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Jimmy Rowles
James George Hunter (August 19, 1918 – May 28, 1996), known professionally as Jimmy Rowles (sometimes spelled Jimmie Rowles), was an American jazz pianist, vocalist, and composer. As a bandleader and accompanist, he explored multiple styles including swing and cool jazz. Music career Rowles was born in Spokane, Washington, United States, and attended Gonzaga University in that city. After moving to Los Angeles, he joined Lester Young's group in 1942. He also worked with Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Les Brown, Tommy Dorsey, Tony Bennett, and as a studio musician. With female singers Rowles was praised as an accompanist by female singers. He recorded ''Sarah Vaughan with the Jimmy Rowles Quintet'' with Sarah Vaughan and accompanied Carmen McRae on her 1972 live album '' The Great American Songbook''. McRae described Rowles as "the guy every girl singer in her right mind would like to work with". In the 1950s and 1960s, he frequently played behind Billie Holiday and Peggy L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spokane, Washington
Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canada–United States border, Canadian border, west of the Washington–Idaho border, and east of Seattle, along Interstate 90 in Washington, I-90. Spokane is the economic and cultural center of the Spokane metropolitan area, the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene combined statistical area, and the Inland Northwest. It is known as the birthplace of Father's Day (United States), Father's Day, and locally by the nickname of "Lilac City". Officially, Spokane goes by the nickname of ''Hooptown USA'', due to Spokane annually hosting Spokane Hoopfest, the world's largest basketball tournament. The city and the wider Inland Northwest area are served by Spokane International Airport, west of Downtown Spokane. According to the 2010 United States census, 2010 ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Brown (bandleader)
Lester Raymond Brown (March 14, 1912 – January 4, 2001) was an American jazz musician who led the big band Les Brown and His Band of Renown for nearly seven decades from 1938 to 2000. Biography Brown was born in Reinerton, Pennsylvania. He enrolled in the Conway Military Band School (later part of Ithaca College) in 1926, studying with famous bandleader Patrick Conway for three years before receiving a music scholarship to the New York Military Academy, where he graduated in 1932. Brown attended college at Duke University from 1932 to 1936. There he led the group Les Brown and His Blue Devils, who performed regularly on Duke's campus and up and down the east coast. Brown took the band on an extensive summer tour in 1936. At the end of the tour, while some of the band members returned to Duke to continue their education, others stayed on with Brown and continued to tour, becoming in 1938 the Band of Renown. The band's original drummer, Don Kramer, became the acting manager and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallichs. He is best known as a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, but he also composed music, and was a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as songs written by others from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s. Mercer's songs were among the most successful hits of the time, including " Moon River", " Days of Wine and Roses", " Autumn Leaves", and "Hooray for Hollywood". He wrote the lyrics to more than 1,500 songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Oscar nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars. Early life Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia, where one of his first jobs, aged 10, was sweeping floors at the original 1919 location of Leopold's Ice Cream. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Best Is Yet To Come (Ella Fitzgerald Album)
''The Best Is Yet to Come'' is a 1982 studio album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by a studio orchestra arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle. The last of Fitzgerald's six collaborations with Riddle, their work together on the Verve label more than fifteen years earlier is considered some of Fitzgerald's finest, both musically and critically. Fitzgerald's performance on the album won her the 1984 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female, one of three Grammys she won for her work with Riddle. Reception In his biography of Riddle, ''September In the Rain'', Peter J. Levinson wrote that the album "...simply wasn't the best. In fact it was a near disaster. The raggedy tone of Ella's voice couldn't be disguised". Track listing # "Don't Be That Way" ( Benny Goodman, Mitchell Parish, Edgar Sampson) – 4:03 # " God Bless the Child" (Arthur Herzog Jr., Billie Holiday) – 4:42 # "(I Wonder) Where Our Love Has Gone" (Buddy Johnson) – 3:48 # ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nelson Riddle
Nelson Smock Riddle Jr. (June 1, 1921 – October 6, 1985) was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s. He worked with many world-famous vocalists at Capitol Records, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney and Keely Smith. He scored and arranged music for many films and television shows, earning an Academy Award and three Grammy Awards. He found commercial and critical success with a new generation in the 1980s, in a trio of Platinum albums with Linda Ronstadt. Early years Riddle was born in Oradell, New Jersey, the only child to survive to birth, and after, of Marie Albertine Riddle (a native of Mulhouse, France, whose father was Spanish) and Nelson Smock Riddle, who was of English-Irish and Dutch descent. His mother had suffered six miscarriages and one stillbirth in her lifetime. It was his mother's secon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mocambo (nightclub)
