chilledairtext

A "Fine" index

2009-08-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

Here is the index for my forthcoming ebook, A Fine Romance: My Lifelong Affair With Jazz Singing and Singers

It will be available next Friday, Aug. 14, 2009, at Scribd

"Fine" Index

2009-08-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

A FINE ROMANCE: MY LIFELONG AFFAIR WITH JAZZ SINGING AND SINGERS
by Bill Reed

Cellar Door Books
Los Angeles, CA
© 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD 5

PART ONE: INTERVIEWS AND PROFILES

Introduction to Part One 8
Beverly Kenney 10
Joe Williams 21
Page Cavanaugh 25
Jo Stafford 36
Ethel Waters 44
Q & A with Ruth Olay 51
Nat “King” Cole 63
Helen Grayco 67
Dusty Springfield 73
Bobbi Rogers 76
Judy Garland 80
Mieko Hirota 85
Sue Raney 88
Kurt Reichenbach 91
Dick and Kiz Harp 94
Jennie Smith 98
Nora Evans 101
Dick Noel 104
Chris Connor 106
Carole Simpson 109
Pinky Winters 111
Johnny Prophet 130
Irene Kral 133
Nina Simone 137

PART TWO: ONE SHOT WONDERS
Introduction to Part Two 144

Bill Black 145
Carole Creveling 156
Sue Childs 160
Flo Handy 164
June Rudell 179

PART THREE: SHORT TAKES

Lorez Alexandria 172
Laurie Allyn 173
Flo Bennett 174
Betty Blake 174
Janet Brace 175
June Christy 176
Marlene Cord 177
Dorothy Dandridge 178
Cora Lee Day 179
Blossom Dearie 180
Ronnie Deauville 182
Marlene Dietrich 182
Kevin Gavin 183
Inez Jones 184
Abbey Lincoln 185
Julie London 186
Frances Lynne 187
Susannah McCorkle 189
Mary Ann McCall 191
Anita O’Day 192
Peters Sisters, The 193
Pied Pipers, The 194
King Pleasure 195
Jimmy Rushing 196
Kenny Sargent 197
Hazel Scott 198
Lizabeth Scott 199
Dinah Shore 200
Carol Sloane 201
Victoria Spivey 202
Maxine Sullivan 202
Lynn Taylor 203
Kay Thompson 204
Sarah Vaughan 205
Helen Ward 206
Margaret Whiting 207
Lee Wiley 209

DISCOGRAPHY 211

INDEX 216

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SOURCES 227-228

Liner notes for SSJ Fall 2009 release, In the Mood for A Song?

2009-07-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

Getting in touch with the rightful owner of the master of this album, veteran music executive Mort Hillman, was easy enough. And after negotiations were completed for SSJ’s release of the 1955 LP, next came the task of securing some background on the making of the disc. But so far back in time did Hillman oversee the production of the recording---more than fifty years ago---that he can only remember a few scant details about the artist, Corky Shayne.

Hillman’s hazy memory was complicated by the fact that the singer’s lone album was but one of hundreds of projects he was associated with between 1947,when he joined the Tommy Dorsey band as a trumpet player, and his retirement from music in 1980 when he entered the world of politics as a New York State assemblyman. Before that, Hillman was also a vocal group singer (The C Notes), the owner of Chicago’s Salem Records and, later, an exec with Jubilee, Audio Fidelity and Music Minus One Records. He also acted as a producer for these labels.

Hillman was also the personal manager of, among others, singer-pianist Joe Derise, singer Paula Castle and jazz star Herbie Mann. And this represents but a small part of his activities in the music business. Today Hillman is retired and living happily with his wife, Ruth, in Florida (where he still remains active in local Democratic Party politics).

Hillman can recall doing a record promo tour with Shayne, including appearances by Shayne on popular radio shows in the Chicago area such as those of popular dee-jays Howard Miller and Marty Faye. But that was just about it, . . .aside from the obscure recollection that Shayne’s uncle ran a popular record store in Chicago. And when I contacted the esteemed Chicago arranger Johnny Pate who arranged and played on the Shayne date, he could not even recall the session. I wasn’t surprised, for drawing blanks such as this is often the case today with still active session musicians who oftentimes cannot even recall record dates from the recent past, much less a half-century ago.

And were it not for the help of legendary Chicago singer-pianist Audrey Morris who did, in fact, recall Shayne from the golden era of the Fifties music scene in Chicago, I might never have ascertained the few facts about the singer that I finally did. In late 2008, the still professionally active Morris put me in touch with Shayne’s half-sister, Ava Schneider, who was able to supply me with a few facts about Shayne. From Schneider I learned that Corky (real name Corinne) was born in 1932 in Illinois and that she died in Indian Wells, California in 2005. But Shayne was more than two decades older than Schneider; thus, the singer’s professional career was over and done with by the time her half-sister would’ve been old enough to remember anything about it.

Schneider recalls that her sister didn’t remain in Chicago too much longer after her performing activities ceased, and that Shayne then moved to the Los Angeles area where she remained active in show business, but behind the scenes with a series of jobs as assistant to music industry executives. Somewhere along the line, Shayne was married to a certain Eugene Willage, but I was unable to learn how the marriage played out, nor could Corky’s half-sister summon up what happened with it either. Shayne’s half-sister also said that somewhere along the line, Corky became an avid golfer and eventually moved to Palm Springs, California area where she could actively pursue her growing interest in the sport. Clearly, if she was half as good a golfer as she was a singer, then Shayne must’ve had more than her share of holes in one.

--- Bill Reed

Alan Livingston

2009-03-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

continued from here

"But he came back," recalls Livingston, "and said, 'They won't make a deal with Capitol.' 'Why not?,' I asked. He answered, 'They think we're a square company.' So I said, 'Well, I'm gonna go up and meet them.' I went to San Francisco and we started to party. I was out until four in the morning for three nights in a row with these kids. They introduced me to Allen Ginsberg. They were smoking pot I'm sure. I didn't. Who knows what else they were taking? It was not really my scene I must tell you. But I made it appear that it was. We made a deal. I signed them both and they were delighted. Here was the president of Capitol Records partying with these kids."

Livingston's Summer of Love adventure in San Francisco was but one gamble in a long history of similar corporate risk taking. In fact, the biggest act in the history of Capitol--and the record business for that matter---came about in similar daring Livingston fashion. He explains:

"I read the English music press and about a group that were doing well on EMI Records in England. EMI was our major stockholder and Capitol had an agreement with them. EMI had the right of first refusal throughout the world to release any of our product. And we had the right to release any EMI product in the United States. I named one of my producers, Dave Dexter, to screen EMI product. He would suggest something now and then and nothing would happen. Nothing [Cliff Richard, et al] sold." I said at Capitol's weekly meeting of record producers to Dave Dexter, 'Dex, what about this group called the Beatles that I read about?'"

"'Alan,' Dexter said to Livingston, "they're a bunch of long-haired kids who are nothing. Forget it. '"

Livingston had no reason to doubt Dexter, one of the finest producers in the label's history, and who handled such artists as Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, and Stan Kenton. Looking back now, Dexter was apparently not the right person to pass judgment on what must have sounded like, at the time, Music from Mars.

"I continued reading about the Beatles," Livingston says. "Two weeks later I brought it up again. I said, 'Dex, are you SURE?' Because I was getting pressure from England to put the records out. He said, 'Alan. Please take my word for it.' I hadn't even listened to them. So that was that. We passed on the Beatles."

"And so did," according to Livingston, "every other major record label. They went to RCA Victor, CBS Columbia, Decca. All turned them down. Finally, EMI was so anxious to get a record out that they gave them first to a little black-owned Chicago label on the verge of bankruptcy, Vee-Jay and then to a company in Philadelphia called Swan Records. Nothing happened, nothing sold on Vee-Jay or Swan. The Beatles were dead in the U.S."

Until! One day Livingston was sitting in his twelfth floor office in Hollywood's Capitol Tower when his secretary entered:

"There's a call from London from a man called Brian Epstein."

Livingston had never heard of Epstein, but took the call. "Mr. Livingston!," Epstein said, "We don't understand why you don't put the Beatles out." "Well, frankly, I haven't heard them."

"Please listen and call me back."

"So," says Livingston, "I sent down to Dex's office and got some records and sat and listened. I heard SOME-thing. I called Epstein back."

"I'll put them out," Livingston told the Beatles' manager. "I felt that there was a shot and I was going to take it. Then I took a [British] Beatles record home and played it for Nancy [Livingston's wife of 38 years and former move actress Nancy Olson ("Sunset Boulevard"]. 'I want you to listen to this.' And I can quote exactly, I said, 'I think it's going to change the whole record business.' She said, "Realllly. Let me hear it.' I played it for her and she said [very derisively] 'I Wannnnnnna Hold Your Hand. Are you kidding?' And I thought, 'Maybe I made a mistake.' But I put the record out anyway," Livingston laughs.

Livingston's seemingly magic touch seems to be in operation even when he's not thinking about it. Witness:

"My son was rummaging around in my area where I had all my albums and he found some albums of the butcher cover. The butcher cover. . .the Beatles always said to me they'd like to do their own covers. Capitol always did the covers. I said, "Fine. You can do them." And they would send us final artwork from London. And once they sent an album cover which was a picture of them sitting in white smocks holding parts, dismembered parts of dolls, bloody looking. And I looked at it and said, "What is this!?" And I called them and they said, That's our comment on war." I don't want to put this out." They insisted. I had the contractual right to stop it. But I didn't want to do that. So I finally, in desperation, said, 'What we will do is to put out a few hundred of them at most, send them to dealers and have them take them to the stores and see what the reaction is.' Well the word came back in no uncertain terms. The stores said we won't put it on our shelves. We won't sell it. Now a Beatles album is obviously worth a lot of money to them. But they refused to sell it so I called London. I was dealing with Brian Epstein, I said, "We won't put the album out. We can't do it.' Finally he came back and gave us a new cover. I had no other way of dealing with the situation.

When my son found them, a box of them, he said, "don't you know what these are worth?" I said, "No." He said, "I can get 5 to 1 0,000 each for these. So I gave him a number of them and he went back to New York where he was living and was selling them off like crazy. And eventually I sold a few myself. I now have only one left."

"When they came to Los Angeles after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show they were absolutely tops in this country. After they did Sullivan, I said I would appreciate it if you would do a benefit for me. I had a particular charity I was interested in. They said, "Oh,
Alan don't ask us to do that." So I said, "I'll tell you what. Just volunteer, you don't have to play. So Nancy's mother had a huge garden out in Brentwood and I said we'll do it there. And all I want you to do is sit on a chair so that kids can shake hands with you. It will be by invitation only and we'll charge---I could have charged anything, I charged 25 dollars a child---plus an adult had to be with them. It was by invitation and the location was kept secret. But it got out and I had calls from everyone. We took a picture of the Beatles with each kid We took it to capacity. And then we had to call the riot squad. They came up and hid in the garage waiting in case there was anything gone wrong. They roped the place off, mobs of kids were trying to get in. The Beatles walked through and I had a cameraman that took a picture of every child as they came through the line. The pictures will be on the wall at Capitol records in two weeks and you can order prints. Well what could be more appealing, and kids went through that line crying, emotional, hysterical. I never saw anything like it.

"I got to know the Beatles pretty well. I got along best with Paul. He would sit at the piano and play songs for me. That was one trip when I had them in a house in Bel Air. I could't put them in a hotel anymore so I rented a house for them. Secretly. No one knew where they were and I would go out and sit and talk with them. I never understood whether John was putting on an act or that was his real self. He was reasonable at first. But more and more took on an attitude that was anti a lot of things. He was strange, remote. Ringo was just a happy go lucky guy. George I never had much contact with.

One day when they were in the Bel Air house. I came home from the office one day. It was about six o'clock. I came in the front door and just as I shut the front door the doorbell rang and I opened it and there was a camera in my face. It was CBS. They said, "You have BeatIes here?" I said, "Yes." They said, "Where are they staying?" I said, "I don't know." They said, "Come nowwww! Certainly you know where they're staying." I said, "I don't know where they're staying" They finally went off. Then I'm watching television that night and I see my face and they're asking me and I say that I don't know where they're staying. Then there's a shot of my twelve-year-old daughter in front of the house saying, "I know where they're staying." She didn't really know.

In Dave Dexter's autobiography, published in 1992 shortly before his death, he takes almost sole credit for signing the BeatIes. Livingston just smiles and shrugs it off. He knows that his place in Beatle history is secure. As is the part he played in the resurrection of Frank Sinatra's sagging pre-From Here to Eternity fortunes in the early 1950s.

"When I was at Capitol, Sinatra was in the doldrums. He couldn't get a job in a nightclub, Ava Gardner had left him, he was despondent, he was drinking heavily, they SAID he'd lost his voice. He was in bad shape but he certainly hadn't lost his voice. He had been at Columbia Records, and Mitch Miller who was the head of that label made records with him that didn't sell at all. "

The most notorious example of what Sinatra was asked to record toward the end of his stay at Columbia is the now-infamous novelty tune "Mama Will Bark" which features him and fleeting early 50s US TV sensation Dagmar singing a love duet in the personae of canines. Sprinkled throughout are the sounds of a male dog barking voiced by Sinatra. Not only is it inarguably the worst record he ever recorded, also it is one of the worst recordings of all time. . .by anybody. After this record tanked, according to Livingston, "Mitch Miller finally gave up and let him go. Then one day I'm sitting in my office and I get a call from the president of William Morris Agency. He said, 'Alan we just took on management of Frank Sinatra' and I said, 'Realllly.' He said, 'Would you consider signing him?' And I said, 'Yes.' And he said, [incredulously] 'You would?' A half-century later, Livingston chuckles and says, 'Some agent!' I signed Frank to a seven year contract with a union scale advance. Right after that I went to a sales meeting in New York and when I made the announcement everybody moaned---Ughhh---I didn't know how to answer it at first and then I said, 'I only know one thing. He's a great talent.' Instead of trying to make hits for him we started to make albums. Porter, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein. All the great American classic songs and Frank sang them, like nobody else."

Livingston was not only a driving force behind Sinatra and the Beatles but such varied, influential and varied recording acts as Les Paul and Mary Ford, June Christy, Stan Kenton, George Shearing, Nat "King" Cole and come the second wave of rock and roll in the mid-1960s, the Beach Boys. With the latter, Livingston didn't play such a hands-on role, but the success of this great group happened on his watch.

Livingston's strong suit, and where he also functioned as a hands-on producer, were comedy, i.e., Stan Freberg, the 2,000 Year Old Man, etc, and childrens' records, including Bozo, the successful recording clown on whose multi-colored coattails Livingston rode to the eventual presidency of Capitol Records, and early Warner Bros and Capitol cartoon recordings, etc. He even co-wrote a hit song "I Taut I Taw a Pussy Cat" rendered at the top of the hit parade in 1950 by cartoon voice legend Mel Blanc, singing as Warners' Tweety Bird." A minor novelty trifle, but not exactly a classic in the Great American Songbook Nancy Olson Livingston reminds me that her former husband, Alan Jay Lerner, just so happened to have co-written "My Fair Lady." "I went from 'I Could Have Danced All Night' to 'I Taut I Taw a Puddy Tat'," Olson laughs.

In the late fifties RCA Records began a campaign to lure Livingston away from Capitol. He turned them down. Happy at Capitol, he didn't want to move sideways. "Why go from one record company to another. I kept turning them down until finally they said, 'How would you like to be in television?' I'd been in the record business nearly twenty years. This was a challenge. It excited me. I went to NBC as head of programming. The first thing they wanted was a western. I finished the pilot for Bonanaza, but couldn't sell it. That was the end of Bonanza. Eventually though, it went on the air for RCA and it ran for seven years. Henry Mancini, who got very sick before he died, called me in one day and said, "Alan, I always neglected to thank you." I said, "what for?" And he said, Peter Gunn. Somebody brought him to me to compose the score. I knew that was it." Risk-taker Alan Livingston struck again! Up to that time, 1958, the notion of a jazz score for a TV show was unheard of. (In 1961 returned to Capitol for a final stay of seven years.)

There are those who might say that even Livingston's farsightedness in regard to Sinatra and the Beatles pales in comparison to an act he signed to Capitol in 1952.

"I can tell you the story. I had a man who was head of the New York office. He said somebody brought me in this woman, a Peruvian Indian, who had a 4-octave range. She has an amazing voice quality. She doesn't speak any English. I don't know what to do with her. He sent me some tapes. There was no music on them, nothing that you could put your finger on. Her Somebody tired to do something with her on another label nothing had happened. She came to California and I met with her and her husband, Moises Vivanco who was a musician and a guitar player. He spoke English. I said, I'd like to try something with her and we made a deal. I hired the composer/arranger Les Baxter. And I said, "I want you to work with me and her and see if we can come up with something that will be appealing. She couldn't read music, we didn't know where to start. We had her sing all the various things she did which had no form of any kind. Les sat down and wrote a score based on what she was singing. Then I went into the studio with them and an orchestra and we began recording the whole thing live and literally we were dealing with pieces of tape that were [hold out his hands one foot from each other] this long. We'd get something, then say okay, then go from there. We sat and worked and worked and it was driving me crazy. I thought we would never get finished. But we did finish and had come up with an unusual album of effects and sounds. Now what to we call this. I asked Moises. What is this music known as? Tell me about her background. Well, she came from the hills of Peru. She's an Indian and they called it the music of Xtabay. What does that mean? Well, it has a significant meaning to them. I don't know exactly. Well I said, "We're going to call it Voice a/the Xtabay. And we put it out and promoted it as something unusual. And it caught on." A typical Livingston understatement: if there every was one: Sumac went on to become perhaps the most successful offbeat act in Pop history .

I interviewed Alan Livingston in the Beverly Hills home, where the Beatles partied till dawn during their second visit to California in 1966, and in which he has lived for nearly half-a-century. Early in our first conversation I said to him:

"Depending on one's particular point of view you could be be considered either the great destroyer of American popular music, or its great savior."

"What do you mean?," Livingston asks curiously.

"You signed Frank Sinatra to a recording contract at the lowest point in his career, in the early 1950s. In turn, he begin a series of recordings that almost (along with Ella Fitzgerald) single-handedly held the line of the Great American Songbook of Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, Rodgers, Hammerstein et al against the overwhelming tide of rock and roll in the 1950s."

"That's the 'savior' part, right?," he muses.

"Yes, many would say that, I believe."

"And the destroyer part?"

"Ten years after you signed Sinatra, the Beatles came along and launched a second offensive (many would view it that way) from which non-rock American pop and jazz has yet, more than thirty years later, to---many would say---" recover."

"Hmmm, I never thought of THAT before." It is a remark typical of this uncommonly modest and low-key Captain of American Industry.

Helen Grayco cont'd

2009-02-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

“I was singing at the Hollywood Palladium in Hollywood and that’s where Spike heard me in 1946. He asked to see me after the show and offered me a job. He was already established. A huge star. He was going on tour. I was in direct contrast to what he did. I was terribly insulted when Spike first asked to hire me. He had just done “Cocktails for Two” and all that stuff that he was known for. “I don’t know where I could possibly fit in in your group. I‘m not a comedienne,” I told him. He said, “No, you’ll do your own thing. You’ll have your arrangements. You’ll do 15, 20 minutes entirely separate from the show.” They needed something to calm people down. And that’s how we always worked from then on.” On the Spike Jones TV show, even there I was the contrast.”

And in fact, in a 1947 review of the Jones live act, that is the very word the writer uses to describe Grayco‘s contributions to the proceedings: “For contrast, an eyeful called Helen Grayco warbled “Ca Ca Carumba” and a very spicy ditty or two.”

But by the time she had joined the Jones band, Grayco was already a seasoned pro. Here is some of what she also told me about her private and professional life before then.

“I was born in Takoma, Washington. I’m one of eleven children. Six girls and five boys. I was second to the youngest of a good Italian Catholic family. I got a job when I was eight years old singing on KHJ Radio in L.A. on a show called “The Carnival Hour.” Bing Crosby and his brothers had heard me sing on a variety show on the radio in Seattle and they said [sings] ‘Holly-wood!’ And so two of my brothers and my sister moved here and I did the show and then all my family migrated here. It was during the Depression., so it was a very hard time for my family. Actually, I was the breadwinner. My father was in the grocery business and what had happened during the Depression was that he gave out so much credit and food in the area they lived in---he had a great market and a restaurant all combined---and no one could pay. He couldn’t pay whoever he owed and so he went out of business. He lost everything. But I was earned fifty, sixty, seventy-dollars a week. That was a lot of money during the Depression.

“Then, I was put under contract when I was thirteen years old, to Universal Studios. Producer-director Joe Pasternak signed me. Deanna Durbin was their big star at Universal and she had outgrown everything and was going into adult roles and they wanted someone young to be the new Deanna and they hired me and I was put under contract and that year they were paying me a hundred dollars a week and so I was really moving up in the world. I was going to do a film called “Little Lady” and Norman Taurog was going to direct it, but a new regime came into Universal and the group that hired me left. So I never made the film and consequently my contract expired. But I was an extra in the Marx Brothers film , “A Night at the Opera” and you see a little girl go up to the piano and Alan Jones is singing, that’s me. [That's Grayco second from the left in the Chico photo below.] No speaking part, though.” Grayco also had a small part in a Universal movie, “That Certain Age” (1938) billed as “Girl.”

“Before I ever joined Spike Jones, I worked with Stan Kenton. I was in high school at the time and he was going on a tour during the summertime. I was going to Hollywood Professional School and that summer my sister Teresa went with me and we traveled by bus from L.A. and made stops, all one-nighters, all the way to New York to the Roseland Ballroom. But prior to Stan I worked with the bands of Chuck Cascalas, Chuck Cabot, and Red Nichols. But I never recorded with any of these bands. This covered a period of about two or three years.”

Nearly all the while Grayco was with the Spike Jones band, she continued to cut a lengthy list of singles; but alas none were as memorable as the two albums she recorded in 1957 (“After Midnight“) and 1958 (“The Lady in Red“), the former of which has an especially strong standing among critics and fans. Of her singles, she said, “When you’re with a record company they just call you and you come in and record what they want. ‘Ooop Shoop’ and all those songs were picked out for me by the record companies.”

Shortly after hiring Grayco to be a part of his regular band in ‘46, Jones became determined to show the world that he was also capable of producing legitimate, "pretty" music, And so he formed his so-called “Other Orchestra,” which featured Grayco. While this group recorded a number of transcriptions, it was a financial failure and lasted less than one year. The band didn’t want to hear that Spike Jones. But the relationship between Jones and his singer was far more successful and they married in 1949. It was one of their eventual three children, Leslie, who had the pleasure of informing her mother of the ongoing popularity of her albums in Japan.

“My daughter Leslie Ann Jones is a marvelous sound engineer who works for George Lucas in San Francisco. And she’s recorded Michael Feinstein, Rosemary Clooney and won several Grammys. She had just finished a session with Michael Feinstein about three years ago and he said “Leslie, I just bought your mother’s album, “After Midnight” in Japan.” And Leslie said, “My Mother hasn’t recorded in a hundred years.” And he said, “No, it’s very popular in Japan.” She didn’t believe it. And he called Japan and had them send a copy to Leslie. That’s how I found out about my albums in Japan. Through Michael Feinstein.”

In the course of my interview with Grayco, I read to her part of a retrospective rave review of “After Midnight” that appeared in Japan’s Swing Journal a few years back, and which contained the following observation:

“When one encounters such a rare and refined recording, one comes to realize that the established versions of certain songs are not necessarily the last word on the subject. Hopefully the reissue of this work will lead to a re-evaluation of Helen Grayco.”

She was pleasantly surprised:

“WHAT! You’ve got to be kidding. I took great pains with album, unlike the singles that were given to me to do. I never would have chosen any of the singles to do if I had a choice. In those years you recorded what they wanted you to. I took a lot of time. . .saloon songs, nice listening, hopefully rather sexy at times. I think the album got that across. When Tony Curtis heard the album he said, ‘Oh I’ve got to do the liner notes.’ Our budget wasn’t that huge. We could have used a forty piece orchestra. I thought he [Russ Garcia] brought the proper mood to the album. We had all the top players in L.A.“ (She’s right. They included alto sax Les Robinson, alto; Gerald Wiggins, piano; Alvin Stoller, drums; Joe Mondragon bass, Barney Kessell, guitar; and Larry Bunker, vibes. It was arranged by Russ Garcia and conducted by Judd Conlon).

Grayco’s next (second and final) album was recorded for Verve the following year. Like several others of that period on the label, Mel Torme, Anita O’Day Frances Faye, it was a Latin session. “Latin music was hot at the time, she recalls. “It had come into its own. Everybody had to get into the act, including record companies.”

“I continued my singing professionally for a few years after Spike died in 1966,” Grayco tells me, “the Copa in New York, the Dean Martin TV show. . .. Then I met Bill Rosen who ran a restaurant out of New York called Gatsby’s, we married, and after that I gave up my career to concentrate on my marriage. I moved to New York. Then he opened a Gatsby’s in L.A. [in its Brentwood area] and I moved back here.”

Much like when she met Jones, her life took a similar unexpected turn when, in 1976, Gatsby’s hired a piano player by the name of Bob Millard mostly for background atmosphere playing. But it quickly became apparent that he was also a wonderful accompanist for singers. Soon, all the top singers in town came to drop by and jam. “One night,” Grayco says, “Tony Bennett would come in to sing, or Vic Damone would drop by. Just sitting around the piano bar singing. Just a casual thing.”

Then Grayco got caught up in the proceedings at the restaurant and she too began to sing at the restaurant on a semi-regular basis. The “scene” at Gatsy’s lasted for several years until Millard was hired away by the competition, Jimmy’s in Beverly Hills, but the Rosen’s venue remained a hot “in” spot until the early-1980s when Rosen retired (he died in 2002).

After talking with Grayco, I phoned Millard, an friend of mine as well, and he confirmed what Grayco had told me, “Even Sinatra would come in from time to time,” he recalled, “but never to sing, just to watch.” The pianist was also quick to point out that his departure from Gatsby’s did nothing to affect the ongoing (to this day) good feelings between himself and Grayco.

