryant was born on May 30, 1927 in Denison, Texas to Charles and Eulila Bryant, the youngest of three children. As a young child she learned to play piano with her brother Mel, and was a member of a Baptist church choir. Her brother Fred left his trumpet when he joined the military, she picked it up and learned to play. In high school she played trumpet in the marching band.
She turned down scholarships from Oberlin Conservatory and Bennett College to attend Prairie View College in Houston, Texas starting in 1943. Bryant was a member of the Prairie View Co-eds Jazz Band which toured in Texas and performed at the Apollo Theater in New York City in 1944. Her father got a job in Los Angeles, CAlifornia and she transferred to UCLA in 1945, and where she first heard bebop on Central Avenue.
In 1946 she became a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-female jazz band, earned her union card and dropped out of school. Dizzy Gillespie became her mentor and provided her with work. She joined the black female jazz band the Queens of Swing as a drummer, and went on tour with the band.
In 1951 she worked in Los Angeles as a trumpeter for Josephine Baker and Billie Holiday. The same year the Queens of Swing became the first women’s jazz group to appear on television and performed as The Hollywood Sepia Tones. Clora was called onto Ada Leonard’s all-girl orchestra show, however, racist directed calls to the station the engagement. In 1954 she briefly moved to New York because she had lost inspiration from playing in bands.
Bryant recorded her first and only album, Gal With A Horn, in 1957 before returning to the life of a traveling musician. She worked with Louis Armstrong and Harry James, toured with singer Billy Williams and around the world with her brother Mel, had a TV show in Australia and became the first female jazz musician to tour in the Soviet Union after writing to Mikhail Gorbachev.
After a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery in 1996, Bryant was forced to give up the trumpet but she continued to sing. She also began to give lectures on college campuses about the history of jazz, co-edited a book on jazz history in Los Angeles titled Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles, and worked with children in Los Angeles elementary schools.
Trumpeter and vocalist Clora Bryant, who was the only female trumpeter to perform with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on August 25, 2019, after suffering a heart attack at home.
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The Jazz Voyager
From the Big Apple to the Carolinas is the next sojourn this Jazz Voyager is taking for a first time visit to the Joseph M. Bryan, Jr. Amphitheater. The 500 seat outdoor venue has lawn seating for 2,800 and is located in Museum Park situated at the heart of the North Carolina Museum of Art campus amid gardens, meadows, woodlands, and site-specific art installations and sculpture.
This week is a two-fer on this voyage with singer-songwriter Gregory Porter is taking the stage as the headliner. Coming out of Bakersfield, California, he cites the Bakersfield Southern Gospel sound and his mother’s Nat King Cole record collection as fundamental influences on his own sound. Opening for him is The Baylor Project, the Grammy nominated duo of Jean and Marcus Baylor, who have built their career on love, family, faith, culture, and community.
The venue is located at 2110 Blue Ridge Road in Raleigh, NC 27607. For tickets and more info go to https://notoriousjazz.com/event/gregory-porter-the-baylor-project.
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