The Mocambo was a nightclub in West Hollywood, California, at 8588 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip. It was owned by Charlie Morrison and Felix Young. History The Mocambo opened on January 3, 1941, and it became an immediate success. The club's Latin American-themed decor was designed by Tony Duquette and cost $100,000 (). Along the walls were glass cages holding live cockatoos, macaws, seagulls, pigeons, and parrots. With big band music, the club became one of the most popular dance-till-dawn spots in town. On any given night, one might find the room filled with the leading men and women of the motion picture industry. In 1943, when Frank Sinatra became a solo act, he made his Los Angeles debut at the Mocambo. On March 15, 1955, Ella Fitzgerald opened at the Mocambo, after Marilyn Monroe lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. The incident was turned into a play by Bonnie Greer in 2005. It has been widely reported that Fitzg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Smith (pianist)
Paul Thatcher Smith (April 17, 1922 – June 29, 2013) was an American jazz pianist. He performed in various genres of jazz, most typically bebop, but is best known as an accompanist of singers, especially Ella Fitzgerald.Peter Keepnew"Paul Smith, Jazz Pianist, Is Dead at 91" ''New York Times'', 3 July 2013 Early life Smith was born in San Diego, California to parents, Lon Smith and Constance Farmer, who were vaudeville performers and encouraged his interest in music. He began studying piano at age 8, and led a jazz band in high school and became a professional musician at 19 with the Johnny Richards band. Later life and career After playing with Richards in 1941 and spending 1943 to 1945 in the military, Smith worked with Les Paul (1946–1947) and Tommy Dorsey (1947–1949) before moving to Los Angeles and becoming a studio musician. Studio work took up much of his time: he worked as a staff musician for NBC and Warner Brothers, and for many years he was the musical director ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great American Songbook (Carmen McRae Album)
''The Great American Songbook'' is a 1972 live album by Carmen McRae, accompanied by a jazz quartet including Jimmy Rowles and Joe Pass. McRae was a great fan of Rowles and described him in the liner notes to the album as "the guy every girl singer in her right mind would like to work with". Rowles's humorous country and western song, "The Ballad of Thelonious Monk", is featured on the album. Reception Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Scott Yanow wrote that McRae "...had what was at the time a rare opportunity to record a live, spontaneous, jazz-oriented set. She sounds quite enthusiastic about both her accompaniment and the strong repertoire". Phyl Garland, reviewing the album for ''Ebony'' magazine, wrote that "this is one of the finest heaping portions of McRae in ages...it captures her banter between song all the wit of a mature woman rapping about how to make it in ''any'' situation." Garland described "If the Moon Turns Green" and "I Thought About You" as "masterpieces of d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen McRae
Carmen Mercedes McRae (April 8, 1920 – November 10, 1994) was an American jazz singer. She is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century and is remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of lyrics. Early life and education McRae was born in Harlem, New York City, United States. Her father, Osmond, and mother, Evadne (Gayle) McRae, were immigrants from Jamaica. She began studying piano when she was eight, and the music of jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington filled her home. When she was 17 years old, she met singer Billie Holiday. As a teenager McRae came to the attention of Teddy Wilson and his wife, the composer Irene Kitchings. One of McRae's early songs, "Dream of Life", was, through their influence, recorded in 1939 by Wilson’s long-time collaborator Billie Holiday.Brian Berger"Carmen McRae" HiLobrow, April 8, 2015. McRae considered Holiday to be her primary influence. Early career In her l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer. Nicknamed "Sassy" and "Jazz royalty, The Divine One", she won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine Grammy Awards. She was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Critic Scott Yanow wrote that she had "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century". Early life Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Asbury "Jake" Vaughan, a carpenter by trade who played guitar and piano, and Ada Vaughan, a laundress who sang in the church choir, migrants from Virginia. The Vaughans lived in a house on Brunswick Street in Newark for Vaughan's entire childhood. Jake was deeply religious. The family was active in New Mount Zion Baptist Church at 186 Thomas Street. Vaughan began piano lessons at the age of seven, sang in the church choir, and played piano for rehearsals and services. She developed an early love for popular music on records and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarah Vaughan With The Jimmy Rowles Quintet
''Sarah Vaughan and the Jimmy Rowles Quintet'' is a 1974 live album by Sarah Vaughan, accompanied by pianist Jimmy Rowles and his quintet. The song "Morning Star" was mistakenly attributed in the liner notes of the album to W. C. Handy, but was actually written by Rowles and lyricist Johnny Mercer.Leslie Gourse ''Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan'' 2009 - Page 276 0786751142 "Of the songs that were released, "Morning Star" was written by Jimmy Rowles with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, though W. C. Handy was given credit — apparently by accident — for the composition. This information comes directly from Jimmy " Reception The AllMusic review by Ken Dryden stated that Rowles proves himself to be "a consummate accompanist," and Vaughan is "in her usual outstanding form." Track listing # "The Folks Who Live On the Hill" ( Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern) - 4:50 # "That Face" ( Alan Bergman, Lew Spence) - 7:55 # " That Sunday, That Summer" (Joe Sherman, George David Weiss) - 4:33 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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