Grayco says that she has no strong interest in resuming her career. As for how she spends her time these days, she says: “I’m very social. A lot of lunches, dinners, a lot of friends, my children, my grandchildren.” She adds: “Just the other day I ran into [fellow singer] Jane Harvey at the Café Roma here in L.A. She came with her dog.” In addition to the Café Roma, currently you can also “catch” Helen Grayco on the various DVDs of the Spike Jones TV shows and on the CDs culled from the bandleader’s radio shows and transcriptions now in release. And, of course, on the current Japanese issues of both her wonderful CDs, “After Midnight’ and “The Lady in Red.”
______________________________
SELECTED HELEN GRAYCO DISCOGRAPHY

Non-commercial air checks and radio transcriptions

To construct a complete listing of Helen Grayco’s recordings, including radio and TV air checks, radio transcriptions, is outside the scope of this discography. However, here is just a small part of the non-commercial Grayco material that exists (a complete commercial listing follows).

* With the Spike Jones Other Orchestra on Program #Z-213. Standard Program Library (1946) singing: "I've Got the World on a String" and "E-Bob-O-Lee-Bop." These 16-inch records were made only for radio stations, although they were reissued to the public by Wally Heider on a Hindsight LP in the 1970s.

* Grayco also performed "live" with the Other Orchestra in 1946 at the Trocadero in Hollywood. Several titles featuring Helen were carried on radio KHJ, including a version of "Personality." Presumably air checks of this broadcast exist.

* Grayco made a pilot for radio show (without Jones) for NBC, Greetings From Helen Grayco w/ the Tune Toppers and an interview with Bob Waterfield -15 min.

* There is also a 32-track transcription series with a performer known as Wayne Fair. It is not known which songs are performed by Grayco.

* She was a regular on nearly every Spike Jones television show, including the 1950 "Wild Bill Hiccup" pilot. Several broadcasts of the regular series are now available on DVD and feature Grayco’s singing. She also appeared in the summer of 1958 on the “Club Oasis” TV series. It is to be hoped that either audio or video recordings of this series exists. She was also a guest on a 1968 episode of the Dean Martin NBC TV series.

Singles

Singles through 1951 are 78 rpm only; her 1950s singles were issued on both 45 rpm and 78 rpm (the numbers here are for the 45s.

Diga Diga Do / Or No Dice by Manny Klein Orch w/vocals by Helen Grayco - London L -761 (1949)

Red Silken Stockings / A Hundred Years From Today - London L-1022 (1951)

'Twas Brillig / I Don’t Want to Go Home - London L-1005 (1951)

Ev’ry Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy / Don’t Send Me Home - Mercury 5818 (1952)

Walkin’ To the Mailbox / To Be Loved By You - Mercury 5838 (1952)

Oop Shoop / Teach Me Tonight - “X” 4x-0051 (1954)

Please Don’t Freeze / Say the Word - “X” 4x-0089 (1954)

I Love You Yes I Do / What Do You See in Her ? - “X” 4x-0139 (1955)

Love and Marriage / When You’re in Love You Believe - “X” 4x-0168 (1955)

I’d Better Be Careful / Night Train - “X” 4x-0180 (1955)

Lily’s Lament / Rock and Roll Wedding - Vik 4x-0199 (1956)

Fool For You, A / C'est La Guerre - Vik 4x 0219 (1956)

They Can’t Take That Away From Me / Year Round Love - Vik 4x 0236 (1956)

Them There Eyes / Temptation Verve V10129X45 [from lp “The Lady in Red“] - (1959)

If That’s How Nature Made Him / When a Woman Loves a Man - label ? (1977)

A Wrong Kind of Love / San Francisco Heartache - United Artists (ca. 1985)

Note: Ms. Grayco is heard on only two RCA recordings with husband Spike Jones and his City Slickers: None But the Lonely Heart (RCA 47-2992) and "Rhapsody from Hunger(y)" (RCA 47-4055). Both are spoken parts. She made no recordings with Jones on any other commercial label, i.e. Verve, Liberty, etc.

Albums

After Midnight - Vik LX-1066 (1957) currently available on RCA CD releases from Spain, France and Japan (?)

Lady in Red - Verve MGV 2099 (1959) currently available on Universal Music CD Verve UCCU-3094.

(My thanks to Spike Jones expert Ted Hering for his assistance in compiling the non-commercial part of this discography.)

Back to Home

Flo. . .

2008-09-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

CONTINUED FROM HERE

Jazz critic and head of the Rutgers Jazz Institute Dan Morgenstern heard Handy perform just once “live” accompanying herself in a jazz club in New York City, “some 35 years ago,” he wrote in 2000. “If anything, she was even better than on Smoky and Intimate. ” It was only then that I learned that Handy was also a pianist.

Singer-pianist-songwriter Dave Frishberg was the first of many of Flo Handy’s friends and musical associates with whom I spoke in piecing together the story of this remarkable woman. He, along with a number of other similarly gifted musicians, was part of a musical colony that, in the 1960s and 1970s thrived in the Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania area. And still living there, in fact, are the likes of Phil Woods, pianist John Coates, Urbie Green. Sax giant Al Cohn had moved there in the mid-1960s with his new wife, Flo Handy, who continued to retain her professional last name which she had taken when she married her first husband, arranger-pianist George Handy. (Cohn died in 1988, Flo in ‘96, George Handy the following year.)

It was from Frishberg, over breakfast one morning in L.A. in late 2007, that I also began to learn of a somewhat “secret” musical life of Flo Handy that operated in areas other than those demonstrated on this CD. Here is what he said:

“She told me once that she was studying piano with [famed piano teacher] Sanford Gold. I said, ‘Do you have a piano background? And she said. ’No I never had a lesson before in my life.‘ She played well. She said, ’When I got a job singing I began to teach myself to play the piano so I could accompany myself. ‘

"One club was called The Lost and Found. Some clubs on First Avenue. They were all on the East Side, kind of gangsterish places. I met Al Cohn about the same time he was going with Flo around 1960. [Frishberg would soon become a Cohn sideman.] Anyone Al Cohn married was worth checking out. When I heard her play I was taken aback by the excellence of it. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I‘m certain that Sanford wasn’t teaching her scales. He was teaching her keyboard harmony and how to use the piano as a tool. She was such a great natural musician that she picked right up on it. I couldn’t believe how beautifully she played. It was jazz-inflected but it wasn’t merely jazz. [I was told by another friend that Handy had also studied with jazz pianist Dave McKenna.] You could tell that she had a deep talent for composing.”

But it was “composing’ that fell far outside the territory of as jazz, i, e., classical lieder written to frame previously written literature and poetry of such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Tennessee Williams and John Steinbeck. Art songs with titles like Song Cycle for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano. And it was Flo Handy’s classical endeavors that are remembered by most of her close friends, several of whom were even unaware of the existence of Smoky and Intimate until I informed them of it.. All were at pains to stress the excellence of this “other” music of Flo Handy. The general consensus was that Flo had received her training in musical theory strictly at the “knee” of her first husband, the somewhat older George Handy (Boyd Raeburn‘s chief arranger), who she married at age 18 just out of high school in the mid-1940s.

Aside from Frishberg, other friends of Handy’s with whom I spoke included: two younger musicians who both describe Flo in mentor-like terms, singer Katherine Cartwright and jazz pianist Eric Doney; singer Pinky Winters; Phil Woods’ wife Jill; Eddie Caine, former musician with George Handy; and Louise Sims, widow of Zoot. And, in fact, Flo wrote four of the instrumentals heard on the self-titled ’56 album for Riverside. Somewhat curiously, though, there are no songs written by Handy on Smoky and Intimate. But there is one title by Barnes and the great American songwriter Alec Wilder, “Lack-a-Day,” which appears to have been written especially for the album. Along with other originals co-written by Barnes, “Wait With Me Love”; and label owner Richard Carney, “Compromise.” The other nine titles fall into the category of, to one degree or another, standards.

In addition to Smoky and Intimate, there were also a few tracks recorded by Handy for a couple of novelty albums by Creed Taylor and Kenyon Hopkins. And there was also a complete LP recorded with her first husband at a recording studio in the legendary jazz Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter‘s New Jersey home. But the result was later intentionally destroyed by George. And that’s just about it! How could such a fine singer as Flo Handy have ended up so under-recorded? Part of the reason for this appears to have been strictly geographical. Singer Katherine Cartwright told me:

“In the early 1960s Al [Cohn] wanted to move to the Poconos, get out of the city. Up till then Flo had been working all the time solo in New York. She was doing very well. On the upswing. Al was able to dip in and out, do all the things that he could do from the Poconos, but she. . .woman singer, hadn‘t nearly the career that he had, it wasn’t so good for her. Fortunately she did do a few fairly long running solo stints when she moved to the Poconos.“

One of those gigs was a long-running stint she had opening for jazz pianist Eric Doney in the Delaware Water Gap, PA area. It was an act that consisted of Handy singing and playing strictly the verses of songs. She knew them all, would play them, Doney told me, and, as often as not ask, the audience to guess the name of the song.

Describing the music written by Handy, Cartwright said, “It’s great, beautiful music, but a mess to read. Because she didn‘t use key signatures. The music looked very strange. She wrote all the time. She understood harmonically what was going on. But in terms of what it looked like on the page. . .. She was sort of my primary mentor growing up. She was THE Jazz woman. I knew her from the late 60s until her death. I performed a lot of her music.”

On a more personal level, Frishberg told me, “I thought she was very attractive, Like that,” he said, pointing to the cover of the LP. “But not ostentatious . She would never dress up real pretty. She was just a good looking woman. Dressed very plainly. Then they [Cohn and Handy] bought a house out in the Poconos where I also had a place. During the last part of their lives I stayed at their house a few times after I no longer lived there. Al was older than both of us. Compared to my marriages I thought that Al was the luckiest guy in the world. It was a terrific team they had and I appreciated the way they appreciated each other. Two of the most extraordinary human beings in the music world. Absolutely. She performed one day at the piano for me in Pokonos and I couldn’t believe it. My knees buckled. She sounded so great. There are certain females who play piano and sing. Jeri Southern was in that bag, Joyce Collins, certainly Flo was in that bag.”

return to home

More 4 G 4

2008-06-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

continued from here

Reed: The most popular definition of a jazz singer is that there is no definition, but there is. The late critic Whitney Balliett wrote that “He or she simply makes whatever he or she sings . . .
SWING.” I might interject here that no disrepsect was intended when Balliett continued, “Ethel Merman is not a jazz singer.”
Sutton: But there’s that great Ethel Merman-Bill Evans album that's a really great record. You're ignoring that entirely.
(laughter)
Reed: “However,” Balliett wrote, “Doris Day IS a jazz singer.” And so, I would like to ask anyone on the panel who cares to jump in, Do you think that one could learn from a teacher how to swing?
Ross: No! When you swing, you know what it is to swing. You work with musicians your whole life. Suddenly one night you're working. . .. The definition of swing can be so many things. But it's like, I will say it's like everything jelling. You're jelling with the bass player and the drummer and the piano player and you're all on the same plane and you know it's swinging. No one has to define it for you. But above all, you’ve got to know where 1 is. . .1,2,3,4.
(laughter)
Reed: I could add that, I think it was Ira Gitler who wrote: “One person's jazz singer is another person’s Robert Goulet.”
(laughter)
Which opens the door to another question and---any one of you can jump in here---how do you define jazz singing?
Sutton: As the only person on the panel who has to admit that I think someone actually did teach me to swing. And a couple of people on the panel taught me to swing. I think for me the definition of a jazz singer is that jazz singing is about singing in a context. You know that old joke about the singer holds a light bulb and the whole world revolves around him or her? Usually HER, because of the sexist world we live in. but I think that philosophy is the polar opposite of how I see jazz singing. And I didn't really get exposed to jazz singing until I was in my late teens and early twenties. And what happened was that when I heard it and I said,‘There is something about this that is so linked to the musicians, the instrumentalists.’ And it was different than anything that I had heard before. And when you talk with arrangers and composers about working with a jazz singer or working with a pop singer---I was talking with one arranger friend who you all know but I won’t say who the artist he was talking about was---‘I was working with this pop singer
. . .’[who shall remain nameless] and he said it was such a shock because he works with so many jazz singers, and in this context, every sixteen bars they would have to figure out how the key and the tempo and the instrumentation and everything about the arrangement would showcase the glory of this voice. That to me is the polar opposite of what jazz singing is. A jazz singer wants to hang with the guys, and in order to hang with the guys you have to know certain things. And you hear music not just horizontally but also vertically. So for example if you think of Sarah, she's going to. . .she's singing in such a way that she arpeggiating chords. She’s hearing the harmony. She's singing the context of the music. And other singers, if I'm coaching a Broadway singer or a classical singer, the whole focus of their training is. . .THE VOICE. I WILL CREATE MY SOUND. AND MY SOUND WILL BE SO SUBLIME THAT ALL ELSE WILL FLOW FROM MY SOUND. In jazz, no one gives a rat's butt about your SOUND. You know what I mean? I mean, I care. It's nice to have a good sound, and it’s appropriate to work on your sound, but it’s really about the context, the words and the context. So. . .and the chord changes.
Merrill: We've had the greatest experiences. I know that Annie and I have had similar musical experiences. I know that my first piano player in jazz was Bill Trillian [sic]. Do you remember Bill? No? Then I went on to the big names, but I won't bother to tell you.
Ross: Go on.
Merrill: Yeah. I have to remember. Bud Powell. How about that one? That’s a good one. Yeah! I was about fifteen years old and I knew that I was going to be a different kind of singer and that the only people I would be in it with would be jazz people because I liked to phrase in my own way, I liked the chord changes, I liked to improvise in my own way. And the only place you could do that really was with jazz people. And so that was my reason for being part of the jazz world, loving every minute of it. Still loving every minute of it. Right?
Ross: Absolutely!
Reed: Earlier this week, the first day I was here I went to a panel about the Great American Songbook. And, actually, I had prepared a somewhat recondite question about the subject and then when I went to the panel, which was chaired by Ron Kaplan, who is starting a group called the American Songbook Preservation Society and afterward he gave me his card which had a quote on it that is far better than what I wrote and much more succinct and . . .less verbose, and it is from Tony Bennett and it says simply, ’In a hundred to a hundred-and-fifty years from now, I believe that people will recognize the music of Gershwin and Ellington as the classical music of our time.’ I couldn't agree more, and I wonder if any of you might have some insights that would might buttress that statement as being a correct one?
Ross: I think he's absolutely right. And you know, songwriting is such a craft. Lyric writing is such a craft. I was given the gift of doing Gershwin tonight, and what a gift! I started going through. . .there used to be a guy in new York named Frank Military. Do you remember him? [To Sutton: You're too young.]
Merrill: He sent us all books of music. We don't get them anymore.
Ross: Well I pulled out my books and did I find gems. And you know I knew a lot of the songs because my aunt was a singer, so they came over to the house. But I think, they used to. . .you could really concentrate on what was the right rhyme. What was being expressed, what you eally wanted to say. This is my dream, and I think it happened. They all stayed up nights. They would phone one another---this is all in my fantasy---and say, ‘I got it. I GOT IT!’ And that would become a line. So I think it does a disservice not to sing the lyrics correctly, not to sing the melody correctly. At least once!
(laughter)
Merrill: I found out a lot about Irving Berlin, too. What a genius he was. He was able to take our feelings and condense them. It was he was reading your feelings and your mind. I is amazing to read his lyrics.
Simple . . ..
Ross: ‘When I Lost You.’
Merrill: He wrote that for his wife.
Reed: What puzzles me a lot, and maybe Ron Kaplan is on to a clue as to how this will be done, is that with mass public taste spiraling ever downward into the primordial ooze, how will this happen, how will this music be protected so that it will have the same kind of legitimacy as the 3 B’s, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms?Sutton: Well, I think. . .I do a fair amount of education and I recently took over a position as the vocal department head at a small concentrated music academy here in Los Angeles, Los Angeles Music Academy. One of the reasons I decided to do it is that they said that I could do anything I wanted with the curriculum. That I could do whatever I wanted. And I knew what I wanted. A lot of the singers who are coming there are foreign singers who want to be pop stars. But if they come to L.A. Music Academy they have to learn the Great American Songbook. they have to learn the root montion of the song, they have to. . .last week was Review of Blues and Rhythm Changes. They’re learning those forms and. . .what happens is, to learn to sing those forms is to learn musical structures you’ll use for the rest of your musical life. And I've had the opportunity a fair amount of time to teach that to singers that haven't been exposed to it. And once they realize the elegance and the beauty of those structures, they sort of say. . .’Hmmmm?’ I gave a student an assignment. She came in and she had a pop singer who she really loved who was lovely, but I don’t think not a composer on the same level of Gershwin, let’s just say. And I taught her how to hear the root motion, how to hear the root note of the chords and how they go by and I said, listen, ‘Now that you know how to do this, you go home and bring back to me a lead sheet with the chord changes or this song that you love so much,’and it was 46 bars of A minor. Well, I can’t tell you the look on this girl’s face. And then, the next week I assigned her to sing the melody of ‘Prelude to a Kiss,’ which takes her the rest of the semester to master, but after that she can sing a half-step, so there’s all sorts of things about getting into this music that show anyone loves music and has good ears. . .that says ‘Wow, this is sort of off the food chain.’ That’s what happened to me. I was singing in a cheesy, sort of pop, singing cocktail waitress sort of thing. And on my one night off there was a jazz trio across the street and I would go over there to hear them and I would think ‘Why is this music so much better than what we’re doing?’ I didn’t know why it was, but I knew it was. I knew the music, I knew the melody, I knew the harmony was better. I think for people that are lovers of music, if that’s your passion, If we introduce them to these forms, they say ‘Wow, this is really cool! I get this.‘ And then they compare a lot of other music that’s out there and they say, ‘Oh, hmmm,’ I guess this [more commercial music] wasn’t as interesting as I thought.’ But in some ways it is interesting. There’s rhythm things going on in modern music, there's different things. I’m not one to totally bash it. I think there’s elements of that that we can bring. . .. But, a great melody, and a great, elegant harmony line, and a great lyric, that’s what they [American Songbook songs] are. When you analyze these things. . .. I was just trying to memorize a Cole Porter lyric. ‘It’s Alright With Me,’ and it’s just fascinating when you analyze why that line is first and why that line is that line is second and why that line is third ‘It‘s the wrong time. And the wrong place, though your face’---nice little internal rhyme there---is lovely it's the wrong face. It’s not his face. . .'; then ’face, ‘lovely,’ then you go ‘It’s the wrong song in the wrong style, though your smile. . .’ A little more personal than face, ‘Your smile is charming.’ Then ‘It’s the wrong game with the wrong chips, though your lips. . .’ Get to the sex! You know, ‘Lips are tempting’ is stronger than ‘charming.’ You analyze that and figure out why ‘lovely’ is first, then ‘charming,’ then ‘tempting.’ And then you say, ‘Okay, these guys were the masters.’ And when you analyze that and point that out to kids and say there’s a reason that it’s ‘lovely’ first, and ‘tempting’ last. Then you say, ‘Oh, wow, that’s why we study this music.’ I think it survives because of its greatness and you don’t really have to do anything about it. You just have to introduce it to people.
Reed: I hate to sound like the character in Hard Day’s Night who says, ‘Hey, you kids, get off my lawn,’ but I really feel that the bad has absolutely driven out the good to a wildly disproportionate point. One of my favorite quotes of all time is when a reporter asked Max Roach what he thought of rap, he said, ‘People who voted for defunding of music education in public schools are getting what they paid for.’
[laughter, applause]
And so how can we reverse that, with the drum machines and the synthesizers throughout every show on television, even the National Geographic Specials are unwatchable because they have all this horrible, thumping synth music. What can be done? Any ideas
Ross: [singing] ‘They wanted me to go to re-rab. I said no, no, no.’
[laughter]
Merrill: That’s great, Annie.
Sutton: So maybe all four of us should participate in some incredible scandal. I’ll take Barack Obama. Just for the jazz press.
Ross: He likes jazz. Sutton: Yes, he likes jazz I saw his list of records and it had Coltrane on it.
Merrill: I disagree with you a little bit. I think there’s plenty of good jazz around. We have Dizzy’s Coca-Cola, stuff at Carnegie Hall. . .
Reed: But I’m talking about the media and American Idol. . ..
Merrill: Oh, dear god. I haven't watched it even once.
Sutton: You know we have to get in there. I just went to my son’s school and they do have a little music program there. I was flabbergasted. I was shocked and saddened because the symphonic band was very good. But there are several jazz bands and they're so terrible that I sat there with my heart sinking, thinking that this is audience watching this and they’re thinking ‘This is jazz.’and was so badly done, and it was taught by someone who obviously knows nothing about jazz, and I thought ‘This is inoculating people against what’s great about this music.’ So I think that all we can really do is to strive to be as excellent at what we’re doing as we possibly can give our time, to a certain degree. . .. Annie and I sang at the Hollywood Bowl a couple of years ago---now there’s a phrase I never thought I would say in my life---’Oh, you know, when Annie Ross and I were singing at the Hollywood Bowl. . ."
(laughter)
My son after the show---there was also John Pizzarelli and Kurt Elling---and it’s my kid. What does he remember? ‘It’s that meatball song, mom. What a great song. She's [Ross] great! I loved her.' This is my eleven-year-old son and what does he pick out of the show? Does he pick out the r n’b stuff that's similar to what he’s heard before? No! He picks out Annie Ross singing ‘One Meatball.’
(laughter)
I'm dead serious. All we have to do is do our thing and we have to make sure that as many young people as possible are exposed to it. Because when I first heard Sarah Vaughan when I was nineteen, I was angry that no one had ever no one had ever played anything like this for me. I was a dopey white girl in Milwaukee and what did I know. ‘Oh this has been out there all this time and I never knew?’ So I think that when you actually play the stuff, and you are careful that you play things that are interesting. You play things that are funny. You play things that they can cross over to. You don’t disrespect them and play something that has a twenty minute trombone solo. . .no offense to my husband. You have to give them a bridge to walk over. You have to show them how the skills of jazz musicians have implications for their life as songwriters themselves.
Reed: I'm going to change the line of. . .I will shortly be throwing open the floor to questions, but right now I'm going to change the subject to the degree that I might induce whiplash. But. . .Pinky. . .
Winters: Yes?
Reed: You have been strangely silent this morning.

Part two in the not-too-distant future.

Liner Notes for Beverly Kenney's "Lonely and Blue" - SSJ Records

2007-09-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise in the late 1980s when I found a reference to Beverly Kenney in a collection of writings by the Beat Generation essayist, Seymour Krim. It was the first time I'd seen her name in posthumous print since she committed suicide in 1960. Small matter that her name was misspelled, i. e, “Kenny.”

There was a time, though, when this singer’s name was everywhere, at least in jazz circles: “She’s a top bet for jazz rooms, there the crowds will go for her looks as well as her vocals” (Variety, 1956), “a gifted singer with good taste in the choice of songs she sings and a plethora of natural equipment with which to sing them” (Barry Ulanov in Down Beat, 1956), and “the kind of ability and potential that should enable her to stay a long time” (Down Beat, 1955).

But not long after that brief mention of Beverly KENNY, there came a relative deluge, in the form of an article about her in, of all places, the Nov '92 issue of the U.S. men’s fashion magazine, GQ. It seems that its author, New York disc jockey, singer, and son of famed songwriter, Arthur Schwartz, Jonathan Schwartz, had long since relegated Beverly Kenney to what he describes as his "A shelf" of recordings, alongside "Sinatra, the early Miles Davis, Beethoven string quartets, anything for the cello, the Verve Billie Holiday, [and] the original cast recording of Carousel." To say that Schwartz' affection for Kenney placed him in the vast minority is an understatement. But only as regards the U.S., for even though she has long been forgotten in her native land, Kenney is still a name known to most Japanese devotees of jazz singing. There were six lp's three on Roost, three on Decca that have remained mostly in print all these years in Japan. And in 2007, this label released a seventh volume, a demo session, entitled “Snuggled on Your Shoulder.”

Schwartz truly did his homework, including his revelation of the name of a lover of the singer, a dazzling, legendary fifties Greenwich Village professional intellectual, Milton Klonsky. A kind of Beat Generation guru with a huge intellect and an ego to match, Klonsky apparently even inspired her to write poetry.

The article spurred me on to begin, using clues contained therein, undertaking some Kenney investigation on my own. I contacted several individuals whose paths had crossed hers during the brief period of Kenney’s rapid musical ascendancy in the mid-1950s and who were kind enough to answer some of my questions about her. The one thing that most agree upon is that Beverly Kenney was of a psychological disposition somewhat at odds with her upbeat vocal style. Musician Ralph Patt who worked with Kenney in Larry Sonn’s band: “I remember what a great singer she was but she seemed pretty unhappy and not too stable, so I wasn't surprised at her untimely death. A great loss” Jazz singer-pianist Audrey Morris recalled: “It was customary for the visiting singers to hang out with the locals a lot, go to hear all the others, etc. and I often asked Beverly if she wanted to join in, but she never did.” Singer Beverly Kelly‘s recollections of Kenney echo almost word for those of Audrey Morris and Ralph Patt: “sad,” “unhappy,” “depressed.” Ironically, because of the similarity in their names, more than four decades later, the still professionally active Kelly continues to quash rumors of her own demise.

