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Merrill At Midnight
''Merrill at Midnight'' is the fourth album by Helen Merrill, featuring the singer fronting a quartet augmented by an orchestra arranged and conducted by Hal Mooney, recorded in 1957 and released on the EmArcy label.EmArcy Records discography
accessed October 5, 2012


Reception

The review by Bruce Eder stated "this one's a keeper and in a class by itself, with lots and lots of class."Eder, B
Allmusic Review
accessed October 5, 2012


Track listing

# "Soft as Spring" (

Helen Merrill
Helen Merrill (born Jelena Ana Milcetic; July 21, 1930) is an American jazz vocalist. Her first album, the eponymous 1954 recording ''Helen Merrill'' (with Clifford Brown), was an immediate success and associated her with the first generation of bebop jazz musicians. After an active 1950s and 1960s, Merrill spent time recording and touring in Europe and Japan, falling into obscurity in the United States. In the 1980s and '90s, she was under contract with Verve and her performances in America revived her profile. Known for her emotional, sensual vocal performances, her career continues in its sixth decade with concerts and recordings. Early life and career Jelena Ana Milcetic was born in New York to Croatian immigrant parents. She began singing in jazz clubs in the Bronx in 1944 when she was fourteen. By the time she was sixteen, Merrill had taken up music full-time. In 1952, Merrill made her recording debut when she was asked to sing "A Cigarette For Company" with Earl Hines; ...
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Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather's wishes for him to practice law and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, ''Kiss Me, Kate ...
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Double Bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings. The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, viola, and cello, ''The Orchestra: A User's Manual''
, Andrew Hugill with the Philharmonia Orchestra
as well as the concert band, and is featured in Double bass concerto, concertos, solo, and chamber music in European classical music, Western classical music.Alfred Planyavsky

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Milt Hinton
Milton John Hinton (June 23, 1910 – December 19, 2000) was an American double bassist and photographer. Regarded as the Dean of American jazz bass players, his nicknames included "Sporty" from his years in Chicago, "Fump" from his time on the road with Cab Calloway, and "The Judge" from the 1950s and beyond. Hinton's recording career lasted over 60 years, mostly in jazz but also with a variety of other genres as a prolific session musician. He was also a photographer of note, praised for documenting American jazz during the 20th Century. Biography Early life in Mississippi (1910–1919) Hinton was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States, the only child of Hilda Gertrude Robinson, whom he referred to as "Titter," and Milton Dixon Hinton. He was three-months-old when his father left the family. He grew up in a home with his mother, his maternal grandmother (a former slave of Joe Davis, the brother of Jefferson Davis), and two of his mother's sisters. His childhood in V ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ...
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Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ...
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Marian McPartland
Margaret Marian McPartland OBE ( Turner;Hasson, Claire"Marian McPartland: Jazz Pianist: An Overview of a Career" PhD Thesis. Retrieved 12 August 2008. 20 March 1918 – 20 August 2013), was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and writer. She was the host of '' Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz'' on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011. After her marriage to trumpeter Jimmy McPartland in February 1945,Obituary: Marian McPartland
telegraph.co.uk, 21 August 2013.
she resided in the United States when not travelling throughout the world to perform. In 1969, she founded Halcyon Records, a recording company that issued albums for 10 years. In 2000, she was named a

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Singing
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument (as in art song or some jazz styles) up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music, Japanese music, and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, ghazal, and popular music styles such as pop, rock, and electronic dance music. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged, or improvised. It may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual as part of music education or ...
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I'll Be Around (1942 Song)
"I'll Be Around" is a popular song written by Alec Wilder and published in 1942. It was first recorded by Cab Calloway and his Orchestra in 1942 and the first hit version was by The Mills Brothers in 1943 when it reached No. 17 in the Billboard pop charts. The song has become a well-known standard, recorded by many artists. Background Wilder said, in an interview with Jay Nordlinger, that the song came to him in a taxi cab in Baltimore. Just the title. "I spotted he titleas I was crumpling up the envelope some days later. Since I was near a piano, I wrote a tune, using the title as the first phrase of the melody. I remember it only took about 20 minutes. The lyric took much longer to write." Recorded versions *Mildred Bailey (1942) *Tony Bennett *Brook Benton (1960) *Eve Boswell (1951) *Ruby Braff * Les Brown and his Band of Renown (1959) * Cab Calloway and his orchestra (1942) * Diahann Carroll *Don Cherry (1956) * Rosemary Clooney (1951) *Randy Crawford (1995) *Vic Damon ...
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Edward Heyman
Edward Heyman (March 14, 1907October 16, 1981) was an American lyricist and producer, best known for his lyrics to " Body and Soul," "When I Fall in Love," and " For Sentimental Reasons." He also contributed to a number of songs for films. Biography Heyman studied at the University of Michigan where he had an early start on his career writing college musicals. After graduating from college, Heyman moved back to New York City where he started working with a number of experienced musicians like Victor Young ("When I Fall in Love"), Dana Suesse ("You Oughta Be in Pictures") and Johnny Green (" Body and Soul," " Out of Nowhere," "I Cover the Waterfront" and "Easy Come, Easy Go"). From 1935 to 1952, Heyman contributed songs to film scores including '' Sweet Surrender'', ''That Girl from Paris'', ''Curly Top'', '' The Kissing Bandit'', ''Delightfully Dangerous'' and ''Northwest Outpost''. Arguably Heyman's biggest hit is his lyric to " Body and Soul", written in 1930, which was often ...
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Johnny Green
John Waldo Green (October 10, 1908 – May 15, 1989) was an American songwriter, composer, musical arranger, conductor and pianist. He was given the nickname "Beulah" by colleague Conrad Salinger. His most famous song was one of his earliest, " Body and Soul" from the revue ''Three's a Crowd''. Green won four Academy Awards for his film scores and a fifth for producing a short musical film, and he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972. He was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Early years John Waldo Green was born in New York City, the son of musical parents Vivian Isidor Green (June 29, 1885 – January 3, 1940) and Irina Etelka Jellenik (April 12, 1885 – November 15, 1947), a.k.a. Irma (or Erma) Etelka Jellenik. Vivian and Irina wed on December 16, 1907 in Manhattan. John attended Horace Mann School and the New York Military Academy, and was accepted by Harvard at the age of 15, entering the university in 1924. His musical tuto ...
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Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"."Noel Coward at 70"
''Time'', 26 December 1969, p. 46
Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as ''