A jazz singer who won early acclaim for her interpretations of classic songs, then re-emerged decades later from near-obscurity.
Her final album "Live at Birdland" was released in 2022, 60 years after her debut recording "Out of the Blue".
From 1969 to 1977, she lived near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she worked as a legal secretary and sang occasionally in a local nightclub. She sang in church choirs, then at age 14 began singing with a local big band, making 9 dollars a night.
Lurlean Hunter (1928-1983) was, with all her skills, one of the most underappreciated singers in America. Other singers, who held her in universal high regard, were in no doubt as to her quality. A singers' singer, she was revered for her near perfection in vocal styling, technique, and delivery, gifts she blended into a captivating combination. This distinction is self-evident in the four albums she recorded during her career: Lonesome Gal (1955), Night Life (1956), Stepping Out (1957), and Blue and Sentimental (1960). On them she is accompanied by orchestras filled by some of the best New York jazz musicians. The skillful writing was provided by a handful of top arrangers, including Quincy Jones, Marion Evans, Manny Albam, Al Cohn, Ernie Wilkins, Phil Moore, and Jimmy Giuffre. All of them with the exception of Cohn and Wilkins also conducted their own scores. Throughout she is refreshingly unselfconscious, her voice strong and firm, her conception mature and intelligent and her phrasing meaningful. Blessed with fantastic intonation, effortless ease and innate musicianship, she also had an innately lyrical approach to the songs she sang, and they flowed out of her like something made of rich velvet, done in exquisite taste.
Dinah Shore, the quintessential American girl, was both America’s sweetheart in the 1940s and 1950s and a leading example of an independent woman in the 1970s. Her career spanned over forty years and included stints on the radio and in the movies. Her most enduring legacy, however, is her impressive vocal recordings and television shows.
One of the least regarded, but arguably the most talented of the many female pianist/vocalists who inhabited the West Coast during the 1940s, Mabel Scott was beautiful, elegant and classically trained, with a strong voice suitable for torchy ballads as well as uptempo jump novelties. And she was married, albeit briefly, to one of the major stars of 1940s black music. Small wonder, then, that she was not more commercially successful during her recording career - or more well-known today than she is.
One of the most technically gifted and popular vocalists of the immediate postwar period, Jo Stafford effortlessly walked the line between breezy pop and the more serious art of post-big-band jazz singing. With the help of her husband, top-flight arranger and Capitol A&R director Paul Weston, Stafford recorded throughout the '40s and '50s for Capitol and Columbia. She also contributed (with Weston) to one of the best pop novelty acts of the period, a humorously inept and off-key satire that saw the couple billed as Jonathan & Darlene Edwards.
Lee Wiley was born in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma probably on October 10, 1908 – that’s what’s on her tombstone but she would have said 1915. She said that she was a Cherokee princess and had the nickname of “Pocahontas”. Lee Wiley was a tunesmith - like Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee
Lee Wiley was born in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma probably on October 10, 1908 – that’s what’s on her tombstone but she would have said 1915. She said that she was a Cherokee princess and had the nickname of “Pocahontas”. Lee Wiley was a tunesmith - like Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee
Betty Carter developed a legendary reputation, along with Art Blakey, as one of the great mentors for young jazz musicians. Equally legendary was her singing prowess, creating a distinctive style of improvisation that could transcend any song.
Jeri Southern, was a classically trained pianist who became a jazz-oriented vocalist in the 1950s, whose hit "You Better Go Now" proved the most successful of her several recordings. Born Genevieve Hering, on 5 August 1926, in Royal, Nebraska, Southern studied at the Notre Dame Academy, Omaha, and later played piano at the local Blackstone Hotel.
California is the main subject of some of the songs in this episode, but others simply mention something about the state such as a place, a street or highway, the weather, a person, or an attitude or lifestyle the state represents for the singer. Sit back and enjoy the silky subtleties of our swell dames as they pay homage to the Golden State.