But there were two major exceptions to this downbeat point of view of Kenney. One was her closest female friend, actress Millie Perkins:

"Beverly could be pensive, moody, but she was wonderful.” Perkins is at great pains to underscore that she never saw Kelley’s suicide coming. As for Kenney’ lover for the last year-and-a-half of her life and, whose name I have chosen to withhold for reasons of privacy, he was shocked by her untimely death, though not as surprised as was Perkins. In an extended memoir of his relationship with the singer, he writes of a red flag alert that came up unexpectedly several months into their affair:

“We went out for dinner and then to front-row seats in the theater. About half-way through the show, Beverly said she wanted to leave and so we did . She seemed a bit distant, and said she was not in the mood for it, and so we walked back to the apartment. By now it was about ten o’clock and Beverly went into the bathroom and I went to the bedroom to get undressed. After about 15 minutes, it occurred to me that it was quiet, in the bathroom. No toilets flushed, no showers, no sinks, no sounds. I went to the bathroom door; it was very still inside. I called to Beverly and there was no reply. I called again louder thinking she might have fallen asleep. Still no answer. Next, as my mind started racing with scary thought, I kicked in the locked bathroom door. As I pushed inside, I saw Beverly sprawled on the floor, unconscious.” Next to her lay an empty bottle of sleeping pills.”

Up to that point in their relationship, the lover had not a single clue that Kenney was in any way troubled. And when she recovered a few days later, all was back to seeming happy normalcy until the next (again) thwarted attempt a few months later. However, on her third attempt, a year afterward, she was “successful.” Her lover had the sad experience of hearing her death announced on the radio. “The last paragraph of his memoir reads as follows:

“Beverly was one of a kind, a truly enchanting person, and I choose that word carefully. Now, many years later, I look at her pictures on the CD covers, put on the stereo and once again hear her sweet, innocent voice. And try to think only of the good times.”

***
Unlike the first SSJ volume, “Snuggled,” these cuts have been released before, but only after a fashion. The tracks herein were made for a radio transcription service in the early 1950s, prior to Kenney’s first commercial recordings. Unfortunately, the service has long ceased operations; thus, with a couple of exceptions, the composers of the songs have fallen through the cracks of time. What IS known about the writers is that they were mostly unknown and most likely paid to have their wares recorded. In exchange, the sides were sent to U.S. broadcasters with hopes that the songs would receive radio exposure. The two songs for which I have been able to ascertain authorship are: “That Pyramid Jazz” (Frank Panella, Ben Fields, Louis Zuber) and “Long Lean and Lanky” (by the well-known r n‘ b writer Rudy Toombs). In fact, both titles had been recorded previous to Kenney’s version. The tracks contained herein were scattered about eight different recordings, which were sent to radio stations in the form of 12 inch LPs.

What is also known about the recordings are the musicians on the session, who constitute a veritable who’s who of jazz players circa the early 1950s. They include: Eddie Safranski, arranger-bass; Dale McMickle, trumpet; Al Klink, tenor sax; Dick Hyman, piano; Mundell Lowe, guitar; Don Lamond, drums. It is a measure of their experience and musicianship that the majority of them had, at one time or other, either appeared or recorded with Frank Sinatra. Leader Safranski was especially active on the New York music scene at the time these recordings were made, not just as a session player, but also music producer. The transcription service that originated these sides also released many dozens of other efforts also overseen by Safranski.

The bassist made his initial big splash in the music world as a bassist for Stan Kenton. Settling into a less-nomadic lifestyle in the late 1940s, he eventually became a staff player for the National Broadcasting Company. From the late '60s until his death in 1974 at age 55, he ran workshops and master classes for a bass manufacturer, and played swing and bop with various combos in the Los Angeles area.

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Joel Dorn interview

2007-09-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

continued from Here

RC: Knowing I was going to interview you, I asked several friends of mine what they would like me to find out from you about recording Jimmy Scott. Each of them want to know why the photo of a black female on the cover of [1971 album] “The Source” instead of Jimmy? I've often wondered myself.

JD: That was a record company decision. I was pissed off. I remain angry to this day and I thought it was a big insult. There was a guy who worked at Atlantic Records. His name doesn't make any difference---he's long gone---who just said that Jimmy was too strange looking to put his picture on the cover. He had the ear of one of the owners and said to him, “I don't want that guy’s picture on the cover. Put a picture of a chick.“ As a result, everybody who was always confused when they didn't see Jimmy but heard him and didn't know whether it was a man or a woman singing was now doubly confused. They thought the girl on the cover, a model, was Jimmy.

RC: One of my friends in Japan wants to know the name of the model.

JD: [incredulous] They really want to know the name of the model?! The Japanese are so far out. They want to know the name of the model?”

RC: Record engineer Al Schmitt told me he gets stopped on the street and asked for his autograph on a regular basis in Japan. That’s something that has never happened to him even once in the U.S. during his fifty years in the business. That’s a perfect example to me of how knowledgeable and curious the average Japanese music fan can be.

JD: I could tell you records I made that that have these insane followings. Records that you don’t know: the David Forman record for example.

RC: No.

[JD: I made a record with him on Arista. A bizarre little record, but it’s got a cult of followers. I made a doo-wop record with [record producer-Jay and the American’s co--founder] Kenny Vance, “Looking for an Echo“. The Gene McDaniels record, “Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse.“ I thought they were failed records when I did them. I was very, very disappointed in how they turned out [commercially], yet they have these bizarre followings. The things I did with Leon Redbone. Especially the first record or two. I did a couple of Coltrane projects, a [compilation] box called “The Last Giant” and another, "The Heavyweight Champion” and some Japanese fans came out of the woodwork on that and asked questions that you would have to have an enriched fantasy life to think of. So the questions were. . . incredible. But it's great that people appreciate John Coltrane and Jimmy Scott on that level. The Japanese taste is very refined because they have a refined culture and a culture that has lasted for thousands of years. So they can appreciate the culture in other cultures. But on the other hand there is. . . [laughs]. . . someone really wanted to know the name of the model on the cover of “The Source“? I have no idea. She's probably pushing sixty now.

RC: I saw Jimmy perform at a club in Tokyo in October. Sold out at 6:30 of a Wednesday evening. That sort of thing could never happen in America. It was a great and unforgettable show, even though his voice is not what it once was.

JS: Jimmy knows that about his voice by the way. By the time he got a contract with Sire Records [in 1992 ] as a consequence of [Sire head] Seymour Stein hearing him sing at [songwriter] Doc Pomus’ funeral he was certainly still a genius and brilliant, but physically his voice was past what we tried to get on record in the late 60s and early 70s. But he still brings his wisdom and his pathos and his unique view of time and phrasing to what it is that he does. One of the reasons I fought so hard to record him back then [in 1971 and ‘72] is I wanted to record him while he still had his fast ball. He was at the height of his powers at that point and not being recorded. As a fan, I shared Doc Pomus' anger; why wouldn't Jimmy Scott be recorded by a major label. It was pocket change to record him back then. There's so little documentation. There are only three things that catch Jimmy at the height of his powers: the record with Ray Charles record, “Falling in Love is Wonderful,“ “The Source” and the one after, “Lost and Found, which I think is the best of “The Source” and the best of the [second] album that never came out. [note: the latter was also produced by Dorn]

RC: Why aren't the other tracks like ”The Long and Winding Road” and the other three (?) tracks from the second sessions on “Lost and Found“?
JD: Because, well, the beginning of “The Long and Winding Road” works, the second half of it doesn't. It' simple. “Precious Lord” I didn't think held up to “Motherless Child” in the gospel or spiritual category. He sang the s**t [shit] out of the first half of “The Long and Winding Road,” and the second half he started to stumble.

RC: I heard “Long and Winding Road” on the radio not too long ago.

JD: I used the first half of it in a little syndicated half hour radio documentary when we put out “Lost and “Found.” I sent it out to radio stations. Up to the point where he starts to stumble on it. Whew! Nearly every disc jockey in America that we sent that to called back and said, “Why isn't “Long and Winding Road” on the album?,” they want to know. Wait’ll Jimmy’s collector fans find out that there’s even half a copy of it available on some obscure, limited radio promo recording! [he pauses then gently laughs] They’ll go nuts!

RC: One assumes the same holds true for the un-issued track “I’ll Never Be Free,” from the ‘72 date and “Yesterday” from the “Source” sessions.

JD: The only time that stuff by Jimmy didn't work was generally when I gave him a song when he agreed to do it as a favor to me. By the time I got to the second record I knew not to ask him for certain things. I think “The Source” is an uneven record . . ..

[I start to protest.]

JD: [continuing] I gave him “Exodus.” I thought he did a great job with that. I gave him “Unchained Melody.” I thought he did a great job with that. But I’m not happy with “On Broadway,” I’m not happy with “Our Day Will Come.” Which I thought would be perfect for him. I think he adapted to it only because of his brilliance. He did what he could do with those, but if I had stayed with the “Day by Day” and those things that Jimmy was doing in his club work for years, I think “The Source” would have been a better record. “Day by Day” [on “The Source] is the single greatest recording Jimmy Scott ever made. Not because I produced it, believe me. Other than making sure he had a recording contract and putting him with people I thought he should be with, I didn't make any contribution to “Day to Day” in terms of his interpretation of it. If you ever wanted to define what it is that Jimmy Scott does that nobody living can even approach it’s in that particular song. That's to me. The Ray Charles record is not an uneven record. It's fluid all the way through.

Dorn wrote the following about the checkered history of this legendary suppressed recording in his liner notes for “Lost and Found.”

“Cut to the summer of 1963. I’m a jazz jockey on a jazz station in Philly [Philadelphia]. An album called “Falling in Love is Wonderful” is the premiere release on Ray Charles’ new label, Tangerine Records. Jimmy had been recording since the late ‘40s, first with Lionel Hampton and then on his own on Roost and Savoy. These records were great, and some were even classics, but they were not the Jimmy Scott I had [once] heard at the Apollo [Theater in New York’s Harlem]. That Jimmy had never been captured on record until the Tangerine album. . . In the seven years I was on the air [as a disc jockey], I can’t remember a more positive response to a record. Just as swift and unfortunately negative for Jimmy’s career was the response of his former label, Savoy. Savoy claimed that Jimmy was still legally under contract to them and the courts agreed. Their demand that Jimmy’s Tangerine album be taken off the market was upheld. The breakthrough he had been waiting for years went up in smoke. Jimmy went into a self-imposed exile. He ended up in Cleveland, running the shipping room of the Sheraton Hotel there.”

Nearly ten years later in 1971 when Dorn recorded Scott, Savoy once again successfully stepped in and suppressed the results of the sessions. And although Dorn's work with Scott is now available---at least that portion of it that Dorn approves of---to this day, “Falling in Love is Wonderful” with its arrangements by Gerald Wilson and Marty Paich and accompaniment by Ray Charles himself, still has not been released. It now fetches high amounts from collectors. This time the stumbling block is said to be the high price Charles wants for licensing the disc. This was told to me NOT by Dorn but by as associate of Charles. Dorn, himself, is now negotiating with Charles for release of the disc in the U.S. marketplace. Meanwhile, Jimmy Scott prevailed over all the legal wrangling and other vicissitudes of race, health, and vocal uniqueness to become, in the greatest comeback story ever told, an international music star, especially in this country. One might even go so far as to call him “Japan’s Own. . .”

RC: Just as Doc Pomus had been central to your working with Jimmy Scott, he played a part in your recording at least one other act didn’t he?
Note: Doc Pomus (1925 - 1991), a hovering and beloved songwriter - guru of American rock, r ‘n’b, and blues, wrote or co-wrote such songs as “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “This Magic Moment,” and Elvis Presley hits like "Viva Las Vegas" "Little Sister," and "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame."

JD: Doc turned me on to the Neville Brothers. He called me one day, he said, “Meet me at the Bottom Line. You’re going to hear the greatest singer in America.” I said, “Who’s that?” He said, “Just meet me there.” So I go down there and the greatest singer in America turns out to be Aaron Neville. . .and that band was insane! I ran backstage and I grabbed them and said, “I’m going to make a record with you guys.” “Who are you?” “Don’t worry about who I am.” But I couldn't get them a deal, everybody passed on them, including A&M Records. First of all they had a bad reputation, they were like rough guys and there had been all these Neville Brothers stories. I was telling everybody they’re not going to hurt you. “They’re going to shoot you.” I said [outraged] “They’re not going to do anything!” I said. “Any kind of trouble they ever got into they got into was outside of record companies.” I couldn't make a deal. Then Bette Midler was in New Orleans and she fell in love with them and she called Jerry Moss [of A&M Records], which was really sweet of her. I was in Chicago and recording and I got a call from Moss: “You know that act you want us to record, well Bette Midler says they’re incredible and we’re going to do it.” We finally got a deal at A&M after everybody had turned them down.

RC: The final results really bore out your faith in them.

JD: I've produced a few hundred records with boxes and compilations and the hundreds of albums I've made from scratch, and there are only a handful I can listen to without cringing because of where I fell short, where I feel I didn't serve the artist properly. That’s one of them I can listen to. Understand when I start to rave about a record that I produced it has little or nothing to do with the fact that I produced it. It has to do with who I recorded. That Neville Brothers album [“Fiyo on the Bayou“]. . .I can’t do better than that. In fact, when it came out I was so positive it was going to be a smash that I flew to California, met with everybody at A&M, became involved in the marketing and everything, because I had never seen anything like the Nevilles! They [A&M] hated the record and I knew that record was a classic. You just know sometimes, right? Why did they hate it? They said, “Well, it’s a black act but none of the r ‘n’ b stations are going to play this.” I said, “It’s black guys but it’s a white act. They play to college kids all over the place. They play in New Orleans at bars like Tip’s [Tipitina‘s]. That’s a bar band. That’s a white audience - black band combination. But they hated it. In fact, I never made another record for A&M. I knew it was a classic and about 10-12 years later I got a call from “Rolling Stone.” They had picked the hundred most important albums of the second half of the 20th Century. And that was number fifty or something. I felt so vindicated and Playboy did a thing where they chose the greatest albums ever and they picked it. It was ten years too late. If you look at the back of the album Aaron thanks Bette Midler and Jesus. . .in that order.

RC: History has absolved you.

note: As with “The Source,“ even with his unstinting enthusiasm for “Fiyo“, Dorn has two minor quibbles about the album, of a technical nature and ultimately too negligible to go into there. They amount to only a handful of seconds. From the subject of two temporarily ill-fated projects, Scott and the Nevilles, I turned to a more harmonious and long-running Dorn collaboration.

RC: Tell me about Rahsaan.

JD: First off let me tell you about the Rahsaan freaks. There’s nothing like them. It’s one thing if somebody is a Beatles junkie or some other group that’s affected the whole world, but Rahsaan, the people who “get” Rahsaan. . . it changes your compass, it changes everything. I went on the air as a disc jockey on September 14th 1961 and I had seen his name in “Down Beat“, appearing at clubs like McKee’s Lounge, the Sutherland, and I knew he had a record. We had a bunch of jazz singles that were edited down versions that they used to make for juke boxes. So I pulled the top record. So much of my life has happened randomly. It was “Three for the Festival” on Mercury Records by Roland Kirk and I put it on, and all of a sudden the phone starts ringing: “What’s that?” They hadn't been playing Roland Kirk at the station. Hey, he plays three instruments, he’s blind. He was looked upon as an oddity. Hank Crawford told me that when he was growing up in Memphis he saw him when Rahssan was 14, so Hank was maybe fifteen. He saw him at a hotel in Memphis playing a weekend gig and he was a little boy. Playing two saxophones at once and playing his ass off. He said he was spectacular. That’s Hank Crawford talking! Everybody that I knew looked at him like he was a circus act. I fell in love with that “We Free Kings” record. I started playing it and it started selling in Philly. There was a jazz concert at the Academy of Music and that was in November, December of ‘61. Somebody cancelled and they brought him in. He was the opening act, Rahsaan, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Johnny Griffin, Cannonball, Gloria Lynne, Count Basie. They used to have packages like that. It was the first time I had ever been backstage at a jazz concert and Kirk comes on and I never saw anything like that in my life. I said to myself---I was only a disc jockey as a means to an end, I wanted to be a record producer--- so watching I'm saying, “This is it!” I walked up to him: “Oh, Mister Kirk, I'm your biggest fan.” The regular nonsense. “I play your records all the time. I'm going to be a record producer, I want to produce you some day.” Anyway we struck up a, I won't say a friendship, but an acquaintanceship. It was all uphill for him because all that people, especially critics, did was look at him put him the three horns in his mouth and they would automatically assume he was a circus act.

RC: What was your working relationship like?

JD: I signed him to Atlantic and we started our partnership that lasted about 13 or 14 albums we did together. At first he would come into the studio almost in a defensive manner like “I’m gonna do this,” “I'm gonna do that,” “I don’t want you to do that.” I said, “Do what you want.” So it took three or four albums before I got his trust not so much in that I believed in him that he could do what he wanted to do but where he relaxed a little bit and wasn't fighting the record company. So I would tell him, “I just want to capture what you do. I don’t have songs for you and I don't have any great ideas.” If I was fortunate enough to successfully record a lot of the people I worked with as a producer, like Rahsaan and Yusef [Lateef], Les McCann, and to a degree Eddie Harris, it was because I had seen them in clubs and I wondered why is that what they do in clubs is so spectacular and when they make the record they’re just not the same. Rahsaan was one of those guys.

RC: I heard a story. . .

JD: Yes, it’s true. [laughs] People always ask me about that. Here’s what happened. I came into the studio one day, three, four, five records in. I had long hair in those days and a beard. I don’t know whether he was Roland or whether he was Rahsaan yet and we come into the little mix room off the main studio at Atlantic and he said, “Sit down.” “Alright.” He stands behind me and he starts wrapping masking tape around my head, and I said, “What are you doing?” “Don’t worry about it.” He finishes and leaves a little room for my nostrils so I can breathe and a little room for my mouth so I can talk. Two hundred feet of masking tape wrapped around my head like I’m a mummy. I said, “What are you doing?’ He took a gun out and put the gun to my head, and said, “I want you to mix this record and know how I feel all the time.” Blind and under the gun. He didn't say that, but that’s what he meant. So we mixed for about an hour, and I said, “Will you take this s**t [shit] off. I get the joke. I know what you’re talking about.” Do you know what it’s like to take a couple hundred feet of masking tape off when you have hair down to the middle of your back? People say is that the truth? It’s absolutely the truth. But more than anything it gives you a sense that this was a different kind of guy.

RC: But why did he do it the fifth album in? You had already gained his trust.

JD: I don’t know. Maybe that’s just the way he felt that day.

RC: Was it done in a playful sense?

JD: He was just being Rahsaan. You and I could talk for three weeks and I couldn't truly explain him to you. But I will tell you that he was unto himself. He came out of the black American musical tradition. He was an oral historian of it in the truest sense. He was brilliant. All the people who said he was a clown, a circus act, he was a gimmick guy and all that stuff, they never listened to him just play the tenor or the flute. If he had done nothing but just play the tenor I can guarantee you he would have been [then] what he’s become now which is a hall-of-famer, one of the major tenor players. He is all the stuff [now] that he was when he was alive but nobody dug it. There were so few people. One of the few critics who was on his side was Ira Gitler. When I first met Ira when I first started to record Rahsaan, he said “You made a good call here.” I wish it hadn't taken so long for Rahsaan’s ship to come in. It should have happened while he was alive. He’s selling ten times as much as when he was alive.

RC: I know I would be more afraid of a blind man with a gun than a sighted one. Al Hibbler [a singer who also was sightless] also packed heat. I might ask you what blind jazz musicians were doing running around with guns. Changing the subject. . .as a producer, do you have a. . .?

JD: A formula, you were going to say “formula” right?

RC: More or less.

JD: Here’s all I can tell you. You have no idea how many times people sign an artist. . .I told you I did it with Jimmy Scott. I said, “Here this is a perfect tune for you.” That’s what a producer does. You find material. But there are certain people you don’t have to find material for. My biggest successes were with people who came complete. Doc Pomus one time said, “My two favorite producers are you and Phil Spector.” I was blown away to be included in that kind of company. He said, “Spector makes the whole record and then he puts the artist on last. You do it in the exact reverse. You capture what’s there then you make a record out of it.” I thought that was an interesting distinction. I am NOT a passive producer, but I basically go after people who already are complete in what it is that they do and I capture it and complement it and present it. Better presentation will grab people’s attention, so what I try and do is capture what it is and if necessary complement it, do my little tricks, but I rarely tell anybody what to do or how to do it.

RC: It's a formula that apparently works. Right now Jane Monheit is one of the most successful young jazz performers around.

JD: We met yesterday. The first sessions for her new one will be in March [2002] We’ll do some things with larger ensembles this time. We’ve had voice and piano, trio, quartet, quintet, one thing I sweetened with strings. But now we’re going to work with orchestras, not on the whole record, some chamber-ish. Great songs, just great songs. She’s great, great to work with. It's fun.

RC: Any other projects?

JD: I have three albums planned for the next 18 months which I'm going to be doing. One is the Jane Monheit record, then I'm going to do a record with my son; my youngest son Adam goes under the name of Motion Worker, he’s an electronic artist. He’s got a very nice following and does lots of film stuff. He's a master sampler. We’re going to do an album of samples from jazz albums.

RC: That sort of thing has been done a lot, hasn't it?

JD: Ours won’t be exactly like the other guys are doing. Also for years my son and I walked through Central Park and recorded all the music and ambient sound on weekends, so now we want to do something with that music. If any other great talent comes along, it doesn’t come along much at this stage of the game, I'll do that. I'm in the fourth quarter now, I don't want the game to get called on account of rain and not do the things I want to do, so I've been working on those things.

RC: None of these are for your own label, though?

JD: My Label M is no more and it's NOT no more. The people who funded the label, Paradise Music and Entertainment, were taken over by new people. [emphatically] I don’t like them and they don't like me. So I got control of the label and I can place it someplace else if I want to. Right now I'm debating whether I want another label. I'm going to be sixty in April. I don’t feel old. I still feel like I’m in the 11th grade. There are certain things I want to do that I haven't done. I want to get more involved with photography, so I'm making limited edition sets of my different photographs. I just completed my first photographic project. I want to make little limited editions.

RC: Portraits?

JD: No people at all. I mainly take pictures of mannequins, reflections, the geometry of the city. Right now I'm doing pictures of flags since September 11th. There are so many flags. I started writing about ten or twelve years ago, I always wanted to write. So now I'm a fifth of the way through a book. Not a book about my life, but little pieces that I write, liner notes, things like that. I'm also thinking of putting together a syndicated radio show. I used to go into the black neighborhoods when I was a kid because that was the only place I could get the gospel records and the r ‘n’ b records I heard on the radio. I’ve been listening to records that I liked as a kid for this radio show, I go back to the Soul Stirrers when Sam Cooke was with them, the Harmonizing Four when Jimmy Jones sang lead.

RC: You mentioned to me that you were trying to license Jimmy’s Scott's “Falling in Love is Wonderful.”

JD: I don’t have a place to license it to but I spoke to Ray Charles and he said, “Send me a proposal and I’ll be happy to consider it.” But first I have to have a place to put it out. He's been approached but is reluctant to license it. I’ve been trying to get the record for years. I got close in a conversation. He gave me his e-mail and said , “I’ll consider it.”

RC: Why do you think you don't want another record label (Dorn also was a partner in the label “32 Jazz’ in the 1990s)?

JD: I'm going to be sixty next year. I've been doing this forty years in September. Like anybody else I’ve had ups and downs. The early eighties were very rough for me, then kind of reinventing myself in the mid-eighties and doing what I’m doing now. It took a while to get back in the game. I started at the top. I didn't know what I was doing. I was running on steam, so there was no way to stop me. I landed on my feet with Nesuhi Ertegun. I’d been writing him since I was fourteen. So it took me eleven years to get the job with Atlantic. But I finally got it and I apprenticed to him. At Atlantic when Atlantic was Atlantic! It was unbelievable. Now I’ve got a forty year career and I have a large enough body of work that I now do 25 to 30 interviews a year like this one and it amazes me how people are affected by things that you’re a part of. There are certain things that just keep coming up over and over again. Those certain records, a dozen or so records where people say you changed my life, that's my favorite record, which is great, and then there are these records that I made that---every record I started I believed in but some of them work and some of them don't--- but there’s this core of people who know about certain records. I'm getting off the point. There are certain artists. Jimmy Scott. Rahsaan is another who I recorded and they’ve hit people so heavily with who and what they are. I wish I was smart enough to say that I knew at the beginning. I knew they appealed to me. I get asked questions, especially by young kids who are real record heads. As much as you and I are fanatics, these young guys are not part of time those records were made so they don’t have a frame of reference from then. Their frame of reference is now. And what they hear in it and how if affects them and why they relate to it, it just . . .I want to say confounds. . .. It doesn’t confound me but it does amaze me.

RC: With all the concentration on your accomplishments, I've failed to ask you how you got started.

JD: My whole life as a record producer is based upon two things. When I was a year-and-a-half my mother used to play me Al Jolson records. During World War II we would get up in the morning my mother would check the news to see if her brother in New Guinea was still alive and okay and then she would play me “April Showers,” and I would cry. “April Showers,” man! Then I was sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen in 1956 in Philadelphia. I had Georgie Woods on WDAS in Philadelphia at 915 on a Friday, I think it was March. He played “Ain’t That Love” by Ray Charles and I was done! The first time I saw Ray Charles was when I sixteen, he was with the small band, Fathead [Newman], Hank [Crawford], I was in the eleventh grade. I went up, and Fathead and I laugh about it now, I said, “You know I am going to be a record producer someday, I want to produce you and I want to work at Atlantic Records. Every time they were within a hundred miles of Philly I was there, the little white kid backstage, and then eventually. . . [his voice trails off].

RC: “Eventually,” indeed! Thank you for your time this afternoon, Joel.

JD: Anytime. Any other questions, give me a call.

I had hundreds more For the meantime, however, I let it go at that.

Back to HOME

Page Cavanaugh, cont'd

2007-05-21T19:09:00.001-07:00

“I was with [booking agency] General Artists Corporation for a lot of years. Then one time I went with [rival outfit] MCA for one year and it almost ruined my career. Don’t know how many thousands of dollars I lost. MCA thought we were like the Three Suns, didn't know anything about our music, our background. Big corporate business thing, but GAC always treated me well.” [In his hurtling-headlong style of speaking, Cavanaugh tends to gloss over prepositions, skip personal pronouns, and dispose of articles altogether.]

For anyone who does know anything about music, the swinging Page Cavanaugh Trio bore about as much resemblance to the once-popular and stolid “Suns” as Basie did to Lombardo.

“And so Bullets walked in and says to MCA’s Johnny Dugan, ‘We’re leaving. I'm taking Page out of here. Get out the [bleep] release papers.’ We were up on the sixth floor in New York. And MCA started giving us a hard time and so Bullets walked over to the window, raised it up and said, ‘Alright you [bleep] you either give me that paper, or I'll write on another piece of paper that you were the guy that caused my death. I’ll jump out the [bleep] window.‘ This was ‘51. I know because I was at the Blue Angel in New York.”

Durgom‘s wish was forthrightly granted. “And then, do you know what Bullets did? This is just marvelous,” Cavanaugh recalls with extraordinary sense memory more than a half-century later. “‘May I use your phone?,’ he asked Dugan. ‘Sure.’ Bullets dialed the operator. 'Do me a favor, get me GAC on the phone. [beat] Bill! Bullets. I got the release on Page at the office over here at MCA. I got the paper in my pocket. I’ll be over in five minutes. Go ahead and sign him for the Jo Stafford radio show.’ Right in front of everybody. That'd be Bullets,” he laughs.

Page has got a million great show biz stories like this one, stretching all the way back to the mid-1930s. Retrospectively, he liberally peppers them with enough colorful language to put even the late, great and notoriously salty movie star Carole Lombard to shame. It’s an anecdotal style that is especially surprising emanating from the lips of this rather angelic looking octogenarian. (Think world’s oldest debauched choir boy.)

During the mid-1940s to mid-'50s, Cavanaugh might have been more of a household name than he is these days. But he is still well-remembered for having supported Doris Day in her first motion picture, Romance on the High Seas. At the time, he was such a “name” that Day probably didn’t sleep for a week when she learned she would be sharing screen space with him. When I make this offhand observation to the usually modest and self-effacing Cavanaugh, he can’t quite bring himself to deny it. In ‘48 Cavanaugh and trio were a pretty big deal. He got into the film through the intercession of---once again---Durgom.

“Bullets had been working on [getting the Cavanaugh Trio into] Romance on the High Seas for a year. Director Mike Curtiz was such a hard ass with all those Errol Flynn movies, and after a few days of shooting, and pre-recording with us, Doris was marvelous. Just does what she’s supposed to, and then walks away. She finally goes up to Curtiz: ‘Mister Curtiz, I think I should ask you a question. I’ve been on this movie for three days. You haven’t told me anything to do. Would you mind giving me some instruction?’ ‘Why should I? You’re perfect.’ Curtiz was a toughie. This has been quoted in several books.”

Cavanaugh describes Day as “a sweetheart,” a description he reserves for man, woman, child, or animal who passes muster with him. More than a half-century later, he and Day remain good friends.

Other films in which the Page Cavanaugh appeared around the same time include the Margaret O’Brien weepie The Big City and (1948) and, the same year, Howard Hawks’Ball of Fire remake, A Song is Born. In 1951 the trio was back with Day in Lullaby of Broadway. Best passed over in silence is ‘58’s Frankenstein's Daughter (aka She Monster of the Night) in which Page intro’d the also best-left-forgotten “Daddy Bird” and “Special Date.”

Circa 1945-‘55 the trio was almost everywhere else you looked; on radio, records (RCA Victor mostly), and in the nation’s top night spots, both as a starring act, and also offering backup to several “name” singers on the air and in-person. Including Johnny Desmond, Helen O’Connell, Kay Starr, Connie Haines, Mel Torme, and. . . Frank Sinatra.

If what you’re looking for from Cavanaugh is the usual garden variety FS horror tales, you’d best search elsewhere.

“I can’t say anything but good [about Frank Sinatra]. Here’s how it came about we met. I was working at [the Sunset Strip’s] Bocage with Mel Torme, and Billie and Cliff, a black duo. Heywood and Allen. They stopped the whole show. They worked without a microphone. Cliff played ragtime piano.” It’s mid-afternoon but Cavanaugh is still clad in his bathrobe. He leaps up, bounds across the room to demonstrate thirty seconds worth of Heywood singing the duo‘s signature, “I‘m the Prettiest Piece in Greece.”

“Everything in g flat on the black keys. You could have heard a pin drop. Unfortunately, that was their last gig as a duo. Shortly after that, a cab jumped the curb in Burbank and killed him.

“I met Sinatra at that engagement,“ continues Cavanaugh, back on autobiographical track. “Bullets had not told me a damn thing about it. We finished our set and he said, ‘Come over here, I want you to meet somebody.’ There are four people sitting there and Bullets says, ‘Hey Page, I want you to meet Frank Sinatra.’ Eeeeek,’ I thought to myself.” Quickly gaining his composure: “My pleasure, Mister Sinatra, a pleasure to meet you.” “That’s a bitch of a trio,“ Sinatra said. And that was that. Or so thought Cavanaugh.

“Two days later Bullets called. ’Sinatra wants you to go to the Waldorf-Astoria with him. I thought oh my god what am I going to do now. But I'm a fast reader, pretty good player. I’m going to have to do this. The whole book was there. We spent one full week at Columbia Records, and there was no problem at all.” Page points: There’s the picture on the wall [of Sinatra and the trio appearing at the Waldorf in ‘46].”

“He put the trio right in the middle of the floor, and the band was way back there. We did his radio show several times. That’s when the flap happened. Singing “Put Your Dreams Away,” and it got way out of hand. Fans started screaming things. ‘Where you sleeping tonight? Who you sleeping with, Frankie?’ I thought Oh, oh the party’s on now! As soon as the show ended Frank said, ‘There’ll be no more audiences in New York for the next three weeks. That’s it!’“Well, Old Gold Cigarettes [the sponsor] got really stinky about it. By god they fought with him: ‘You can’t do this.’ ‘I can do any damned thing I want,’ he shoots back. We were over at Columbia Records rehearsing. Old Gold said, ’Your contract stipulates you must have an audience.’ ‘Well you can tell Old Gold to stick it.’ He threw them out. ‘Find something in the street to do.’ And Old Gold dropped him. He had no time for idiots. Page pauses a beat and then offers: “He understood the lyrics, and that’s how he handled the songs.” Sinatra. . .case closed.

Pianist-whisper vocalist (he loves that appellation) Cavanaugh and his trio have a new CD, Return to Elegance. It's one of the finest of his sixty-some-odd years recording career. On it, his playing does not sound remotely like that of an 85-year-old. More like a 24-year-old. Which is roughly how old he was when he first met his longtime friend, the late Nat King Cole. Another “sweetheart” in Cavanaugh’s book. “I came to the West Coast in 1942. I had family out here on my dad’s side. My great aunt’s daughter was a total music nut. They took me up to the Radio Room on Vine Street. The King Cole Trio. They were already famous in Los Angeles. He was packing the place every night. The first night I didn’t meet him. I’d never heard a piano player play like that. I was already pretty good, but I had eighteen miles to go to get anywhere near Nat King Cole. That was the beginning of a friendship that lasted up until he died.”

Though Cole's early trio “sound” is that to which Cavanaugh's is most often compared, he tells me, “I did my best to avoid Nat's sound.” He then winks at me and chuckles, “But I was never too hesitant to steal something that he played.”

Cavanaugh arrived in Los Angeles fresh out of the army where he met the two other musicians with whom he would link up to form his popular post-service trio. But by then he’d already lived enough music to last most players a lifetime.

“Tell me about your family background,” I ask Cavanaugh. I'm wanting him to get all Roots-y on me. But all he offers is:

“We're farmers from Kansas,” he says proudly. “Mom was born and raised in Ridgefield, Missouri. Her name was Page. Mary Ann Page. Because of the coal mining industry they moved down to southeast Kansas. Somewhere along there at a dance she met my dad and they got married. It took them nearly twenty years to get me here.”

“BUT,“ I ask him, “Where were their parents from? He thinks for a few seconds, but can’t come up with a solid answer. I decide to help him out:

“Also from this country?”

“Sure!” (Why not?)

Already too busy back in Kansas thinking about music to give such mundane ancestral considerations much thought, for what it’s worth, the surname Kavanagh or Cavanaugh and the other variants of the name are derived from the Irish Gaelic name Caomhánach, which means 'a student or follower of St. Caomhan' and was first used by Domhnall, eldest son of the 12th century King of Leinster Diarmait mac Murchada. (I just now Googled that.)

“My dad was a bitch of a piano player,” Page says. “He played ragtime. That's what he did. Scott Joplin. ‘Maple Leaf Rag.'"

“From sheet music?,” I ask.

“I have no idea. My grandpa Cavanaugh played some fiddle. And my Grandpa Page also played some fiddle. Hoedowns all that stuff. But my dad was a professional farmer---not a professional musician. My mom played piano. She played a few wrong chords, but it didn’t bother her a lot. She played hymns mostly. Dad could read to a degree, mom a bit less so. I started learning by ear listening to them I began taking lessons when I was nine years old at my grade school teacher’s urging. I was a one room school house person. I was always fooling around at the piano and my teacher said, ‘I’m going to speak to your parents.’‘I think you better get him a teacher, get him started,’ she told my folks. I panicked with the first teacher, but then I got new one who I absolutely adored. What she taught me lasted me my whole life. She was about twenty-some years old. Newly married to one of our teachers back there. I took a beginner's lesson. Played something with one hand. ‘Robin in a Cherry Tree.’ She said, ‘I’m not to teach you any more. For one thing, you’re playing everything by ear. You’re not doing one thing I’m teaching you. So consequently I don’t want to teach you anymore until you learn to read music. So you go home and tell your mother I said that.’ I did, and my mom said, ‘You’re gonna learn.’ I skipped two weeks, then went back and the teacher said, ‘Have you started reading yet?’ and I said, ‘I’m trying.’ So she went to the back of the book and said, ‘Read this,’ and I did and she said, ‘Okay. . .I think you’ve learned your first big lesson. Pay attention to the teacher. Here we go.’ She was the sweetest thing.”

In a twist on the old show biz Jazz Singer cliché, Cavanaugh recalls with uncanny clarity the events of the day that set him on his path to becoming a professional musician:

“The only time they [Cavanaugh’s parents] gave me advice. We had a standing rule on the farm. In the summertime I did all the farm work, dad was trading off work with other farmers. In the wintertime dad did all the farm work. Corn, soybean, wheat, oats, four horses, a whole flocks of cows, a bunch of calves. Self-sustaining. I’m sitting there in the dead of winter. Colder than shit in Kansas. Fire was going in the stove out from the wall. Dad was sitting there reading the morning paper. And I’m practicing ‘Sonnets of Petrarch’ by Franz Liszt A tough son of a bitch. Figure out the cadenzas so you don’t sound like a raving idiot. Mom is over there either crocheting, or picking out meats out of pecans or walnuts. That’s what she’s doing. And she very quietly says:

'Page.’

Went right on with what I was doing.

‘Page’ A bit louder.

‘What?!‘ I’m annoyed ‘I’m trying to figure out this stupid cadenza.

What do you want?

‘Have I done something wrong?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What’s the problem, then?’

‘Well, your daddy and I have been talking about you a couple of days ago and we decided that you are just one heck of a musician. And so we decided between the two of us you oughta be a musician. Just don’t be a farmer. It’s too much work. Go out and be a great musician.’

Isn’t that nice. You can’t beat that. Then dad added,

‘Remember now, you gotta hitch up the horses tomorrow.’”

By age twelve Page had already begun to play for local dances in the area around Cherokee, Kansas where he born in 1922.

“I left home when I was eighteen. Had a scholarship to college. But wasn’t learning anything, so dad said quit, and I quit (laughs). How about that!”

His first real professional job was at age sixteen with a local band, led by one Ernie Williamson. I tell Cavanaugh, “I have a lot of big band reference books, but I can’t. . . ..”

“You can’t find him,” he laughs. “Williamson was an old pit band drummer. A very good organizer,” he informs. “And we had the only territory band back then. Played stock orchestrations.. Four or five saxes, a couple of trumpets, sometimes three---almost never a trombone---and drums.

Nest stop WWII and Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and a musical service outfit, the Three Sergeants, consisting of Cavanaugh, bassist Lloyd Pratt and guitarist Al Viola. “They were drafted a year earlier than me,“ Page informs. “I spent three years in the army. They spent four.”

Beginning in the mid-1940s, Cavanaugh (and Pratt and Viola), along with the likes of Nat King Cole, Bobby Troup, Matt Dennis and Joe Mooney, et al, played a major role in putting a whole new spin on the jazzier side of American Popular Music. Almost overnight, it had a lighter, breezier sound. Eventually, Cole became the most famous of the lot.

“Lloyd left the trio first, then Al in 1949. He wanted to get into studio work. Called on a Friday, then Monday he phoned again. ‘I had a phone call last night. Frank [Sinatra] called me.’ ‘What did Frank have to say?’ ‘He wants me to be the guitarist with his band.’ I said, ‘Get your ass in gear and charge him.’” Occasionally over the years, Viola joined back up with Cavanaugh for a reunion of the trio.

As the decades have worn on, some of Cavanaugh’s fame might have dimmed a bit, there is no question that at age 84---"Godamned, that's old," he said to me--- Cavanaugh is absolutely at the peak of all his powers. Not just pianistically and vocally, but also as a wonderful diseur who, between---and sometimes even during---numbers, imparts a steady steam-of-consciousness supply of tales of his more than sixty years in the entertainment field. Recently, at a performance at the North Hollywood jazz spot, Charlie O’s, he stopped playing for a beat after executing a rare hokey run on the piano keys, and catching himself up short, faced the audience and quipped: "A little cathouse piano never hurt anyone," then he turned around and got back to work.”

A singing and playing encyclopedia of 20th Century American Popular Song. The same night I saw him at Charlie-O’s he rendered old favorites such as "Nina Never Knew" and "Lulu's Back in Town." The latter was performed at the behest of an audience member who called it out as a request. "Goodness," Cavanaugh shouted back in response, "I haven't performed that since World War One." He then, of course, launched into a beautiful vocal rendition of the Torme standby.

Over the last half-century, Page Cavanaugh---especially in the Los Angeles area---has had all the work he can handle, appearing with his various (mostly) small group configurations in some of more swellegant locales in town. And, on occasion---well, a guy's gotta eat---some that are not so toney. If I had any say-so in the matter, for services above and beyond the call of duty to American music, he should receive the Kennedy Center honors. (There's a movement afoot to secure Page Cavanaugh a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.) Instead, he's just. . .booked. Right now he commutes back and forth with his trio, which includes his longtime bass player Phil Mallory, and alternating drummers Dave Tull and Jason Lingle (also both excellent singers), between vaious one-shot gigs in L.A. and Orange County's Balboa Bay Club. Mallory and Lingle back him on the new Return to Elegance.

This true toiling lily of the music field has been plying his trade for more than six decades. But he tends to frame his vast expanse of a career in terms far less lofty:

“We got some recognition. We always had good press especially in New York because we always made sure to have good press agents. One of them got me a quote from Walter Winchell: ‘The greatest thing to hit town since kissing.’ And boy, that made it all over the United States. He pauses a beat, then adds, “You know, the coming of rock and roll never affected me that much. I continued to play the little clubs, sometimes the big clubs. The trio could play ourselves east, play ourselves home.” In the final analysis, that probably is all that really mattered to Cavanaugh. And he did it all without resorting to the regulation Tip Jar, a “tool” of the lounge trade. Plus, he won’t play Andrew Lloyd Webber no matter how much you might offer him to do so. In other words, he’s one classy guy.

For more about Page, go to his web site:

http://www.pagecavanaugh.com

Back to people vs drchilledair

Leonard Reed, Chapter two, part two

2007-04-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

The Oklahoma social worker's reaction was typical of a time when racial integration on the American stage was still a touchy issue. Minstrel shows sometimes featured both races, but always in segregated scenes, and the great African-American comic Bert Williams had begun appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies starting in 1911. Some Broadway musicals and revues featured fully integrated casts, notably The Southerners in 1904, but in provincial America the color line between blacks and whites behind the footlights was still strictly observed. In 1920, with the exception of Williams, the stars of vaudeville and the Broadway stage---Eva Tanguay, Irene Franklin, Bert Leslie, Ed Wynn, Leon Errol---were all white.

Given Reed's fair complexion and wavy hair, the Oklahoma do-gooder's assumption and shock are understandable. The mere fact that eight-year-old Reed was on stage at all was bad enough; this was the period when association with show business brought with it the kind of second-class citizenship normally reserved for blacks. Signs in boarding houses across the country still proclaimed "No Actors or Animals Allowed." Nearly every major citycontained representatives of the Geary Society, an organization formed to protect minors from the evils of working on stage. Posted notices warning blacks to remain segregated were common, especially throughout Southern and midwestern white America; whites crossing over into black territory was equally taboo. . . especially when it came to young white boys cutting up on stage with a bunch of ragtag Negro entertainers. However, public notices directed against racial interaction never meant much to Reed as a boy; he just considered himself to be somewhat above it all.

On his mother's side, a great great grandmother and great grandfather were Choctaw and Negro. Reed's grandmother on his mother's side was Indian and his grandfather was half-black and half-Creek, thus making his mother a four-way mix of black, Creek, Choctaw and Cherokee. Choctaws had been slave owners, and his paternal great great grandparents were descended from unions between slaves and their masters.

The Oklahoma of Reed's boyhood was still wide-open wild-west territory. For him, entertainment meant doing things like hoisting himself up into trees and knocking possums off their branches. Recalls Reed:

"Possum and sweet potatoes, that's what we usually had on Thanksgiving and the other holidays. It's something you did in the dead of night as a two-person operation. The possum hangs on the limb sleeping, and one of you creeps out and shoves him off while your partner stands below with a gunny sack and catches him."

Lightning Creek, where Reed was born, was adjacent to the village of Hayden, but neither site exists any longer on the Oklahoma map. Both were near Nowata, now a populous area fifty miles north of Tulsa. Lightning Creek, Hayden and all the other little dots on the map had come into being because of a trading post that was established a short while after the Cherokees sold land in the area to Delaware Indians of Kansas in the mid-19th century. Soon the town of Noweta, as its name was originally spelled, grew up around the post. When the railroad was built through the area in 1895, two company surveyors are said to have named it Noweta at the suggestion of a Cherokee woman who said that the word meant "We welcome you to come." Later the spelling was changed to Nowata because of a post office error.

Reed retains the memory of his mother at her funeral when he was two, but he never met his father, a white peddler who sold blankets and whiskey to the Indians. Major Reed had not been married to Leonard's mother Sarah Landrum when the boy was born, which might have been overlooked by the Indian community, since sexual relations between Native Americans and blacks, Chinese and whites were a fairly common occurrence at the time. The real problem was that Major Reed was unable to wed Leonard's mother because he was already married to Sarah's sister, Helen. When both women became pregnant by Major Reed, he was run off by tribal elders and forbidden to return to the territory. Helen went with him and the couple settled in California. And had it not been for the existence of the black press, Reed would probably never have met any of the half-brothers and sisters she subsequently had by Major Reed. Daily newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier, were read regularly, not just locally, but nationally by hundreds of thousands of black Americans. Reed's social and professional activities in the 1930's were charted by these and other periodicals on an almost daily basis, and it was through reading these stories in the black press that siblings of whose existence he'd only been vaguely aware up until then were able to get in touch with Reed for the first time.

In 1992, Reed's half-sister Hermie Reed (now Crowder) is cheerfully philosophical about Reed's writing about what some might consider to be their somewhat shocking family background:

"We're just about the only ones left, I guess, so it doesn't matter now who knows about all of it. Besides, these kind of mixed up situations were, unfortunately, fairly common with blacks back then. Everything Leonard says about my father also being his father is true. One thing I don't believe I ever told Leonard is the fact that one time when I was a little girl living in California in the early 1920's, a friend a mine came back from a basketball tournament in Kansas and said he'd seen a fellow---I'm sure it must have been Leonard--- who looked just like me and did I have any brothers living inKansas City? I told him 'no,' but then later on . I asked my mother about it. She just waved me away, but then when I was in my teens she told me all the truth about my father having children by her sister as well. Till the day he died, my older brother Harvey denied Leonard was related to us. But Harvey was very strange, kept to himself, and was thought of as an odd duck by just about everyone who knew him."

Children of mixed parentage such as Reed and his kin tended to be only partially accepted by Indians, who were generally unwilling to identify with Negroes, and such offspring found themselves shunned by whites as well. Many sections of the country even had their own epithets for such racial outcasts. In South Carolina they were called Brass Ankles; in New York and New Jersey, Jackson Whites; in Tennessee, Melungeons; and in Louisiana, Red Bones. But Reed's early years were so migratory and multicultural that he had little sense of racial identity or even the concept of race. Those taking care of him were also of a variety of races, and for a while Reed was entirely unaware of the concept of race and merely surmised that everyone in the world simply possessed their own unique skin tone.

After his mother's death, Reed lived in Hayden with his Indian grandmother for two years. She became too old to take care of him, however,and he was soon launched on a ten-year odyssey of being passed from one household to the next. At first, the households were in the general vicinity of the reservation. There were the Montgomerys, distant relatives of his grandfather who were black. After that came the Statlers, white and unrelated. Both families lived in Nowata. In addition, there were probably several other care givers whom Reed has since forgotten.

Passed from family to family, Reed finally began to be aware of racial differences. Whites who took care of him treated him as white, but he overheard racist remarks about himself and others and grew confused---especially after he would then be shunted off to live with blacks and saw first hand how badly they were treated by whites. This was especially true when Reed went to live with mixed-race husband and wife, Bob and Ella Taylor, who would become his foster parents for nearly five years.

Reed was subject to continual beatings inflicted by Bob Taylor, which caused him to run away from home almost every time the opportunity presented itself. The Taylors moved around the Midwest on a fairly regular basis, seldom remaining in one place for any length of time, and the nomadic lifestyle only served to boost the frequency of these attempts to escape from his sadistic foster parent.

The lore of passing runs deep in black culture. In his autobiography, Black and White Baby, singer Bobby Short writes of a friend light enough to pass:

"He was what colored folks called a 'Mey-rye-nee.'The word is Negro slang, and I'm spelling it phonetically because I've never seen it written down, but old-timers explain it as a derivation of 'Merino,' a breed of sheep with thick curly coats. Another long-gone expression that my brother Bill used to use was: 'Three-quarters Kelt with molly-gloss hair,' which meant a colored person with fair skin and light hair. . .'Kelt' was Negro slang for a white person, and the 'Molly' in molly-gloss has some sort of Scotch-Irish connotation."

Throughout his life Reed would have to struggle with the ''problem'' ofbeing a very light skinned black. But even as a six-year-old, he was discovering that this seeming conundrum also had an advantage. He would go to the white section of nearby Hayden where Bob Taylor or any other black man would not be able to pursue him. When he reached the forbidden zone, he would then "meet a little white boy and play with him. He'd ask where I lived. And I'd tell him my mother and father were dead."

By the time Reed got to the fanciful part about how he came from Coffeeville, Kansas with "a guy in a wagon," he had his new friend eating out of his hand. . ."Well, c'mon and stay with us. I'll tell my mother and father. "Blacks didn't dare go over into white sections to try and find Reed. It sometimes took Bob Taylor weeks and weeks to catch up with him. When it finally happened, it was usually because of Reed's carelessness. On several occasions his downfall proved to be going down to watch the trains come in on Sunday. It's something that everybody did. Whites on one side of the tracks, blacks on the other. More than once Reed forgot and stood on the black side, and that's how they caught him.

Now, it was 1937, thirty years later, and his existence was as complicated as ever by his racial lineage. Even though he didn't look black, had the Pontiac, Michigan hospital authorities been aware of certain factors regarding Reed's lineage, all merciful considerations would surely have been swept aside and Reed would have been shipped off to the area "colored" hospital faster than you could say Hippocrates. A disruption which would certainly have meant his death; and another addition to the list of perhaps thousands of African-Americans killed---murdered---by such practices.

NEXT SUNDAY, APRIL 8, CHAPTER THREE

Leonard Reed, Chapter Two: In Passing, continued

2007-03-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

continued from here

Baker told me later that ordinarily he wouldn't even been have come in that night, but was in the neighborhood and decided to drop in to check up on one of his patients. Seeing me lying there on the gurney as he passed through the emergency room, he said that, unlike the others on duty, his attitude was that he had nothing to lose by trying to save me; I guess he thought of it as a challenge. When he x-rayed me, he discovered that among the more serious internal injuries were a crushed pelvis and a ruptured bladder. The first operation lasted more than six hours.

A few days after I came to, Baker visited my hospital room and let me have the good news. . .and the bad news. I was going to live, but I'd probably never walk again, much less dance professionally. "You'll be alright in a wheelchair," he said. "You'll even get used to it.". But, just like in the movies, I swore to him, "I'll walk again Doc. You'll see."

One of the ways I passed the time in the hospital was dealing with Joe Louis' practical jokes---like the one above about my privates. A few days after coming out of the coma, the phone at my hospital bedside began ringing off the hook with calls from almost every available girl in Detroit calling up to check out the truth of what Joe had just told them. . .that I'd lost "IT" in a car wreck.

After about the tenth call I gave up. Yes, I admitted; it was all true. They had to amputate my penis.

One example of just how far Joe would go to get a laugh requires a little background. Since, until fairly recently, there were hardly any hotels below the Mason-Dixon line that catered to other than whites, when black performers toured the South, they were forced to make do with whatever lodgings they could muster up.This was the situation in 1953 when Joe and I were touring our standup comedy act as part of a package called The Big Rhythm and Blues Show. Ninety cities in nearly as many nights! Joe was the headliner, but the others on the bill were fairly big stars in their own right: Ruth Brown; Buddy Johnson and Ella Johnson and a sixteen piece band; comic Dusty Fletcher; singers Wynonie Harris, the Clovers, the Edwards Sisters; and for jazz spice, Lester Young.

Naturally, the housing problem proved especially great for a travelling unit as large as "The Big Show" with its two busloads of nearly fifty blacks. Or, I should say it was a problem to everyone in our troupe but me! Since I looked too white to stay in most places that catered to blacks anyhow, I usually stayed in white establishments. Most rooming houses in the South were willing to allow a white manager travelling with an all-black show to stay with his cast, but still things could get messy. Many more times than I care to recall, during the first two decades of my show business career I'd been routed by the local constabulary in the middle of the night and thrown out of my lodgings, bag and baggage. On one occasion I was even arrested. The charge? Being a white man cohabiting with coloreds!

And so with "The Big Show," the bus would pull into a town, I'd get off at a white hotel, and the rest of the cast and crew would head off to the black side of town to scuffle. Not everyone in the company accepted my excuse that I was checking into the white hotels to avoid trouble with the law; and others were annoyed by the fact that many of the places I stayed just happened to be located conveniently near the nice whites-only golf course in town. A few just thought I was being "uppity". But mostly there were no strong, hard feelings and things went smoothly. Except, once in Houston.

I got off the bus at the swank Shamrock Hotel, waved goodbye to the others, and after checking in at the desk I went to my room and was just getting comfortable when there was a knock at the door. I got up, opened it, and it was the manager of the hotel.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't stay here," he said in this very starchy voice.

"Why, what's the problem? I paid in advance and everything," I said."

We'll refund your money. I think you'll be happier elsewhere."

I began to catch his "draft"; back then when blacks sensed white prejudice they called it feeling a "draft," and this was a positive hurricane. Knowing that there was no use in bothering to protest, I told him I'd go, and I packed up to leave.

When I reached the lobby, the reason for his attitude was obvious. Actually, three reasons. There stood one of our show's star attractions Ruth Brown, and pulling up the rear were two of the most pathetic little, wide-eyed waifs you ever laid eyes on playing the part of her children. She strode angrily across the lobby, and when she reached me, shook her finger in my face, grabbed me, and as she dragged me toward the hotel entrance, shouted back over her shoulder at the two little "picks": "Come along, children, we've found your daddy."

Needless to say, Joe had put her up to it. I got into some horrible jams due to my light complexion, but some of them were pretty amusing, too. At least, thinking back on them now. One of the funniest involved my vaudeville partner Willie Bryant, who was as light as I am (you can still see Willie on TV all the time, hosting those old Showtime at the Apollo movie shorts that I produced in the 1950's).

Willie Bryant and I first met in 1929 when we were both touring with a black troupe known as the Whitman Sisters. He and I did separate routines in the show, but we also had a couple of numbers together. We liked working together so much that about a year later we decided to put together an act of songs, dance and comedy and go out on our own. Right off the bat, I made a major decision.

"Willie there's no work in the black area for us, and they don't like us anyway because we're half white. So," I insisted, "let's get all-white jobs and go white."

And we did; and for more than two of the three years that we appeared as Reed and Bryant, when we were on the road we never saw another black, or hung around with any. We ate in white restaurants, rode in the white sections of trains and buses and, even more forbidden, had affairs with white women. We made big, big money. But the tradeoff was that we were setting ourselves up for arrest on an almost daily basis. Miraculously, though, only once during that time did anyone come close to blowing the whistle on us.

We had this little black guy valeting for us. His name was Frankie and he could out-dance both of us, but we never gave him the chance. Since Willie and I were working white, we'd bring him out on stage and introduce him us as our dancing discovery, and we'd let him do a few steps, but not enough so as to outshine us.

Willie tended to curse a lot and had a great, gruff sense of humor. Backstage, he'd say to Frankie, 'All right, yo' little black sonofabitch, get my shoes.' We were playing these New York theaters, and Frankie needed this job, so he put up with it. Besides, he knew Willie was kidding, didn't he? Frankie'd say, 'Yes, suh! Mister Bryant, I'se coming.' He seemed like he enjoyed going along with the routine.

Then. . .we played Birmingham, Alabama; Frankie's home town, the fact of which Willie and I weren't aware. We got to the theater the morning after we arrived, and Willie said, 'Hey, you little black sonofabitch, bring my shoes.' And Frankie said, 'I want to tell you something, Mister Bryant, and that is that this is last time I'm calling you Mister Bryant. I'm at home, now, and I'm going to tell all the white folks that you're both colored.'

Willie panicked.

"Now, wait a minute, son, let's get together here."

"No," Frankie said, 'I want a better working situation." "I don't want you to call me black any more"--- because back then it was an insult to call anybody black. "I don't want you to call me a nigger anymore, either. And I want a raise."

I guess he hadn't enjoyed playing along with the routine after all: We had created a Frankenstein's monster."

And I don't want you to say that you found me." We used to say, "Here's a little feller we found in the alley dancing." He said, "I want you to tell them I'm a new find that you're presenting."

Just about all he didn't ask for was top billing.

And so the next show Willie went out and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, a new find. . .", and Frankie was standing in the wings shouting at Willie,"Atta boy.Atta boy."

You never saw such a turnabout in your life. From then on when Frankie said "Jump," Willie jumped. . .at least, until we got back up North.

Another time, this was in the late 1940s, I almost blew the whistle on myself. I was at a football game in Dallas and became real friendly with an attractive woman seated next to me. At some point during the game I turned to her and said:

"Gee, I don't see one colored person here".

"No and there never will be as long as this stadium stands," she said.

I decided to teach her a lesson. I came on to her, took her back to my hotel room, and when we'd finished having sex, said to her:

"You don't like niggers, do you?"

"No!"

"Well, you just got through fuckin' one."

She went completely off her nut, started screaming, and picked up the phone to call the police right there in the middle of red neck country. It was probably the most dangerous thing I'd ever done in my life. Fortunately, I managed to convince her I was joking.

Five years later, I ran into her in, of all places, Times Square. She was with a black guy. I took her aside and whispered:

"You sure you don't like niggers?"

"He's just a friend."

"Well at least you got a friend that you didn't have back in Dallas. And by the way, is the stadium still standing?

"The first time I became aware that my life was destined to be complicated by my black ancestry was around 1920. I was thirteen or fourteen and working in a carnival in Enid, Oklahoma. All the black comedians were on stage, and the black girls were up there, too, singing and dancing. And just then, this white woman---one of those people in every town who came around to see if theshow was 'moral'---snatched me right off the stage. She thought I was white! She said, 'Get down from there with them niggers! Don't ever let me catch you up there again with 'em, 'cause I'll spank you till you can't sit down.' So I went and put on enough cork to pass for black. And that's how I got back on stage.

continued next Sunday, April 1

Leonard Reed, Chapter One, continued

2007-03-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

continued from here

Today, it might be a little difficult for people to understand that in 1937--- even before he became the champ---Joe Louis was already world famous, even more than most movie stars or politicians. And here I was, thirty years old, having just gotten into a business association with this great athlete. Now, the whole setup might go down the drain: The events leading up to my lying flat on my back in a Michigan hospital now were crystal clear.

Five days earlier, the restaurant that Joe and I had just set up in Detroit, the Chicken Shack, was running smooth as silk, so as a reward to myself I had gone to a performance of the show Shuffle Along in Detroit. In the chorus there was this real beauty, and since I could never resist a gorgeous show girl, almost before the curtain went down I was backstage coming on to her. She couldn't go out with me that night, but I wasn't about to give up that easy.

"If I drive to Flint will you go out with me?," I asked. Flint was about sixty miles from Detroit and was where Shuffle Along was headed next.

"Sure, “ she said.

Maybe she thought I'd forget all about it, but a few nights later, I borrowed Joe's car, asked a guy I knew by the name of Big Hat to come along as company; and off I went to Flint hoping to get laid.

I saw Shuffle Along again, and when it was over, I was backstage in a flash. The girl, though, was acting kind of funny. She hemmed and hawed, and then let me have it: "I can't do nothin'," she said. "My old man's here. I didn't know he was coming down. . ." And so on and so forth. .. love's old sweet song.

I was pissed. Here I'd driven all the to Flint, sat again through a show I hadn't particularly liked in the first place. . .and now this routine. I didn't even try and snag another date, but with Big Hat at the wheel of the car, I just climbed in the back to get some sleep, and off we started back to Detroit.

I don't know how long I was out, but the next thing I knew, I was jolted awake by the skreech of brakes and honking of horns. Looking over the back seat, I was blinded by lights heading straight at us. I reached around, hit Big Hat under the chin, and at the last second managed to grab the wheel and steer us out of the path of an oncoming truck. Right into a telephone pole! Upside down we went, with Big Hat thrown free, but me remaining in the back seat to go down with the ship. Even though I could feel that I was broken nearly in two, all I could think as I lost consciousness was my promise to Joe never to let anyone ever drive his car but me.

"God damn that Big Hat," I swore to myself, and then I went out like a light.

The headline splashed across the front page of the January 23, 1937 Chicago Defender told it all:

"LEN REED HURT IN AUTO OF LOUIS' KIN; FIGHTS FOR LIFE
"Actor-Emcee Tossed From Car At Flint.
Auto Is Demolished As It Hits Post Coming Out Sharp Curve"

It said that my pelvic bones had been crushed and that my bladder punctured. A suspected "possible fracture of the skull," though, turned out to be a false alarm.

But where the Defender, the black Chicago daily, had been pretty much low key about what had happened, the headlines and story in the Pittsburgh Courier were right out of today's super market tabloids.
"Leonard Reed, Nationally-Known Producer, Is Seriously Injured In Automobile Accident" its headline read, followed by a screwed-up account which suggested that a white woman had been in the car with me, thus causing "a shroud of mystery" to hover over the crash. And just below the main headline was another nearly as large: "Leonard Reed Known In Theatrical World As 'Great Lover."

This one was accompanied by yet a another story ticking off a number of women with whom I'd been linked romantically; along with a photo of me in a tuxedo next to a photo of "Alma Smith, former Grand Terrace beauty." The caption read: "Great Lover And One Of His Friends." The Courier also got it wrong about me being at the wheel when the accident happened, but that wasn't the paper's fault. I told one of the cops that, because I didn't want it to get back to Joe that I'd let someone else drive his car.

I first met Joe Louis in '36 in Detroit. It was Easter Sunday, right after he'd fought and won one of his first major bouts, the one where he ko'd Charlie Retzlaff in the first round. He had come into the Plantation Club to see one of the Cotton Club-style shows I had been staging there for the past year or so.

Detroit's Plantation, like New York's Cotton Club, was a whites only club, with strictly colored entertainers, but on Sunday afternoons they had what was called a "blue hour" when blacks were allowed to come to see the show. By then, Joe was such a big deal, especially in Detroit, that he could probably have come into the Plantation any time of the day or night he wanted to, but he happened to choose "blue hour."

I often appeared in my shows; and when I did, clothes horse that I was, I changed suits after every number in which I appeared. Then, after the finale, I'd come out in a bathrobe, say 'That's all folks,' go backstage, change one last time into something real sharp and come out to mingle with the crowd. I still remember what I was wearing after the show the day Joe came in: a white linen suit with a purple shirt and tie, and tan-and-white shoes! The first words Joe Louis ever spoke to me weren't about the show, but about my clothes. What was the material? Who made them? I told him I'd be happy to introduce him to my tailor in Cleveland some time: But Joe couldn't wait.

Come sun-up, the next morning, a chauffeur-driven car with Joe and his girlfriend on board, picked me up and a dancer from my chorus line, Mary Stevens. So off we went on the 240-mile drive to Cleveland.

The store, Lyon Clothing, was over on Euclid Avenue, and when my tailor saw me walk in with Joe Louis, he got so excited and made such a fuss that, within a few minutes, the entire neighborhood had begun to crowd around the place. Joe walked up and down the aisles saying to the tailor, "Gimme two of those, some of these, and lotsa those." By now, all of Euclid Avenue was blocked by crowds of people as the four of us walked out of the store into the mob wearing wraparound camel-hair coats-the rage that season-that Joe had bought for us.

The next time I saw Joe was few weeks later, under much different circumstances. I was flat on my back with the flu---for some reason the newspapers had reported this as "a nervous breakdown"---when I heard a knock at the door of my hotel room which was over top the Plantation Club, and in he walks. He looked down at me for a second, then asked,

"What you doing in bed?"

"I caught cold going up and down these damn stairs. One of these days
I'm going to get out of this goddamn show business and do something else." I was just babbling.

"And if you got out, what would you do then?"

"I don't know." I thought a moment, then I said the first thing that came to my mind: "Open up a restaurant. Maybe a Chicken Shack, I suppose. There's none in Detroit."

"Well, if you opened up a chicken shack, you'd have to have a lot of money."

"Yeah," I said.

"How much?"

"I'd need about $5,000 to open up." I really didn't know: I was only guessing.

"Well, if it takes $5,000 to open it, it'd take another $5,000 to run it,
wouldn't it?"

"Yeah."

"That ought to be a good business. I'll be back."

Three hours later he returned with $10,000 in large bills, put it on my bed, and said, "Let's open the Chicken Shack. Use this for your expenses and after I get my money back, we split everything 50/50."

Who ever heard of a deal like that? No papers. No contract. No nothing.

"I'll talk to you later," he said, and walked out.

Here I was, not even knowing where I was going to open this place, and already I had $10,000. I would soon discover, that was typical Joe behavior; and, some years later, he even came to playing fast and loose with my money.

I locked my door and hid the money under my mattress, and thought about the whole idea hard for the next 24 hours. I knew Joe knew what he was doing, because even though he didn't have an education, he wasn't dumb like some people think. He had good sense.

The next day, I began looking for a place to open up our business, and finally found one over on East Verna Highway, at number 424. An old house for sale costing $6,000. I put $2,000 down, moved in, and then started hiring help to fix it up.

In early December, the headline over my "Nightlife in Detroit" column in the Chicago Defender announced: "Len Reed Forsakes Show Biz For Chicken Shack Adventure in Detroit." Further down, it talked about my New Years resolution "to never appear before the public as an actor throughout the entire year of 1937 for pay."

But 1936 had not turned to '37 yet, and I was still not only producing and appearing in my shows at the Plantation. I was also continuing to write my newspaper column and pulling together the Chicken Shack. I don't think I've ever worked harder in my life. By night I was still barking out orders to a stageful of dancers and singers; now, by day, I had turned into some kind of crazy interior decorator from outer space.

"Upstairs," I told my builders, "I want it to look just like a barnyard. I want booths. I want sawdust on the floor. That pipe that's running up there---I want it to be a tree. I want real tree bark on it."

In the front, I had them put an old dray carriage with a table right in the middle and throw in two more chairs so it would seat four people. My plans grew wilder and wilder.

I got an old wagon wheel and had lanterns hanging down from it. Then I put a big circular bar against the back wall in one of the bedrooms. Between the living room and the house's original dining room I knocked out a wall, but for safety's sake I had to leave the huge doorway. Between the kitchen and an adjoining bedroom I knocked out yet another wall, doubling the size of the original kitchen. I put a baby grand piano in. It was real plush. The finishing touch was three little Ford coupes I bought. I put heaters in their trunk so that takeout orders stayed warm till they arrived---our motto was "We Deliver It Hot"---and I put little electric signs on the back that said "Leonard Reed's Chicken Shack. "

Coming from the wilds of Oklahoma where I grew up, I knew all the names of chickens: Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, the Dominecker, and over the next four weeks I learned how to buy and cook them. I found out how much flour it took to make biscuits, how much each pat of butter cost. My instructor, a guy by the name of Ernie, was a friend of Joe's from Chicago. Ernie was a restauranteur, another dumb-uneducated-but-smart guy who had made a mint like Joe. He was the sort who'd say he was taking the "twah", instead of T.W.A. Ernie not only taught me cooking, he also showed me how cashiers could steal from you, and things like how the butcher and the seller could work together to con you.

All the while, my private life remained as wild as ever. The Pittsburgh Courier had me "slated to wed a Detroit girl. Guess who?" But I wasn't even divorced from my first wife, and the so-called engagement was nothing more than a big romance that was going on between myself and this "mystery girl," who happened to be the daughter of a General Motors executive.

Around this time, my still-legal wife, Anna Jones, swooped into town from Chicago. She'd been carrying on a big affair with the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, but a local column made it seem like things were all sweetness and light between us:

"Mrs. Leonard Reed (Anna Jones) is another charming and beautiful lady who seems to have met Santa Claus on the way here. She has 'upset' Detroit with her stunning Parisian creations and that continental speech of hers, with those broad 'a's, is too ducky for words."

She'd come to town because she smelled money coming from my association with Joe, but when she found out that none of it was coming her way, she left as fast as she'd come. Things were civil between us when she was there, but that was about all, and just as soon as I could, I planned to get back to Chicago to file for divorce. She'd messed up several important deals in my life already, and I wasn't about to let her screw things up between Joe and me.

We were set to open the Chicken Shack a couple of days before Christmas, but I was doing double duty putting together my final show at the Plantation, "Santa Claus Comes To Town," so the opening was pushed forward to Xmas Eve and finally to New Year's Eve, a deadline we were, at last, able to meet.

During all this time, Joe's connection with the Chicken Shack wasn't made public, because it wouldn't have seemed right to have the Champ's name associated with something like a chicken restaurant. But most people "in the know" in Detroit were aware he was a silent partner, and a lot of the pre-opening publicity featured his name.

Opening night of "the Shack" was just like the first night of a Broadway show or a movie premiere. Search lights lit up the sky, and there was even a real Broadway star on hand---Tallulah Bankhead. She brought along the cast from a show of hers playing in Detroit, and we played piano and sang all night. Being from the South, Tallulah loved chicken and biscuits, and for the next few nights, while her show was in town, she stopped by after every performance. Of course, Joe was at the opening, too; and so was just about everybody else---black or white---who was anybody in Detroit. The "Shack" was a SMASH. As big as any I'd ever had in show business. Then, just as fast as it had come, it seemed as if it might be all over because of the car wreck.

Spokesmen for the hospital told reporters that I had no little or no chance of surviving, and as a result, one newspaper jumped the gun and ran my obituary.

###

More than a half-century later, Leonard Reed is happy to set the record straight about premature reports of his passing. You don't have to try too hard to get him to supply you with details about his past. But as for the actual year he was born, it's anybody's guess. "Your guess is as good as mine," he says, "it was somewhere between 1906 to 1909 on January, 7th." He doesn't know for sure, because birth records for blacks and Indians weren't generally kept back then."I usually stick with 1907," he laughs, "because that seems old enough for anybody."

Reed was born on an Indian reservation in Lightning Creek, Oklahoma in either Oklahoma, or what was once Oklahoma territory. . .depending on the year of his birth. And if 1907 is correct, then Reed came into the world before Oklahoma was even granted statehood, and right after Native Americans were finally granted U.S. citizenship in 1906. He was born at nearly the turn of the century in a teepee:

"Most people find that hard to believe, but I don't just make these things up. "

The frame house that Reed's mother lived in with her mother and grandmother was a half-mile from a Cherokee reservation. A few weeks before she was due to give birth found her visiting her great grandmother (a full Choctaw who had married a part-black, part Cherokee) when she went into early labor. The upshot: Reed was delivered by a tribal midwife, while all around the fur and animal skin teepee, Indians announced his birth circling the dwelling, he was later told, in a frenzy of ceremonial dancing."You can tell just by looking at me that my dad was white," says Reed. Although he possesses a photo of his father, he never met the man, and has only a single memory of his mother shortly after her death, when he was two:

"They put nickels on her eyes to close them, and I remember her face from trying, like any child would, to reach down into the coffin and grab at the bright shiny coins." The stuff that dreams---not to mention nightmares---are made of, much later Reed recalled that the ghoulish incident had been on his mind when he finally came to in Detroit.

Next Sunday, March 25: Chapter Two: In Passing

Beverly Kenney continued

2007-01-08T19:48:00.000-08:00

. . .continued from here:

My hometown (Charleston, West Virginia) jazz dee-jay Hugh McPherson (Ella's "Rehearsin' w/ McPherson" was written in his honor) was the one to tell me about Kenney's death, not long after it happened. Hugh knew just about everything that was going down in the jazz world, and said she had killed herself over a love affair gone bad. But those I interviewed, several of whom who were close to Kenney, never gave me any real reason to believe that this was the cause. And, in fact, all these years after her demise, no one seems to have a serious clue as to what might have prompted Beverly to do herself in.

Long since forgotten in the U.S. (not so much so elsewhere in the world) you can imagine my surprise in the late 1980s when I found a misspelled reference to her ("Kenny") in a collection of writings by the Beat essayist, Seymour Krim. It was the first time I'd seen her name in print in all those years. He cited her in passing as a friend who had committed suicide.

Apres Krim, however, there came a relative deluge, in the form of a somewhat lengthy article about the singer in, of all places, the Nov '92 GQ. It seems that the author, New York disc jockey, scenemaker, and son of famed songwriter, Arthur Schwartz, Jonathan Schwartz, had long since relegated the singer to what he describes as his "A shelf" of recordings, alongside "Sinatra, the early Miles Davis, Beethoven string quartets, anything for the cello, the Verve Billie Holiday, [and] the original cast recording of Carousel." To say that Schwartz' affection for Kenney placed him in the vast minority is an even vaster understatement. In the U.S., that is. Beyond forgotten in her native land, Kenney is still a name known to most Japanese devotees of jazz singing. There were six lp's three on Roost, three on Decca that have remained in print all these years in Japan AND are reissued almost every time a new digital or packaging wrinkle becomes available. But then, with Sam "The Man" Taylor, Nancy Wilson, the Carpenters, Salena Jones, Billy Vaughn, Percy Faith, the Ventures, Brenda Lee being but a few of the Stateside singers and musicians who have had even longer and more successful careers in Japan than in the U.S., what would you expect from a nation that, while loving American culture and music, adheres to own---some might say---peculiar ideas about what constitutes the Best of the West.

While there are still no web sites dedicated to Kenney on the English language internet, more than four decades after her death, dozens abound in Japanese. A friend has translated a few for me, and while I could never find out the reason why, nearly all available Japanese biographical material on Kenney mention nothing about suicide but incorrectly state that she died in a hotel fire.

No cut-and-paster when it came to his search for Kenney, Jonathan Schwartz truly did his homework, including revelation of the name of the dismissive lover who might have caused the singer to take the pipe, a dazzling, legendary fifties Greenwich Village professional intellectual, Milton Klonsky. A kind of Beat Generation guru with a huge intellect and an ego to match, Klonsky apparently inspired her to write poetry, an example of which was included in Schwartz' article:

On Cesarean Birth
I curled by body smallin hidingto escape the view
of those who sought to start the flow
of waters long since overdue.And watched in horror
Cautious silverpart the roof of my Capri,
And heard the cry of anguished protest, The first of many wrought from me.

Schwartz' article also zeroed in on the circumstances surrounding Kenney's suicide:

"Beverly kept a room at the University Residence Club, on West 11th Street [in NYC]. In that room, one spring night in 1960, more than a year after Milton Klonsky, she wrote letters to both of her parents. . .The letters were conclusional, regretful, irrevocable. . . Then, wearing a pink nightgown, she took a sufficient combination of alcohol and Seconal to killer her. She was 28." Case closed. I wanted to know more; following up on some of the clues in Schwartz' article, I set out to try and find out more about Kenney.

Here is some of what I uncovered from a quartet of individuals whose paths crossed Kenney's during the brief period of her rapid musical ascendancy and who were kind enough to answer some of my questions about her. The one thing that three out of the four agree upon is that Beverly Kenney was one of the saddest human beings they ever met.

Ralph Patt (musician):
"I worked with her on one trip out into the Midwest with the Larry Sonn Band about 1956? Larry was a trumpet player who had worked in Mexico and was trying to get a big band started. That band was very good, with some good studio players making a relatively short trip. Beverly was on the band but only had a few arrangements. We faked tunes for her with the rhythm section. I recall very vividly her fear of driving (riding in cars). At one point, she talked about leaving the band in Ohio and taking the train home.

I worked a few times with her afterwards at a club on 48th St. called Matty's Towncrest.

I remember what a great singer she was but she seemed pretty unhappy and not too stable, so I wasn't surprised at her untimely death. A great loss! Sorry I can't be of more help."

Audrey Morris (jazz singer-pianist):
"I'm not much help on Beverly Kenney as she was very inside. I don't mean aloof - she was lovely and nice to talk to. She was the first out of town act to open the second Mr. Kelly's [in Chicago]. I had returned as resident piano/vocalist. It was customary for the visiting singers to hang out with the locals a lot, go to hear all the others, etc. and I often asked Beverly if she wanted to join in, but she never did. However, we often talked to each other during intermissions. I suspected severe melancholy, maybe mistook it for homesickness as she spoke frequently of Nicky De Frances, her very dear friend. I believe he was working at a piano bar in New York. Maybe Jilly's?.

It wasn't long after she left that word came that both she and Nicky had committed suicide. One goes thru the usual guilt trip, wondering if there had been something one could have done. I hope you can find someone who really knew her. I don't know whether she had family or anyone else close - it's one of those unfinished chapters in my life that brings sadness. I liked her singing and I liked her."

Jazz singer Beverly Kelly (make that---bold, itals, underlined---Kelly) has expended more than a little energy since the time of Kenney's death more than forty years ago putting to rest highly exaggerated rumors of her own demise. Since they came up in the jazz world at the same time, it's not surprising that Kelly knew Kenney. She can, in fact, still recall being on stage one night at a Chicago club and looking down to espy Kenney in the audience. Kelly tossed off a remark into the mic about how one of them would sooner or later have to undergo a name change, but Kenney only stared back at her seemingly without comprehension. Overall Kelly's recollections of Kenney echo almost word for those of Audrey Morris and Ralph Patt: “sad,” “unhappy,” “depressed.” Looking back, like Morris, she wishes she could have done something to help Kenney. Perhaps not just idle Monday morning quarterbacking, for eventually Kelly went on to become Doctor Beverly Kelly, a practicing therapist.

Oddly enough, the memories of Kenney’s best friend in the few years prior to her suicide, Rashomon-fashion, have little in common with Kelly, Morris and Patt. Instead the recollections of actress Millie Perkins and the singer in the mid-1950s come off sounding like nothing so much as slightly updated version of My Sister Eileen, that classic tale of young womanhood larking about New York's Greenwich Village.

In 1959 Perkins won what was called "the most coveted screen role since Scarlet O'Hara," that of Anne Frank---without even seeking it. She was chosen from among 10,000 aspirants. She had never acted before in her life when she was plucked from junior model obscurity by director George Stevens. With the possible exception of Jean Seberg in Preminger's St. Joan, no other young novice actress has ever had to carry such a heavy weight. Perkins' initial outing was, fortunately for her, more successful than Seberg's. I interviewed her in the Fall of 2003 at a coffee shop in Hollywood, California.

"I was very young, very new to the world and had just started modeling in New York City. I had moved there with my sister. I lived in Greenwich Village, in those days it was very artsty and everybody knew everybody. All the poets and writers. You know, whoever was interesting was in the Village. I met Beverly in Washington Square Park. She was dating a poet named Milton Klonsky. Klonsky died, I don't know when he died [1981 in NYC of lung cancer]. Beverly took me under her wing. I really liked it. I loved going to hear her sing. She never talked about her family. I never felt she was close to them."

"We became friends because of [New York Times literary critic] Anatole Broyard and Milton Klonsky. Anatole dated every woman in Greenwich Village. Beverly picked me out as a friend. She wasn't gay. . .was she gay? We would go to the movies together, we ate together. The first time I had the flu. I had a terrible fever, a terrible cold. Beverly came over, she made hot tea, lemon in it, a giant swig of scotch. She said, "Drink this, you'll feel better tomorrow." I drank it and felt totally better the next. From now on in that's what I do when I get the flu."

"Anatole [Broyard] was one of my big romances, or affairs I should say. I wasn't in love with Anatole, but I was a young girl and when I met him in Washington Park. We all went there every Sunday. He had a big crush on my sister Lulu, who was the beauty in the family. Everybody wanted her, and my sister didn't want to go out with Anatole, and Anatole saw me. . .. I went out with him for a long time until I did the "Diary." Then I met a lot of women who went out with him who had terrible stories to tell about him but I never had a terrible story to tell about Anatole. He was a good influence on my life. [beat] He stills owes me money, but he's dead now."
"Milton was an odd duck. After he broke up with Beverly---I don't even know if he broke up with Beverly or she broke up with him, but I gather he broke up with her because she seemed pretty depressed. But the thing is, Milton asked me out, and he was just not my kind of person. . . odd."

"I didn't know a whole lot about Beverly's personal life. But we had a real connection. Beverly took a liking to me, I took one to Beverly. There was this semi-sophisticated person. . .I say "sophisticated" in experiences. Beverly was, because she was singing in clubs. She was singing in a club in Philadelphia and I would get on a train and go down to the club and sit there and hear her sing. It was all very new and exciting to me. I was from New Jersey and was just starting out in life [Kenney was also from New Jersey]."

She was wonderful. . .Beverly. When I grew up in high school, I went out with a jazz saxophone player and so I was a little bit hip to music. And Barry used to take me to New York before I even moved there to see everything going on. . .Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Herbie Mann you name it I would go. So I was of music, a little bit. When I met Beverly, it was so thrilling to me to meet a real human being. . .it was wonderful to me because I was new, just beginning in the world, learning what it was all about. I was having experiences, but I was very unsophisticated, okay? Had never even heard of drugs. So when I met Beverly, she was the warmest. sweetest---to me---giving person that I had met. That is aside from some people I knew before I had gotten into the world. So to meet someone who sang that was into that kind of music was very exciting to me, because I didn't know a lot of people that understood. In high school they played Teresa Brewer not that she was bad but she wasn't my cup of tea and I remember when I met my boyfriend Barry and he said, 'What are you listening to that garbage for? You wanna hear real music'?' So I was educated."

I asked Perkins if she was surprised by Kenney's suicide.

"I was. The thing was I was moving around in life. I had moved to New York, quickly became a model. One of the top junior type models. For a year-and-a-half I was on the cover of all those magazines: Seventeen, Glamour, Vogue, all those things. That's when I knew Beverly, in that period. First I worked in an advertising agency, then I became a model, and then George Stevens was looking for someone to star in "The Diary of Anne Frank" and they saw my picture and eventually they said yes to me, and I moved to California to shoot the movie, okay. When I moved to California we had each others' phone numbers, we were both doing our lives. I didn't know that Beverly was depressed. They say she committed suicide, correct? I didn't know that that was happening with Beverly. We talked a couple of times on the phone. She sounded fine. I was beginning to earn a living and get out there. Maybe she needed money. She never asked me for money. Did she need money?"

"Beverly was very pensive, moody, but she was wonderful. She was one of the important people in my beginning years. I know that when she died I was shocked, and I went into difficult times about it because all of a sudden I felt guilty. Oh , my god, my friend Beverly. Maybe I should have called, but I was shooting a movie, having a strange little experience of my own. No one was looking after me, either. It was sad and hard for me. I know that my sister called me and said, Do you know who I talked to recently? Beverly Kenney's sister. Somehow my sister met up with her. I didn't even know she had a sister. My sister said, I talked to Beverly Kenney's sister. She was kind of rude. She said, "Well, everyone abandoned Beverly when she needed them, including your sister. And she loved Millie. I felt guilty for a while. It was terrible, but it made me think, Well, what the hell was she going through that I didn't know about. She never shared it."

"I remember I met a few of her friends. . .once when we were locked out of her apartment and had to break in, and there was some woman along with us. But those people were odd people to me. But Beverly was my kind of people. She had a heart, a real heart."

"I don't know if she took drugs or not? I know she liked to have a drink from time to time."

"I never saw Beverly as driven, but I saw that all she was a singer, and she seemed to have a lot of people with good taste in the music business being supportive of her. I know she didn't have a lot of money. She had a lot of oddballs around her. People who weren't in the music business at all. I knew that she wrote poetry, I read some of it, but I don't remember. . .. Beverly was a singer but she did not have the personae of a career person, someone after a career."

"Musicians really loved Beverly because they thought she had a future, and was really good. They thought she was going places. She probably was her own worst enemy. Why did she commit suicide???? There was a real melancholy about Beverly. She smiled a lot but didn’t laugh. She wasn’t jolly, sober. I felt her melancholy came out in her music. She didn’t seem to care about Milton Klonsky that much. When they broke up, I felt sad for her, but.... Then Milton called me up and asked me out. I couldn’t believe it."

"Someone in New York told Jonathan Schwartz to call me. Said that we were lesbians together. It's not true."

"Can I print that?," I asked Perkins.

"I don't care. It's not true. This sounds very naive but I don't even think I knew what a lesbian was. I had been married to Dean Stockwell, I had been to France, I was modeling before they asked me to test. Before they asked me to do the Diary I was a model for a year-and-a-half right after high school. Became a top model. I was on the cover of Seventeen , Vogue, Glamour. They sent me to England to model, to the West Indies, to Paris, they asked me to do the collections. That's when George Stevens saw my picture and wanted me to go California. I only lived in New York a year-and-a-half and that's where I net Beverly. It never dawned on me to be an actress. I was very naive and unsophisticated. If an eighteen year old girl today said she had never heard the world lesbian they would laugh at her. I had never heard of marijuana. When I went to California, the first time I heard about drugs is when I was going out with Dean Stockwell, I went to a party and everybody was smoking marijuana. They kept passing the cigarette around and I kept saying, well what IS that? Oh, it was just somebody brought me back a present from Morocco. It is called marijuana and I said, “What, what is that?” I was furious. “I said I will never go out with you again if you smoke any of that.” Well we got married, but the point is, I never heard of it. I was pretty naive. Anway, when Schwartz asked were Beverly and I lovers, I laughed and said no, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me because I never was a judgmental person. Maybe because of my background. My father was half Mongolian and half Hungarian. My mother was Irish and French and I remember when I. . .My mother used to read tea leaves at the Gypsy Tea Room on 42nd Street, on the second floor. My mother was wonderful, my father was a sea captain. We had six kids in my family. My father was a commodore of thirty ships during World War II. He was wonderful. He was the first person to set foot on Japanese soil after Hirohito's surrender. We saw him in the newsreels before McArthur got there. My mother and my father were wonderful people, kind of crazy. I remember I was going out with a photographer, he was black, and I told my mother I was going out with this black man who was a photographer. And she said, "Ohhhh, Millie, people in Africa have a lotttt of diamonds. I bet he has hordes of diamonds. He could be an African prince, you never know. " I was engaged to a Phillipino man whose father was an ambassador, and I told my mother and she said, "Millieeeee, Hirohito had five sons and one daughter. He could be one of those sons in disguise. Why don't you marry him?" So when my mother says that. . .. So when someone says lesbiannnnn, I didn't care."

"When I was tested for Anne Frank, I was flown to California and I never saw Beverly again after that."

But not exactly the last time. Throughout my conversation with Perkins, she struck me as a very commonsensical, non-new agey sort, with a strong tendency toward stressing the seen over the unseen. However, for several weeks after Kenney's death she recalls sensing the palpable presence of her friend's spirit. Finally, when she could take it no more, she screamed, "Beverly, go away! I can't help you!" And that was the last the actress ever "saw" of her.

At two points in my conversation with Perkins, she abruptly stopped and sang long portions---note-for-note---of two of Kenney's songs: first, "I Never Has Seen Snow" and then "This Little Town is Paris." Don't get me wrong. . .but if you closed your eyes, it was Beverly Kenney.

Irene Kral Songography - work in progress

2006-12-29T17:47:00.000-08:00

The Tattle-Tales:45: "Far Away''l "Boolya Botten Booten Baby Huh!" Columbia 4-40349 (1954) 45:
"No! Not A Single Regret" / "I'll Never Smile Again" Columbia 4-40393 (1954) 45:
"Who Put The 'Ungh' In Mambo" / "Vieni Qui" Columbia 4-40326 (1954)

ADAMS JERRI (FEATURING THE TATTLE TALES) - GUESS I HAD TO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT/SNOW DREAMS Columbia 404015 (Tattle-Tales with Kral?)

ALL ALONE see Remember
AND EVEN THEN
"SteveIreneo!" - United Artists 3052/6052 1959
ANGEL EYES (Dennis - Brent)
Live in Tokyo
BABY DON'T QUIT NOW (Mercer -Rowles)
Live 4:36 9/11/77
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
BENJAMIN (Thomas)
Lady of Lavender 2:43 (also one side of a 45 rpm)
BEST TIME OF THE DAY, THE (Allen - )
"SteveIreneo!" - United Artists 3052/6052 1959
BETTER THAN ANYTHING (Lougborough -Wheat)
Ava LP 2:10
BLUE GARDENIA (Lee - Russell)
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
CHILD IS BORN, A (Jones - Wilder)
You Are There 1977
COMES LOVE (Brown - Stept - Tobias)
Band and I 1959
COOL BLUE (Hefti - Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" - United Artists 3052/6052 1959
CORCOVADO (Jobim - Lees)
Live in Tokyo
DETOUR AHEAD (Carter - Ellis - Frigo)
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
Band and I 1959
"Sessions Live" -Various Artists -Calliope 3022 "Buddy Collette Quintet With Irene Kral- Studio West 104
DON'T LOOK BACK (Mandel -Dunham)
Where is Love 3:04 12/74
EMILY (Mandel - Mercer)
You Are There 4:04 1977
EVERYBODY KNEW BUT ME (Berlin)
Band and I 1959
EVERYTIME WE SAY GOODBYE (Porter)
Kral Space
Live in Tokyo
boot # 2 same as Tokyo?
EXPERIMENT (Porter)
Just for Now 2:03 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Kral Space
FORGETFUL (Handy - Segal)
Sessions TV show early 1960s (see youtube for clip)
FORGETTABLE
A Night on the Coast (1 track)
(could this possibly be the song "Forgetful" (George Handy - Jack Segal) instead?
G & G Japanese CM (:30 secs.)
rec. 1977, Tokyo
GENTLE RAIN (Bonfa - Dubey))
Live 5:58 9/11/77
Gentle Rain 5:28
GOIN' TO CALIFORNIA (Wheat -Loughborough)
Wonderful Life 3:29 1965
GUESS I'LL HANG MY TEARS OUT TO DRY (Cahn - Styne)
Ava LP 3:36
Live in Tokyo
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
HERE I GO AGAIN (Coleman -Wolf)
Wonderful Life 2:57 1965
HERE'S THAT RAINY DAY (Burke -Van Heusen)
Live 3:39 9/11/77
Just for Now 4: 15 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 3:50
HOLD YOUR HEAD HIGH (DeShannon -Newman)
Wonderful Life 1:56 1965
HOUSEBOAT (Duning - Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052 1959
I HADN'T ANYONE TILL YOU (Noble)
Boy with Lots of Brass 1957
I FALL IN LOVE TOO EASILY (Cahn -Styne)
Just for Now 6:44 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
I GUESS I'LL HANG MY TEARS OUT TO DRY
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
I LET A SONG GO OUT OF MY HEART
Band and I 1959
I LIKE IT HERE (AND THIS IS WHERE I'LL STAY) (Wilder -McGlohon)
You Are There 2:23 1977
I LIKE YOU, YOURE NICE (Dearie)
Live 3:10 9/11/77
Just for Now 3:03 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Where is Love 3:07 12/74
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 3:11
I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE (Mercer -McHugh)
Band and I 1959
IF LOVE WERE ALL (Coward)
You Are There 3:16 1977
IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW
Gentle Rain 5:34
I'LL FOLLOW MY SECRET HEART/SOMEDAY I'LL FIND YOU/ I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN
You Are There 4:42 1977
I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN
see I'll Follow My Secret Heart see Remember
IMAGINATION
Boy with Lots of Brass 1957
I'M GONNA SING A NEW SONG (Dorough -Landesman)
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZ Broadcast from San Francisco
IMPOSSIBLE (Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052
IS IT OVER BABY? (Fitting)
Wonderful Life 2:34 1965
IT ISN'T SO GOOD IT COULDN'T GET BETTER (Landesman - Wolf)
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
Kral Space
Band and I 1959
Live in Tokyo
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD (Adamson -Savitt -Watson) Ava LP 2:32
Just for Now 2:406/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
''Buddy Collette Quintet With Irene Kral- Studio West 104
IT'S ANYBODY'S SPRING (Van Heusen - Burke)
Lady of Lavender 2:20
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
I'VE NEVER BEEN ANYTHING (Wolf)
Wonderful Life 1:57 1965
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
JUST FOR NOW (Langdon -Previn)
Just for Now 4:25 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
JUST FRIENDS (Klenner - Lewis)
Ava LP 2:38
"Buddy Collette Quintet With Irene Kral- Studio West 104
LADY OF LAVENDER (Spheris)
Lady of Lavender 3:07
LAZY AFTERNOON (Latouche - Moross)
Band and I 1959
LET ME LOVE YOU (Howard)
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
LITTLE BITTY BOY (Hood)
Lady of Lavender 2:19
LOVE CAME ON STEALTHY FINGERS (Dorough)
You Are There 2:41 1977
Where is Love 3:07 12/74
LOVER COME BACK TO ME (Hammerstein - Romberg)
Terry Gibbs Dream Band
LUCKY TO BE ME (Bernstein - Comden - Green)
see Some Other Spring medley
MAD ABOUT THE BOY (Coward)
You Are There 3 :28 1977
MAD AT THE WORLD (Florence -Manley)
Wonderful Life 1:50 1965
MEANING OF THE BLUES, THE (Troup - Worth)
Ava LP 3:10
Just for Now 4:03 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
"Buddy Collette Quintet With Irene Kral- Studio West 104
MEMPHIS IN JUNE (Carmichael - Webster)
Band and I 1959
MISTY ROSES (Hardin)
Lady of Lavender 2:45
Live in Tokyo
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT (Blackburn - Suessdorf)
Boy with Lots of Brass
Terry Gibbs Dream Band
NEVER LET ME GO (Evans -Livingston)
Live 4:37
Where is Love 4:32 12/74
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
NICE WEATHER FOR DUCKS (Landesman -Wolf)
Just for Now 3:04 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Kral Space
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 2:52
NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES, THE (Brainin - Bernier)
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY, THE (Adair - Dennis)
Band and I 1959
NO MORE (Camarate - Russell)
Ava LP 3:10
NOBODY ELSE BUT ME (Kern - Hammerstein)
Ava LP 1:54
"Buddy Collette Quintet With Irene Kral- Studio West 104
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 2:01
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
NOTHING LIKE YOU (HAS EVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE) Dorough -Landesman)
Wonderful Life 2:21 1965
You Are There 2:07 1977
OH, YOU CRAZY MOON (Burke - Van Heusen)
Live in Tokyo
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
OLD GUITARON (Almeida - Mercer)
Guitar From Ipanema
ON A CLEAR DAY (Lerner - Lane)
Live in Tokyo
ON TOP OF MT. TIPSY (Dorough - Landesman)
Lady of Lavender 2:33
ONCE UPON A LONG AGO (O'Kun)
Kral Space
ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME (Mahanovich)
Lady of Lavender 5:04
PASSING BY (Hess -Lawrence -Misraki /- Trenet)
Ava LP 1:53
PIECES OF DREAMS (Legrand - Bergman - Bergman)
You Are There 3:10 1977
PLEASANT DREAMS (Randall - Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052 1959
POEMS TO EAT (Simon -Landesman)
Lady of Lavender 3:10
RAIN IN SPAIN, THE (Lerner - Loewe)
My Fair Lady (with Jack Sheldon)
REMEMBER/SOMEDAY I'LL FIND YOU/- I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN/- ALL ALONE
Gentle Rain
ROCK ME TO SLEEP (Carter -Vandervoort)
Ava LP 2:18
Just for Now 2:26 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 2:23
ROOM WITH A VIEW, A (Coward)
You Are There 2:09 1977
RUN DON'T WALK (Jones - Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052 1959
SECOND CHANCE (Andre Previn - Dory Previn)
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE, THE (Webster - Mandel)
You Are There 1977
SHINING SEA, THE (Mandel - Lee)
soundtrack album
SHOW ME (Lerner - Loewe)
My Fair Lady
SMALL DAY TOMORROW (Dorough -Landesman)
Live 4:02
You Are There 3:43 1977
Kral Space
SMALL WORLD (Styne - Sondheim)
see A Time for Love
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 6:40
SO MANY STARS
Irene Kral Sings bootleg 4/26/78 KJAZZ Broadcast from San Francisco
SOME OTHER TIME/LUCKY TO BE ME
Where is Love 6:41 12/74
Lady of Lavender 1:45
SOMEDAY I'LL FIND YOU
see I'll Follow My Secret Heart
see Remember
SOMETHING IN YOUR SMILE (Leslie Bricusse)
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR
Gentle Rain 4:25
SOMETHING TO REMEMBER YOU BY
Band and I 1959
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
SOMETIME AGO
Wonderful Life 3:12 1965
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
SOMETIMES I'M HAPPY
"Sessions Live" -Various Artists -Calliope 3022
Terry Gibbs Dream Band
SONG IS YOU, THE
Lady of Lavender 1:45
Kral Space
Boy with Lots of Brass 1957
Live in Tokyo
SPRING CAN REALLY HANG YOU UP THE MOST (Landesman -Wolf)
Where is Love 5:00 12/74
"Buddy Collette Quintet With Irene Kral- Studio West 104
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 4:48
SPRING IS WHERE YOU ARE
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052
STAR EYES
Kral Space
Live in Tokyo
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
STRAIGHT AHEAD (Ellis)
Lady of Lavender 2: 18 (also one side of a 45 rpm)
SUMMER ME, WINTER ME
You Are There 2:44 1977
SUNDAY (Miller -Cohn -Styne -Kreuger)
Live 3:05
Just for Now 2:27 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 2:21
THERE ARE DAYS (WHEN I DON'T THINK OF YOU AT ALL) (Wolf -Landesman)
Wonderful Life 3:04 1965
THERE HE GOES (Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052 1959
THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY (Batchelor -Wolf)
Wonderful Life 2:20 1965
THIS IS ALWAYS
Ava LP 3:24
THIS LIFE WE'VE LED (Algren -Landesman -Wolf)
Wonderful Life 3:55 1965
THIS LITTLE LOVE (Wolf -Landesman)
Band and I 1959
THIS MASQUERADE (Leon Russell)
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
TIME FOR LOVE, A (Mandel -Webster) / SMALL WORLD (Styne - Sondheim)
Where is Love 6:28 12/74
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) (medley) 6:40
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
TIME FOR LOVE, A (Mandel - Webster)
You Are There 1977
TOO LATE THE SPRING (Shulman - Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052 1959
TOUCH OF YOUR LIPS, THE
Ava LP 2:20
Live 2:30
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 2:36
UNDERDOG, THE (Cohn -Frishberg)
You Are There 3:30 1977
Gentle Rain 4:45
UNLIT ROOM (Dorough -Landesman)
Lady of Lavender 2:12
You Are There 1:50 1977
Dave Remington Big BandLP: Chicago Shouts! Universal 76835S (1968)
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
WATCH WHAT HAPPENS (Legrand - Gimbel)
You Are There 2:07 1977
Dave Remington Big BandLP: Chicago Shouts! Universal 76835S (1968)
WHAT ARE YOU DOING THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? (Legrand - Bergman - Bergman)
You Are There 4:41 1977
WHAT IS A WOMAN (Allen)
"SteveIreneo!" -United Artists 3052/6052 1959
WHAT'S NEW
Gentle Rain 5:04
WHAT'S RIGHT FOR YOU?
Band and I 1959
WHEELERS AND DEALERS (Frishberg)
Lady of Lavender 3:02
You Are There 2:57 1977
Just for Now 2:44 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Kral Space
WHEN I LOOK IN YOUR EYES (Bricusse)
Where is Love 3:35 12/74
Second Chance - rec. 1975, rel. 2010
WHERE IS LOVE (Bart)
Just for Now 4: 13 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Where is Love 2: 19 12/74
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) 4:07
WINDS OF HEAVEN (Dorough -Landesman)
You Are There 2:21 1977
WINTER MOON
Guitar From Ipanema
WITHOUT RHYME OR REASON (Dorough -Landesman)
Dave Remington Big Band: Chicago Shouts! Universal 76835S (1968) Features Irene Kral on 3 tracks
WONDERFUL LIFE (Perrin -Boxer)
Wonderful Life 1:42 1965
WOULDN'T IT BE LOVERLY (Lerner - Loewe)
My Fair Lady
YES (Allen)
'Steveireno!" -United Artists 3052/6052 1959
YOU ARE THE SUNSHINE OF MY LIFE (Wonder)
Live 2:58 9/11/77
Just for Now 3:26 6/13-14/75, San Diego, CA
Live in Tokyo
YOU ARE THERE (Frishberg - Mandel)
Live 4:30
You Are There 2:18
Gentle Rain 4:35
YOU WERE THERE (Coward)
You Are There 1:43 1977

Boy With Lots of Brass (Maynard Ferguson) EmArcy MG-36114 (1957)
Sessions Live Various Artists Calliope 3022
Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 6 One More Time Fantasy/Contemporary CCD-7658-2 (1959, rel. 2002)
The Band And I United Artists UAS 5016 (1959)
SteveIreneo! United Artists UAL 3052 (1959)
The Buddy Collette Quintet Studio West 104 (1962, rel. 1990)
A Night On The Coast Moon 008 (rec. 1962, rel. 1989)
Better Than Anything Ava AS 33 (1963)
My Fair Lady Swings Capitol ST 2173 (1964)
Guitar From Ipanema Capitol T 2197 (1964)
Wonderful Life Mainstream S 6058 (1965)
The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! United Artists UAS-5142 (1966)
Dave Remington Big Band: Chicago Shouts! Universal 76835S (1968)
Lady of Lavender Jazzwest JWS-2003 CD (rec. 1970s, rel. 1998)
Where Is Love? Choice CRS 1012 (1975)
Just For Now Jazzed Media JM 1003 (rec. 6/13-14/75, rel. 2004)
Kral Space Catalyst CAT 7625 (1977)
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo TDK TDCN-5143 (rec. 1977, rel. 1994)
Angel Eyes - Live In Tokyo (expanded ed.) Muzak MZCF 1186 (rec. 1977, rel. 2009)
Irene Kral Live Just Jazz JJCD 1002 (rec. 9/11/77. rel. 1995)c
You Are There Audiophile ACD-299 (rec. 1977, rel. 1999)
Gentle Rain Choice CRS 1020 (1978)
Irene Kral Sings with the Alan Broadbent Trio (aircheck 4/26/78)
Second Chance Jazzed Media JM1049 (rec. 1975, rel. 1979).

back to my main blog

Chris Connor's Birthday

2006-11-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

Today is the birthday of jazz singer Chris Connor. As a teenager in the 1950s, I was more inspired by Connor than any other artist (extra-categoricdally) that I was aware of at the time. Due to the fact that she was the first MODERN cutting edge art that I was ever exposed to. . . . .and liked A WHOLE LOT! Influenced my tastes in literature, art, dance, you name it. Encouraged me to expand horizons, investigations, etc. Now she is in the Pantheon of All-Time Great Jazz Singers. But this was always necessarily the case. It has taken years for the rest of the world to understand just how unique a performer she was. But I "got it" right off the bat while I was prrrrractically protoplasm in Buster Brown Shoes.

Happy birthday, Chris Connor!

In honor of the occasion, here's a post on this blog from early this year.

2006-09-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

pinky

2006-09-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

jazzman

Sam Phillips, cont'd

2006-07-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

“I really didn’t want to have anything to do with the record,” he told me, “because it might effect the performers. I was certainly invited, but the only thing I was around for was Matchbox Twenty. The did a cut of “Lonely Weekend” here in Memphis at the old studio at 706 Union. I was totally amazed at what they did.”

Most rockabilly and rhythm and blues aficionados know that address as the site the Sun Studios where, among the musical history that transpired there, Elvis Presley, under Phillips’ guidance, first recorded, and “Rocket 88,” most often singled out as the first true amalgam of bi-racial styles that resulted in the new “sound” of rock and roll was cut on March 5, 1951 at Sun. The rent that former dee-jay and mortuary attendant Phillips paid at “706” was $150 a month. He installed his recording and transcription equipment with the help of a two-year loan in January 1950. Then, operating on the premise that "We Record Anything-Anywhere-Anytime," he opened the doors of the Memphis Recording Service, soon to be known as Sun Records. It was here that such iconic now-blues figures as Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Junior Parker, and Ike Turner, and dozens of arguably lesser figures, also made their first or near-first recordings. Phillips and especially right hand man Turner uncovered talent by scouring the backwoods and fields of Tennessee searching, preferably, for black musicians who had never before seen the inside of a recording studio. Most of the masters that resulted were then leased to Chess Records in Chicago and RPM in Los Angeles.

Today, the “706” location is preserved nearly intact and serves not only as a major Memphis tourist attraction, but in its original function as well. Ringo Starr, Def Leppard, John Fogerty, Tom Petty, U2, The Spin Doctors, Def Leppard, The Tractors, Malcolm Yelvington, Michelle Shocked, Gatemouth Brown, The Indigo Girls, Keith Sykes, Dennis Quaid, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Swan, and The Gibson Brothers are only some of who have come to record at Sun Studio in more recent times.

Matchbox Twenty’s take on Charlie Rich‘s “Lonely Weekend,” on “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” cut at “706 Union” represents a complete rethinking and reharmonizing to which fans of the original might find troubling. However, the forward-looking Phillips found it to be “fairly outstanding. Other performers on the CD tend to go for period authenticity, especially Paul McCartney with a version of Elvis’ seminal 1953 “That’s All Right (Mama)“ that successfully replicates the original right down to the very last reverberating quiver of the slapback bass. It helps that the Beatle had as sidemen, two of Presley’s original sidemen, Scotty Moore on guitar, and D.J. Fontanna playing drums. If it’s a stunt it’s an interesting one. Not one in ten could spot McCartney’s voice. He doesn’t sound like Elvis OR himself.

Other players include: Bob Dylan; Jeff Beck; France’s 50s answer to Elvis, Johnny Halliday; Tom Petty; Sheryl Crow; Chryssie Hynde, Eric Clapton; Elton John; Robert Plant; Van Morrison; and Bryan Ferry. All are heard on the soundtrack CD of “Good Rockin‘ Tonight.“ It’s an interesting assemblage: What other record compilation comes to mind that contains not one but two (!) rockabilly performances by peers of the U.K. realm, i.e. Sirs McCartney and John? Like McCartney’s contribution, the latter’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” is a close approximation of the Sun Sound. In addition, the Japanese issue contains six additional tracks by Ben Folds Five, Mark Knopfler and others not heard on the U.S. release. Most of the recordings were cut especially for the project and are heard and/or seen in the film.

Typical of projects where latter day musicians revisit material from an earlier time, it is the rule-of-thumb for one or more of the tracks to have one foot perhaps a little too securely planted in the present if not indeed the future. Here, the performance likely to rile up the purists, even more so than “Lonely Weekend,” is “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” by The Howling Diablos featuring Kid Rock, which in its incarnation here might just as well be called “Rappin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee.” Nearly all other twenty-two tracks aim for at least a degree of period authenticity, especially Chris Isaac’s “It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You,” a virtual carbon copy of the song from Elvis’ Sun Sessions that only recently came to light of the first time on the compilation “Sunrise.”
After Presley, the ratio of blacks to whites recorded by Phillips shifted almost 180 degrees, causing him to become the target of some criticism of “selling out.“ But he has been quoted elsewhere as saying: “I would love to have kept recording black people, period. And I continued to record some, but not as many. My thinking was that if I could record white people that felt the emotions that were so akin to black people’s emotions---this could broaden the base for the acceptance of that type of that type of feel in music.”

And In fact, the history of U.S. music radio can almost be divided between pre-Elvis and post-Elvis. Before, from the worlds of pop and jazz, there was Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong and a few other blacks on the mainstream airwaves. That was the extent of it. But after the coming of Phillips and his musical Pygmalion, Presley, the floodgates were opened.

I asked Phillips if, in 1954, after the last chords of “That’s All Right (Mama)“ had stopped ringing in the studio, he sensed that he had witnessed music history in the making.

“Well, I knew I had something different. And sometimes something different is harder to sell in most cases than things that are kind of familiar to people’s ears. People then think that it “broke” everywhere overnight. But it was only a hit here in Memphis. I have not been more depressed than I was when I left Memphis on the first road trip to promote it after it was released. “One dee-jay said, ‘Sam I can’t play this. You oughta cut something like Tennessee Ernie Ford’s ‘Sixteen Tons.’ That was real big at the time. I said, ‘Man, I agree with you. But I’ve got this.’ Just about all I got was, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’”

One r ‘n’ b disc jockey in Shreveport played “That’s All Right (Mama)” under the duress of a five dollar “bribe”---the only time the by now desperate Sam Phillips has ever resorted to payola before or since---but all he received for his time and money was one airplay preceded by the announcement, “I just want to tell my listeners I got Sam Phillips in the studio with me here, and he thinks this is gonna be a hit record, and I’m telling him that this man is not going to be played after the sun comes up in the morning. It‘s so country.”

Phillips says he “prayed that I could stay in business long enough to make sure that people made the judgment on it. I got to Dallas and Alta Hayes, a really great record lady as well as a lovely person, looked at me and saw that I was just worn out on the road not getting a real good response from the distributors as to whether they were going to promote it or not. We went up and had a cup of coffee on the corner. And she ate---I’ll never forget this---a chocolate éclair and I had a cup of coffee. I couldn’t have gotten any food down and she said, ‘You look like hell from exhaustion, Sam.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know that.’ And she said, ‘You got a hit record, did you know that?’ I thought maybe she felt so sorry for me so she was trying to make me feel better. But sure enough it wasn’t very long after that before we began to see some real signs that we was going to have pretty good crop.”

Indeed! After Phillips launched Presley, he kept right on discovering other whites gifted with the ability to amalgamate various stylistic strands of white and black music. After Elvis caught fire in 1954, those who began beating a path to Sun and Phillips included Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Warren Smith, Charlie Feathers, Ray Smith and many others. This was in addition to the early 50s during which time he discovered and/or played a major role in the careers of so many black blues musicians. Most agree that would have been enough of a musical contribution for any one person.

At the time Phillips founded Memphis Recording Service (soon to be Sun) in 1950, as difficult as it is to comprehend, it was the lone recording studio in the now boom recording center of Memphis, Tennessee.

“I was just about the only thing in the south. There was Cosimo Matassa in New Orleans, a couple of others and that was it. I did everything I could to make this a record town. This is exactly what I wanted because I knew that the potential of untried, unproved artists was all over---both black and white----and there was room for us all to make a really some impressions, and as we got further into it I could tell that Memphis was going to not be forgotten in history and what it contributed to music around the world.”

In 1960 he had built a new studio, also in Memphis, at 639 Madison, formerly a muffler shop, and a bakery. He gutted the site and built two modern recording studios on the ground floor, placed offices and a tape vault on the second, and designated the top floor for accounting and publishing and, finally, an office of his very own, complete with jukebox and wet bar. It can be seen in all it’s space age glory---including Sputnik door handles in Morgan Neville’s 2000 documentary on Phillips.

Clearly Phillips had intended to carry on in the Sun tradition with Sam Phillips Recording Service, but for reasons mostly having to do with the increasingly corporate ways of the record industry, began leasing it to others and diversify his interests. He sold Sun Records in 1969. When was the last time he had worked hands-on as a producer in the studio? I asked.

“Let’s see. . .it was so long ago, it was one track that I did. . .they just wanted me to do it with John Prine [the Prine track, “Saigon,’ was cut in ’79] . . . Charlie Rich, a couple of things I did on him and then some things on Jerry Lee Lewis that haven’t been released. I haven’t done anything much to speak of since 1970.”

“This cat was a busy boy but, man, I tell you I’d do it all over again under the same circumstances not knowing any more than I did at the time as to what the final results were gonna be. It was a happy time. I had to promote my butt off to the best of my ability in addition to making the records and then shipping them and seeing that they got there on time and all that. I look back on it and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.

“The new studio is pretty and it’s great and has fabulous sound, but I can tell you right now, my favorite place in the world is Sun Studios. It’s almost sacred to me because together within those walls we did some very unusual things. We worked with people who didn’t have an opportunity just like myself, and somehow it all came together in that place and I’m a little partial to the old studio that I built with my hands. It’s not just a studio. It’s the feel of how well that place didn’t behave but would behave if you knew how to use it.” Clearly Sam Phillips understood how to coax out secrets from the walls of the former radiator repair shop at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee.

rap, cont'd

2006-04-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

NYT letter cont'd

I was appalled---but, alas, not entirely surprised. For in all the debate over constitutional issues surrounding the arrest of Luther Campbell, virtually all commentators, white and black, have glibly embraced Mr. Campbell's claim that his music is part of "black culture." Those who genuinely value black culture, and the welfare of black people in America, need to take a look at this claim.

What does it mean to say that 2 Live Crew's lyrics are "quintessentially black"? Does Mr. Wicker believe that his black male colleagues sit at their desks harboring secret desires to break into chants about slapping black "bitches" who won't gratify their sexual desires? Does he think that his black female colleagues are pleased at being presented, as they are in 2 Live Crew's lyrics, as subhuman creatures who exist solely to gratify the violent sexual fantasies of men? Are the black people who do not sanction the sentiments expressed in 2 Live Crew songs inauthentic, not genuinely black?

What Mr. Campbell is retailing---and what even good white liberals like Mr. Wicker are endorsing---is the vicious myth that black people are the embodiment of irresponsible and unrestrained sexuality. Mr. Campbell is making a fortune exploiting the very myth that has been used for four centuries to underwrite slavery, the lynching of black men and the sexual abuse of black women.

To treat this myth as an affirmation of black culture is horrific. Money---not black culture---is what 2 Live Crew is about. The group uses graphic depictions of sex and violence against women to sell records. If this activity embodies any culture at all, it is American culture in the broadest sense, and it is American culture at its worst.

But the self-proclaimed guardians of black consciousness---and the white lawyers making money from black performers---try to convince us that every song or stage act performed by a black person is a representation of some one monolithic thing called black culture. They can then play on black people's legitimate fears of white racism to protect a right that has nothing to do with race.

This is not only dismaying but also dangerous, because it indulges the crippling belief that even the most morally repugnant behavior by a black person must be embraced as part of black culture. This means that no black person can ever criticize any other black person's conduct without being called in Mr. Campbell's phrase, an "Uncle Tom." Such an attitude, sad to say, is as oppressive as the racism it purports to fight.

Mr. Campbell may have a constitutionally protected right to profit from his abusive songs. But let him and his apologists spare black people---particularly black woman---the further degradation of identifying our culture with his lyrics. A culture sustains and supports constructive and self-affirming visions of a people. The songs of 2 Live Crew fail to do this.

As a black woman, I urge black and white people of good will---those people who are genuinely concerned about black culture---to have the courage to speak out and challenge Mr. Campbell and Mr. Wicker in their claims that violence and irresponsible sex are "quintessentially black."

Michelle Moody-Adams
Rochester, June 15, 1990

The writer is (or at least was in 1990) a University of Rochester assistant professor of philosophy. back to main blog

Bessie and Demas cont'd

2006-04-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

"I had never heard Bessie Smith. I had only heard of her up until the time I recorded with her. I was so surprised when I finally heard her in the studio. She was so far above all the other blues singers I'd heard up until then---and that includes Lucille Hegamin whose band I was in one time and who probably was just as well known as Bessie in those days.

"You just couldn't stop listening to Bessie and looking at her when she sang. She was a large, attractive, brown-skinned woman, with very good legs. Later on I heard stories about how difficult she was, but I found her very relaxed, very sedate. As long as you were no problem to her, she was no problem to you. I was a little nervous about playing with her because she was expecting her favorite trumpet player, Joe Smith, and instead she was going to get me.

"When my friend the trombonist Charlie Green asked me to come down and record with Bessie, I said, 'Where's Joe?' He said he couldn't find him for this recording, so I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Ten days later, they still couldn't find Joe; he must have been on the road with Fletcher Henderson, so I recorded with Bessie a second time. There was no written music at all except for a lead sheet that her piano player Fred Longshaw had. We didn't have microphones; but horns we played into, like megaphones. These were what they called acoustical recordings. How it ever got into the booth I'll never know. These were very, very primitive recordings. . .so primitive that you couldn't even record drums because it threw everything out of whack.

"After meeting Bessie, we went right to work. She turned us over to her pianist, Fred Longshaw. The only thing that was interesting to him, as far as any rehearsal we might have done, was the introduction. We played an eight bar introduction, then Bessie sang. We'd never heard these numbers before, no music, but you're supposed to know the blues. If you didn't know the blues, you were like a lost ball in the tall grass.

"Every number she sang told a story. One was 'Pickpocket Blues.' When she sang it you knew right away what she was talking about---she was a pickpocket, her friends were trying to tell her to stop it. But she ended up in jail anyhow. . .'I'm in the jailhouse now.' It was a short story.

"I didn't bear those records that we made those two days until almost forty years later. I was in California when the record producer Chris Albertson called me and he asked if I had ever heard them and I said, 'no.' He sent me copies and I was pleasantly surprised. You couldn't listen to playbacks back in the days we first recorded them, because test pressings took a couple of days to get back. Musically, you were flying by the seat of your pants. But we only had to do one take on each of the songs to be satisfied."

Dean's discography would grow to include recordings with such other stars as Lena Horne and Sidney Bechet. AND in 1942 he hired Charlie Parker for the Noble Sissle band. If Demas were alive today---he died in 1990--- he would be 102; Bessie, ten years his senior. Whenever I was with Demas, I never failed to be moved by the fact he was fully aware and proud of the import and significance of everything he had done in the fields of theatre and music. Hear Bessie and Demas perform "Thinking Blues" - 1928 (mp3 links for a limited time only)

Back to main blog

Richard Berry cont'd

2006-04-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

From the L.A. Reader, 1981, by Bill Reed

Though it may seem inappropriate to memorialize an anthem devoted to anarchic eruption, this year [1981] nevertheless marks the silver anniversary of the composing and first recording of “Louie Louie,” an enduring source of inspiration to rock ‘n’ roll heavy metalists and young punk garage band upstarts everywhere. With its haunting (make that “mind-numbing”), proto stomp first few bars (duh-duh-duh, DUH-DUH), it is arguably the most recognizable of all rock songs. Without question, “Louie Louie” set the pace for such three-chord, scuzz-rock classics to follow as “Wooly Bully, “Hanky Panky,” “96 Tears,” “Surfin’ Bird,” and scores of other songs whose principal virtue was acting as a safe outlet for their young listeners to go harmlessly mad for 2:32 seconds. (I once knew a girl who locked herself in the bathroom and did a secret dance of wild abandon whenever “Louie Louie” came on the radio--- an action over which she claimed she had no control.)

More than forty versions [that was in 1981; as of the 21st century, that number is significantly higher] of the venerable rocker have been recorded in the United States alone; and aside from the song’s most famous version by the Kingsmen, other performers who’ve had a go at “Louie” over the years include Frank Zappa (aided and abetted by a full symphony orchestra and pipe organ), the Beach Boys and, most recently, Barry White, who last summer got a modest hit from his efforts. There is also an outstanding reggae effort by Toots and the Maytals.

“Louie Louie” was the last song ever recorded by Iggy Popp and the Stooges (available on the Metallic ‘KO lp); and it was one of the first releases by this year’s fastest-rising fringe rockers, Black Flag. Sometime in the near future a local label (Rhino) plans to release a collection entitled The Best of “Louie Louie,” sure to contain the classic interpretation by the Kingsmen, who had a No. 1 hit with the song in 1963---a recording that set off a national craze (more a teen rite of passage, actually) of trying to decipher the chart-topper’s supposedly dirty “leer-ics.” But long before that Oregon-based group mined gold from “Louie” x 2, its writer, Richard Berry, had a recorded success of his own with the song at almost the very dawning of the rock and roll era. It was therefore a genuine thrill for me when I got a chance to talk with the man who actually sat down and wrote this timeless Le Sacre du Printemps of punk.

“I wrote “Louie Louie” in a dressing room at the Harmony Club in Anaheim,” Berry told me. “They used to have country and western dances there most of the time, but on Sunday nights they leased the club to Mexican bands. Around the early part of 1956, I was working for this outfit, Ricky Rivera and the Rhythm Rockers, playing keyboards. They used to do all this Latin stuff, and they had this one number, ‘El Loco Cha-Cha-Cha,’ and it had that figure duh-duh-duh, DUH-DUH, over and over again. I kept hearing it backstage, and it used to just jam me up, and so I said, “I could write a song to this.” So I was sitting back in the dressing room waiting for them to bring me on, and I got the words “Louie Louie,” and the rest just kind of fell into place. Years later when people asked me about writing the song, I could’ve just lied and said, ‘Oh, yeah, I knew this guy named Louie,’ but there wasn’t anybody around named Louie. I just pulled it out of the air. I pictured the guy singing as being like the guy in the song, ‘One for My Baby’---you know, 'Set ‘em up, Joe.’ The bartender’s name was Louie, and the guy singing is about to go across the sea, and he’s telling his story to Louie.”

For all practical purposes, forty-six-year-old Berry is a Los Angeles native son. Although he was born in New Orleans, Berry and his parents relocated to Southern California when he was two. Berry’s father, who died in 1969, was a day laborer; his mother worked in a laundry. Although Berry is black, the first kind of music he responded to wasn’t rhythm and blues or jazz, but instead, as he informed me, “the old Country and Western guys like Bob Wills, T. Texas Tyler, and Ernest Tubb.“ Only when Berry entered Jefferson High School in Watts, in 1950, did he begin to perk up his ears to the sounds of black musicians, (“The first record by a black artist to get to me was Nat “King” Cole’s “Straighten up and Fly Right.”)

My music teacher at Jefferson was San Brown,” Berry told me. “He’s kind of famous for all the professional musicians he turned out, but,” he laughs, “he flunked me three straight times in my harmony classes.” Perhaps Berry’s increasing involvement with a less theoretical form of harmony caused this problem because it was around this time that he began to “hang around school doing some street-corner singing.” At first it was just for fun. Everybody was doing it; but after a while Berry and some friends began to take their pastime more seriously.

“I went to school with Cornel Gunter, Obie Jessie, and Pete Fox,” Berry said. (Gunter eventually ended up with the Coasters, and Jessie, and Jessie, as ‘Young Jessie,’ went on to become a somewhat legendary figure on the Los Angeles r&b scene.) We formed a group called the Flamingos, not to be confused with the Flamingos---we had the name first. At that time our idol was Jessie Belvin. He Wrote 'Earth Angel.' I begin to sneak out of the church choir to join up with the other guys at a talent show they used to have at the old Lincoln Theater at Twenty-third Street Central Avenue hosted by the really popular deejay Hunter Hancock; and we won first prize almost every time. We used to imitate a group that was big then, the Hollywood Four Flames.”

“Finally, we said, let's try and make a record," the easygoing rocker told me. "We went to the phone book and looked up record companies, and we came across Modern Records. They had everyone, including B. B. King and Ike and Tina Turner. We started recording for them, and did a number of cuts-things like 'She a Wants to Rock,' which was produced by Leiber and Stoller, and 'Gettin' High.' Most of them were regional hits that sold forty to fifty thousand copies. This was around 1953, and we called ourselves the Flairs. It was also around this time that I sang with Etta James on the hit, 'Roll With Me, Henry' "---later cleaned up lyrically with "Roll" replaced by "Dance," (Berry also guested as the low- Low-LOW voice on the Coasters' classic: 1955 recording "Riot in Cel1 Block Number Nine.")

But the young doo-wopper's happy association with Modern Records was somewhat short-lived. "The record companies," Berry said, "should have been fairer with all of us. When I look back, nobody bothered to tell me my legal rights. I didn't know anything about BMI when I was with Modern Records. I always used to see some other guy's name on my records as co-writer for songs I'd written myself. And I said what's that doing on there? And they said, ‘Well, if the distributors see our names on there they'll go to work on the record.' I didn't know they were getting part of the money. No one had ever questioned the practice before me. I finally ended suing over about sixty-some songs that I had written but that I never got royalties for. The case rolled on for about five years, and eventually I settled out of court, although no one on their side admitted any wrongdoing. But I was able to record 'Louie Louie' for another company, Flip Records, in 1956."

Throughout the late fifties and early sixties Berry continued to record with varying success. (Only briefly did he ever hold down nonmusical jobs-once in, of all places, a falsies factory, and another time in a record-pressing plant.) Also he toured extensively throughout this time; by and large because of the success of his 1956 recording of ''Louie.'' "I worked on the road with the great Bobby Bland and Junior Parker. That was my spiritual awakening. Before those guys," Berry admitted, "I didn't know what soul was. But those blues guys totally an amazed me. I used to work with Roy Brown, Floyd Dixon, Rosco Gordon, Etta James, Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, and all those folks when I toured all through the South."
From the if-only-I'd-known-then department comes the following incident in the songwriter/singer's career---for he somewhat woefully said, "In 1957 I was getting ready to get married. I needed some bucks; and so I sold the record-sales rights to 'Louie Louie.' This was six years before the big hit by the Kingsmen came out, so it was obviously not for a whole lot of money. But thank God the I did manage to hang on to the rights for radio and television play! The rest of the rights went to a guy named Max Feirtag." (I phoned Feirtag to secure a quote for this article, but when I identified myself as a reporter, he promptly hung up on me without so much as a by-your-leave, or how's your sister?)

Around the early sixties, fed up with what be calls the ''record-business rat race" and with the constant touring, Berry settled into a nearly non-stop, twenty-year run of playing at various clubs around Southern California, California, a routine whose regularity was broken only once, but significantly, in 1963 when the Kingsmen recorded "Louie Louie" and turned it into an international hit. It was like found money.

'"I wasn't at all hard up in 1963 when the Kingsmen record came out, Berry told me. "But in 1965, there was along wait when that first check finally came in. . .for over $7,000. Three days later another check came for $4,000. I didn't go ape or anything. I just kept playing the clubs and put the money in the bank." Berry waffled on the subject of how much money the song continues to bring him. He said: "Let's put it this way: During the bad years it's enough to buy a good used car, and during the good years it's enough for a good new car." (The song's use in Animal House must have temporarily brightened his fortunes.)

An interesting sidebar to the 1963 success of Berry's most popular song is the flap caused by the alleged dirty lyrics to "Louie Louie." Breathed there an American teen in the sixties who didn't sit around for hours, ears glued to the phonograph trying to make out the supposed smutty scansion of the song amongst all the Kingsmen clatter? It was a pluperfect example of the mass hysteria and delusion of crowds when young rock 'n' rollers all over cocked an ear for words that Berry insists simply were not to be heard. (The most popular supposition is that the line "I pinned a rose in her hair" was actually "I shot a wad in her hair.")

Richard Berry adamantly insists, "There were never any dirty lyrics to 'Louie Louie': In 1963, the FBI had us down to the bureau because of some sort of FCC investigation. The song had been banned in a couple of states. What was finally uncovered," Berry laughed, "was that because you really couldn't hear the words too well in the Kingsmen version, a rumor got started on college campuses that the song had dirty lyrics. This was passed on from school to school. Then somebody mimeographed what they were hearing, and then somebody else mimeographed what they were hearing. And it just went on and on. But the 'Louie, Louie' I wrote and recorded was clean; and so was the Kingsmen's version. It never fails when I play a club, someone will come up and ask me what are the dirty lyrics to 'Louie Louie: So when Barry White did it I said, 'At last, people will finally get to hear the lyrics,' because the words are so audible on his version."

Berry must've had to fend off that recurring question a lot of times, for he proudly (but a little wearily) ticked off his club history in the Los Angeles area: "Up until last year I worked constantly in places like Lakewood, E1 Monte, and Downey. I worked at one club in Gardena, the Casino, for four-and-a-half years. We made history there. And there were other places like H. D. Hover's Century Restaurant out near the airport, the Jolly Roger in El Segundo, a place called the Caravan for four years, Filthy Mc Nasty's on Sunset and in the [San Fernando] Valley, and the Swing Club in Studio City. That was my favorite! There was also a place in La Puente where Frank Zappa says he always came to see me when he was a kid! Five or six years ago I performed at some of Art Laboe's Oldies shows when he held them where the Comedy Store is now." It must have been like old home week, because in the mid-fifties he also took part in Laboe's shows when there was an early show at E1 Monte Legion Stadium and then a later run-through the same evening all the way down in Long Beach. But wherever the keyboardist and his quintet played, the highlight of the show was always "Louie Louie."

The highlight of all those years on the club circuit was visits, on different occasions, by jazz greats Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. Dolphy, around the early nineteen-sixties, sat in with Berry and his band at several clubs around town, seemingly undaunted by the switchover to employing his avant-garde sax style in a rock 'n' roll format. As for the appearance by Coltrane, Berry recalled: "It was really phenomenal. My band was playing an after-hours jam at this tinky little club in Gardena, around 1962, when in walks John Coltrane with his saxophone. This was about five o'clock in the morning; and he did a few numbers with us. Just some twelve-bar blues. He is absolutely me all-time favorite musician. Always was; always will be. I don’t have the Dolphy sessions on tape; but I did record the Coltrane session, because I used to tape just about everything I did. In the process of moving around a lot, I’ve lost track of the tape. I’ve gone through stuff for the last couple of years looking for it, but so far it’s still missing. I hope I can find it sometime.“ I told Berry I hope he did, too; the tape of a performance of jazz giant Coltrane playing within a rock and roll format is surely one for the ages. Also, I warned him that when this piece of information reached print, his phone would, doubtlessly, begin to ring off the wall.)

Of the anomaly of a black musician playing mostly white clubs (which Berry mostly did), the seemingly stoical musician said, "Usually there was no problem; but sometimes I'd play a place and when blacks showed up, I'd get fired. I tried to tell the owners that even if they replaced me with Danny and the Juniors, the blacks wouldn't leave," he laughed. “But still I'd get canned. There was one place I told the owner the only way he could get the blacks to go away was to close the place for two weeks, lower the ceiling, and turn it into a Country and Western bar. I was joking. But do you know, that's exactly what the guy did," said Berry, shaking his head in amazement.

Perhaps one other reason for the veteran musician's low profile nationally these last two decades is his fear of flying. He told me, “After years of not being bothered at all by flying, suddenly in 1960 on a plane flight out of Oakland I totally freaked out. Petrified. I didn't fly again until 1977 when I had to go to Brazil to work with my friend Etta James. I actually had to have the mother of a friend of mine fly with me and hold my hand all the way there. It was my first time on a jet. I was able to come back by myself. But frankly," he adds, "I haven't flown since then."

This year all Berry really wants to do is write music. "Right now, "he said, “I'm mostly composing ballads. Barry White may record one of my new songs, ‘Lost in Paradise,’ for his next album," Why the shift away from performing? "Look," he said, “I haven't minded at all talking about 'Louie Louie' with you this afternoon---in fact, I loved it. But, frankly, after six nights a week, for twenty years, I'm beginning to get a little tired of singing it.” He paused a beat, then added: “After all, Paul Revere and the Raiders only had to do it for a year." back to main blog

Copyright © 2006 Bill Reed

More Marvin

2006-04-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

In 1985, not long after Gaye was shot dead by his father, I was employed by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art when a new co-worker was hired; an attractive Latina woman who had apparently covered the amorous waterfront. For not only was she the wife of a well-known Golden Era MGM producer-director, but, word quickly spread around the office, she had been Marvin Gaye's "last old lady." But hardly a day goes by in Lotusland where one doesn't run into some starry-eyed individual claiming just such a brush with greatness. Was this indeed the woman who cropped up in a lot of Gaye's obits; the one who was in the process of suing the singer, claiming that had beaten her in late 1982 and early 1983? In her deposition against the star, she had also said that on one of these occasions he had taken a diamond ring and carved a message in the windshield of her car. And so. . .having nothing better to do with my hours after quitting time, I donned my deerstalker hat and shades and at a discrete distance followed Gaye's alleged inamorata to the parking garage to ascertain which was her car. She got into a nice, upscale late model car, which I now was able to inspect the next day. When I did, my heart skipped a beat as I gazed upon the grand, iconic gesture of one of undisputed giants of American secular music. Smack across the driver's line of sight, Gaye's rage resonated from beyond the grave in big, bold jagged letters: F**k You. Was she hanging onto the windshield for reasons of sentiment, or poverty? Or was it just a jury exhibit for a still-in-progress claim against Marvin Gaye's estate. I never mustered the nerve to ask her. No doubt today that windshield would fetch a tidy sum on ebay. back

Soliloquy of a Mad Cat Sitter cont'd

2006-03-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

MONDAY: I see that one of the "pets" has barfed on the kitchen floor. Why? I don't know how to best clean it up??? Degoutant. I'll put some Betty Carter records on. Now to feed the cats. First I'll clean out the cat box. Oh my god, one of the cats didn't make it to the box. Are they trying to say something? Jesus, that is gross.How many more days? I better water the plants now. Get unemployment check out of hiding place and bring it to my house in order to mail it special delivery to Bill in California.
TUESDAY: Brought new cat food for the "pets." Nine Lives Tuna with Eggs. That sounds so good I want to eat it.(ten minutes later) Maybe I better, because the cats don't want it. They've been spoiled on the junky Puss and Boots that David and Bill feed them. Well, if that's what they want. . .. Now I'll watch some TV. I'll see what Fonzie is all about. (1/2 hour later) God was that awful!!! Now I'll watch Laverne and Shirley.(10 minutes later) Even worse than Fonzie. I know what I'll do now. I'll go over to Murder, Inc. I'm there now. As I walk in the store I see one funny looking dog. Named "Watson" I later find out---now that's really sick---& four cats. Say hello to proprietress. I ask her if it's true that the store is open 24 hours (Larry told me this at work). She laughs. No, it's not true, she says.
WEDNESDAY: Feed cats the same old shit. Put on Duke Ellington record. Look at Bill's book shelf. Take down his World's Fair scrapbook. I hope he doesn't notice that I've looked at it. I'm impressed at his wit. Off to the ballet. Return from the ballet. Put on MHMH. Go home.
THURSDAY: Arrive & fed the cats. Watch Welcome Back Kotter. Lots of cute boys on the show. Go to Everhard Baths. Get room. Settle in my chambre. Not too crowded. Just right. Person next door is lying on bed fully clothed. Am I sick or is he? Who's to say? The world allows for an infinite variety of behavior at bath houses. At 1:10 a.m. meet someone named "David." Chit chat. Says he is a "televsion consutant." I say that TV needs all the consulting it can get. He's not terribly amused. Lives on Crosby Street in SoHo. Have quick sex. Go home by taxi. It is three.
FRIDAY: Let cats out. When time comes to get them in, all cooperate except Dinah. This has been going on all week. Baby and Frances come when I call them but Dinah is evidently deaf at times. Go out to get Dinah, and Baby and Frances run back out. They're making a monkey out of me. How do David and Bill get them in? I'll have to ask them. Tonight it takes twenty minutes to do it. Oh drat. Dinah just scratched me as I tried to get her in.
SATURDAY: Come over to meet super. He's super. See but not talk to Erma. Receive postcard from B &D. Glad to see that everything is all right! Come back over later. One of the cats has knocked some of David's books off the lower shelf. Why? To read them? I doubt that. Maybe to be malicious is more like it. Bring parents over on way to take them to dinner. Father asks if my friend who has this apartment took his wife to California. Change subject. Go to Tandoor for a delicious dinner. I had raita, nan, malagawtawny soup, Chicken Tikka, Go home & read Miss Mapp. B&D back from Calif. tomorrow. Phew!
back to square one

Betty Hutton continued. . .

2006-02-26T07:37:00.000-08:00

The star’s screen persona of the self-sufficient dame with grit and spunk, so useful during WW II (think "Rosie the Riveter"), was eventually replaced post-war by the kind of female role model as exemplified by the more demure, lower-keyed Doris Day. Not that there‘s anything wrong with Dodo. Interestingly, out of the starting gate in her first film, Romance on the High Seas, Day is a near carbon copy of Hutton.

Although Hutton's professional demise was at hand, even after the war she continued to be, for a while, the most popular female performer in America circa 1950-1955, with her picture on the cover of Time, and appearances in the title role in the movie event of the year in 1950, Annie Get Your Gun, and the equally popular The Greatest Show on Earth, two years later.

Come the late fifties, though, her "bit" wore increasingly thin with the public. Irving Berlin’s “Annie" is arguably her most satisfying screen appearance. It displays the best of both Betty's, i.e the more sensitive, modulated "Hutton the serious actress" conflated with the (as Bob Hope once called her) "vitamin pill with legs" Betty. Unseen for many years, it was rumored to have long been suppressed by the Irving Berlin estate. Something to do with fear of drawing fire due to the way Native-Americans are depicted in the film. An alternate theory was that the estate of the property's co-author, Dorothy Fields, was responsible for the film's suppression. Whatever the reason, "Annie" remained unavailable for more than two decades, until it finally became available on DVD in 2001.

At the time of the film's release, the public cared little about who played the title role as long as she was good. Judy Garland has come to be associated with the film of "Annie" mainly because of its relation to her kamikze krash 'n burn latter days at MGM. However, she was kicked off of it after having done all the prerecording and shooting several musical numbers, and replaced by Hutton. The resulting film of the Berlin stage musical became one of the top films, both financially and critically, of its release year. For good reason. Hutton is on screen for almost the entirety of the film and is called upon to describe an arc moving from uncertain backwoods urchin to woman of the world, albeit a highly vulnerable one. It is ironic that the one film that would have kept Hutton's name before the public (certainly the world today has little use for the strident Hutton of her 40s Paramount films) has, until fairly recently, been unavailable.

Garland would probably have been all wrong for the film. She's perfect as the take charge ingénue in The Harvey Girls, but she can't "do" helpless. Just like straightforward, honest Garbo couldn't make duplicitousness believable in her swan song, Two-Faced Woman. Hutton, though, is just right for "Annie." You might have guessed it from her shaded, touching performance in Miracle of Morgan's Creek a few years earlier.

I am just old enough to remember how excited all of America was about the first TV SPEC-TAC-U-LAR, Satins and Spurs , with Hutton in 1955. Golleeee! A brand new Broadway show in Living Color LIVE in your own home entertainment center. Through the air. . .free! But it turned out to be a kind of video precursor to the fabled Broadway flop Moose Murders of a few decades later and didn't help Hutton's worsening image and popularity in the least. Her real Waterloo, though, was a TV situation comedy a few years later, Goldie, whose awfulness was of such magnitude---hell, stench---that even the resilient Hutton was unable to rebound from it. Never has anyone once so famous fallen so far below radar detection. And, so fast.

Hutton had a long history of the manic-depressive act of publicly announcing she was "giving up show business for good" after smash, rave notices such as she received at the Palace in the early 1950s. Finally, after her sitcom debacle, she had no choice but to honor her pledge. In early 2001 I went to see the premiere big screen showing at the Motion Picture Academy in LA of the newly restored Annie Get Your Gun. It was a mostly invited audience of industry folk, many of whom were simply were not prepared for what hit them. Namely Betty Hutton! The audience went absolutely bananas at the end of every number, applauding, whistling and stamping. Every one was a show stopper, but of course they couldn't stop the show. I almost wouldn't have surprised if the projectionist had rewound certain numbers and shown them over again, like dancer Fayard Nicholas told me happened sometimes when the Nicholas Brothers’ big number from Stormy Weather was shown in theaters. History has finally absolved me. I've always thought that Hutton's "Annie" performance is the one of the best big screen musical comedy performances. I have little doubt that most of thousand or so in attendance at the turn away screening at the Motion Picture Academy would agree with me. Nearly everyone around me was enraptured by Hutton, a forgotten relic of the past whom few remember today.

The other star of the film, Howard Keel, is no slouch either. But how can you compete with Hutton, who simply walks away with the picture? Keel was there at the "Annie" re-premiere, and at 83 appeared in unbelievably good shape [he is now deceased]. Ramrod tall, and a swift and steady gait. Voice as deep and resonant as ever. In a word. . .handsome as all get out. Hutton, however, chose to stay away.

I once saw Lucille Ball speak in person, and in response to the audience's request to tell them about "The good old days at RKO," she let them in on how hateful America's beloved Henry Fonda had been to her when she was just starting out at the studio; resentful that he had to appear in a movie with the much less famous (at the time) Ball. The audience could be heard audibly gasping at her candor. But Betty Hutton's forthrightness in a Turner Classics Movie inverview on the occasion of the DVD release of Annie Get Your Gun made Ball's telling tales out of school look like a puff piece by comparison. She told interviewer Robert Osborne that she'd been treated abysmally by everyone who had anything to do with the picture.

But if she wasn't having a good time making “Annie” it doesn't show. In a way she's playing herself: a woman of great talent and skill who still doesn't have control of the world around her. That's Annie Oakley, at least the Irving Berlin version of her, and that certainly was (and unfortunately, apparently), still is the case with Hutton. The DVD is now available, but there's nothing like seeing a Arthur Freed unit MGM production in academy ratio on a mile high screen like the one at the Motion Picture Academy.

Happy birthday, Betty Hutton. . .wherever you are.

More Son of, Son of....

2006-02-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

What drew us together was a mutual appreciation of singer Little Jimmy Scott. I had not met Jimmy at the time, and nearly everyone (Gerald Wilson and Betty Carter included) told me he was dead. But I found him living in Jersey, and played an early part in getting him back in action. Part of my help is documented in David Ritz's bio of Jimmy. It was a first person narrative by me, secretly recorded by Ritz w/o my permission. Of course, no harm done, none intended. But it was a odd feeling reading along w/o any advance "warning" and suddenly seeing a page-long quote by me.

I think that by the time Jimmy came back, he had more or less lost it vocally. When I first saw him perfom "live" it was just at the beginning of the comeback, and there was something (a little bit) left. But nearly all the post-comeback sides are unbearable for me to listen to. A couple of years ago I saw him perform in Tokyo, it was mid-week, a 6:00 pm (!) show at a very large club and the place was packed. "Live," his charisma tended to compensate for his diminished vocal powers. Afterwards, I went backstage and I'm not even certain that Jimmy recalled me, BUT his bassist and road manager, Hill Green (very sweet man), remembered me w/o any prompting from easily ten years earlier, tapping me on the shoulder, etc. Now THAT'S what I call total recall.

I don't know whether you are aware of just how big Jimmy is (or, perhaps, was) in other parts of the world: TV commercials, fashion spreads in L'uomo Vogue (Homo Vogue?), and one year when I was in Tokyo, his face was just everywhere on signage (along with others of Astor Piazolla. . .now just how hip is that?!). I think that's when I finally decided for once and all that Tokyo was the city for me. I was surprised to read recently how poor Jimmy still is. I suppose everyone has to get their, um, cut. Plus ca change. . ..

I was working very hard for Jimmy when I first found him, then he just---you should pardon the expression---slipped out of my grip. The real hero in Jimmy's renaissance was a (then) NY writer by the name of Jimmy McDonough. He just worked and slaved for Scott and the latter finally left him high and dry. Jimmy Scott just does whatever people tell him to do, so he probably has no sense of the emotional damage that he most likely inflicted on McDonough. I have not spoken with the latter for a number of years though, so I don't know the whole story. I DO know that Jimmy had a horrible person by name of---let's call her---Madame LaFarge managing him. If you ever have a meeting with her (please don't), come armed with garlic and a mirror. Eventually, Jimmy fired her. Followed by three fast choruses of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! TTFN. Best, Bill

Son of Everything But the Oink continued

2006-02-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

......I was very upset about A. M.'s response. The word "nix" in her original email is a slang expression that in this context is just short of saying "f**k you. Haven't heard "nix" in years. There's a local advance-on-your-paycheck operation down the street from me called "Nix." As recently as thirty years ago, anyone approaching the place for a "loan" woulda subliminally thought the outfit was in the business of NOT giving you a loan.......singer Beverly Kenney has remained extremely popular in Japan for the nearly half-century since her death. Something to do with the quality in her voice of a quality known in that country as "hakanasa." Hard to translate, but something like "vulnerability".......Dear Lincoln: Technically "bel dormir" means "sleep well" but that's not quite correct and it always used to crack Michel Legrand up whenever I said it. He would ask me to say it over and over and over. And just laugh and laugh and laugh. I haven't seen Michel for years and if we met up today, he probably wouldn't remember me. Full hard drive. But all I would have to say is "Bel Dormir" and it would probably ALL come rushing back to him......Jerry: Do you you remember the time in high school when we ran into Haynes Record Shop on West Washinton Street and stole a lifesize Doris Day cardboard cutout for the original cast recording of the Pajama Game? I believe you distracted them, while I ran in and snatched up Doris. You will, of course, NOT remember (no one has long term memory like me) but trust me my old friend, you were an accomplice. Just think, if we still had that--Doris migrated back and forth between the inside of our locker doors----we could sell it on Ebay and retire to Gstaad. Probably the only thing I stole from a store in my life...but WHO could resist? I guess the "statue" of limitations has run out on that little caper.......David E. hopes that there is an Unreturned Calls Hell . For those who subscribe to the notion that "He or she who ends the day with the most unreturned phone calls. . .wins." In "UPC Hell," one would have access to a telephone and a number that tells you how to get OUT of hell. But it's answered by a machine that play thirty minutes of rap before informing the caller, "We'll get back to you just as soon as possible with instructions for getting out of UPC Hell." But it will take an eternity for them to return the call.

More Kuro!

2006-02-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

"Everything".....continued

2006-02-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

The rate of musical literacy is just so much higher in Japan than almost anywhere else in the world (Holland is good, too). That's because in that nation there remains music education at every public school grade level. I know a ten-year-old boy (not a prodigy) in Japan who can play an entire John Williams film score on his little electric keyboard. It is my sense that almost any Japanese can navigate their way around at least one musical instrument to one degree of profiency or another. My favorite quote of recent years is from Max Roach. When a reporter asked him what he thought of rap, he replied: "People who voted for defunding of music education in public schools are getting what they paid for." I have a friend, pianist John ("Drum Machines Have No Soul") Wood who holds an interesting theory that the dumbing down of music truly began with the invention of multi-track recording---but that's ANOTHER story.......I lived in New York for a long time and the very first job I had when I landed there in the early Sixties was as an apprentice recording engineer. Something I knew nothing about then, and precious little more about now. I was employed, during its dying days, by a once-great outfit, Empire Recording. That is where I cut the acetate for singer Bill Black that 43 years later has just now been released in Japan (bringing new meaning to the phrase "In the can."). Even then---back in the early 1960s---we did those, as my friend Lincoln calls them, ad agency Creative Freakout recordings. I still have a few of them. One is a gay cowboy (plus ca change) Marlboro cig commercial. Another is for Blooper Soap ("Blooper Soap is reallllll good.") When I was going through my collection the day I uncovered the Bill Black acetate a couple of years ago, I also came across a session that I engineered for jazz pianist Steve Kuhn. Probably the only real session I ever engineered in my life, so you gotta admit that though my ouevre is not just slim but damn near non-existent, it's cherce. Mostly I just transferred comml's (Robert Hall Clothes, etc.) onto acetate for ad agencies, etc, and one time at Empire I did one of the voices for a version of the infamous Farting Contest for a novelty record company. Like I say. . ."cherce".......Speaking of ad agencies, there used to be a famous one known as Batton, Barton, Durston and Osborne (sic?). Jack Benny once said that the name sounded like a garbage can falling down the stairs.......I received Pinky Winters and Lou Levy's The Shadow of Your Smile a few days ago. I was the "Release Producer." As alluded to in a previous blog entry, until you hear applause after the first track, there is absolutely no indication that it is a live album. It sounds just like a studio album. Not a cough in a carload. The second half of the concert will be forthcoming on CD later soon. Here's what Pinky, Lou and Bill Takas play on part two: The Piccolino (Instrumental), If I Were a Bell, I Am in Love, You Say You Care/Dance Only With Me, The Dolphin (instrumental), Never Let Me Go, The Trolley Song, Lady Be Good, Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, I'm Old-Fashioned, No More Blues. I hope pt. 1 is a Big Hit!, the faster to release pt. 2.......a friend of mine went to Frank Sinatra, Senior longtime pianist Bill Miller's birthday party yesterday He is 91 and is still touring with FS, Junior. I wonder how many more Sinatras he'll run through before retiring.......singer Jackie Paris was just about IT for me. Jackie was kind of big in Japan and even won a major Swing Journal award in that country around 1990. I once saw a double bill of Chris Connor and Jackie Paris at L.A.'s Jazz Bakery!!!!! There is a new big screen docu about him that premiered last month at Sundance.......Got an update on Vic Damone today: He is fine, plays golf every day, just doesn't seem to have the drive to work anymore. Whenever anyone parrot's that old cliche to me, "Vic Damone is a good singer, but he can't swing, I take off myglasses and spoil for a fight (Shirley I jest)........There has just been a street in "Vegas' renamed "Mel Torme Way.......Pinky Winters sang Jobim's Useless Landscape to me on the phone today (don't ask why) w/o sheet music in front of her AND perfectly. Unbelieveable. Hard song to sing, especially w/o the music. She can read music by the way and plays decent piano. I was at a party with her recently where she played for herself for the first time in public... ever! Forks poised in mid-air throughout the entirety of the first song. She has a gig coming up the 14th of March and now says that she will always henceforth pull a Sarah/Carmen and accompany herself on one number.

Hooray for Hazel!

2006-02-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

In the 1940s, singer-pianist Hazel Scott was nearly as famous as Lena Horne. But today she's chiefly remembered as the onetime wife of the charismatic but controversial congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Like Horne, Scott was a cool, sophisticated performer, and on the silver screen she was a distant and non-threatening black sex symbol. Off screen, it was another matter.

Working in the 1940s and early '50s mostly without the safety net of any civil rights organization, Scott lashed out against the U.S. racial situation nearly every chance she had. Making her actions doubly daring was her gender, for as Scott remarked years later: "Any woman who has a great deal to offer is in trouble, and if the woman is black, she is in deep trouble."

There are plenty of women -- and plenty of black women -- who might say the same thing today. And that makes a look back at Scott's life all the more worthwhile.

Scott was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad in 1920. Her mother, Alma, bore five children, but only Hazel lived past infancy. Scott's father, Thomas R. Scott, was a teacher and scholar, who, among his other accomplishments, could speak 17 different Chinese dialects. Originally from Scotland and of African ancestry, he had come to Trinidad to teach at St. Mary's College. Alma Scott, a debutante and a talented pianist, was from an upper-class island family.

"I remember the instant I realized I could play," Hazel Scott recalled years later.

"I was two-and-a-half. My grandmother finally got tired and fell asleep. I managed to climb on the piano bench and start picking out a tune with one hand. I kept doing it until it came more easily. Then my grandmother woke up and asked, `Who's there?' She thought it was one of the students who had come. I said, `It's me.' And she said, `Yes, but who?' I said, `Me, Hazel.' She jumped up and called in the neighbors to hear the prodigy."

Hazel, it turned out, had perfect pitch. She started studying music with her mother and shortly thereafter began appearing publicly in Port-of-Spain. When Hazel was four, the Scotts left Trinidad for New York. On the boat trip, while her mother was laid up in her cabin suffering from sea sickness, Hazel, unfazed, spent most of the voyage performing at the piano for the other passengers.

The family's first home in New York was a brownstone in Harlem on 118th Street. Two years after arriving in the city, Hazel gave a classical performance at Town Hall (her jazz playing was still a few years away). At age 8, she was allowed to begin studying at Julliard on an informal basis after one of the teachers there heard her play and pronounced her a genius.

In 1934, Scott's father died from pneumonia, and her mother, who would have preferred a career as a classical pianist but suffered from weak wrists, turned to pop music as a means of supporting the family. Quickly learning the saxophone, she got a job playing in the band of Louis Armstrong's second wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong. To Scott's surprise, one night when they were backing the acts at the Apollo Theatre's boisterous amateur night in Harlem, 14-year-old Hazel, who was thought to be at home asleep, came out on the stage to compete. The same year she was heard at Carnegie Hall performing Tchaikovsky's "Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra."

"I was a prodigy," Scott said years later, "but nobody expected anything to come of it. No matter how good I was, it wasn't going to happen." At the time, the idea of blacks playing classical music was still considered a tasteless and pretentious notion by most whites.

But as a teenager Hazel had her mind set on becoming a music professional. "I cannot stay home with people who aren't in the business," she told her mother. "If you won't let me play in your orchestra, I'll become a juvenile delinquent." Thus at age 12 she began touring with her mother's American Creolians; she also formed her own band, 14 Men and a Girl.

When she was 15, Scott and her musicians were working at a bar in Port Chester, N.Y., when, according to a story in Time magazine a few years later, the musician's union tried to have Scott fired for being under age. "I am over eighteen!" Hazel lied to the union. "And I'll outplay, outswing and outsing anybody who says different." This brand of fierceness would serve Scott well in years to come.

In 1936 Scott had her own three-times-a-week radio show on the Mutual network, which chose her for the slot from among 1,500 hopefuls. The same year, at Roseland, she made her first major downtown appearance on a bill headlined by Count Basie. In 1938, at age 18, Scott made her theatrical debut in the Broadway revue, "Sing Out the News." Even though she was only a part of the ensemble that sang the show's hit, "Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones," her appearance was favorably singled out in several reviews.

It was around this time that Scott also began refining the unique piano style with which she made her mark -- swinging the classics. Hired as an intermission player in support of star Frances Faye at New York's popular Yacht Club, Hazel soon began receiving notes on stage via the busboy that she was no longer to perform the song that she had just sung because Faye was using it in her act. "Well, let's see if Frances Faye can do this!," she grumbled and tore into a Bach invention played boogie-woogie style.

"Needless to say," she later recalled, "Miss Faye didn't do THAT in her show, so I was able to get through a complete show without being interrupted by the busboy." Scott was by no means the inventor of the gimmick, but at the Yacht Club she sensed immediately that she had stumbled onto a good thing, mined it for all it was worth, and soon was one of the hottest club attractions in town. In his "Brown Sugar," author Donald Bogle describes Hazel's act during this period:

"She began her classical numbers in a conventional way, gradually changed the rhythm, letting the boogie-woogie notes creep in until, finally, Hazel Scott gave in to the sounds within her and pounded the keyboard as if each minute might be her last." (Scott also sang occasionally, but to only marginally interesting results.)

A Carnegie Hall appearance in 1945, when she swingingly deconstructed Lizst's "Second Hungarian Rhapsody" was typical, and at least one reviewer was ecstatic: Scott's performance, he wrote (with tongue tucked firmly in cheek) constituted a form of musical analysis. The evening was, he said, "the most impudent musical criticism since George Bernard Show stopped writing on the subject. It was witty, daring, modern, but never irreverent. I think Lizst would have been delighted." One of the writer's colleagues from another paper felt very differently about Scott, however; he stomped out in the middle of her performance and later in print deemed it akin to sacrilege.

Scott first became familiar with jazz due to the steady stream of musicians who frequented Alma Scott's Harlem apartment. Art Tatum was an early friend of Hazel's, tutoring her extensively at the keyboard. Lester Young would also often stop by to pay his respects to Hazel's mother, and usually end up taking out his sax and instigating a jam session. Fats Waller was like a beloved uncle to her. And then, there was Billie Holiday. "I would put a nickel in the local jukebox and hear Lady Day sing," Scott told Essence magazine in 1978, "and then come home and find her sitting in the kitchen with my mother."

One night a 15-year-old Scott sneaked out of her apartment to play with a swing band on New York's jumping 52nd Street. In the middle of the action, she suddenly heard what she later described as a "scream that was absolutely primeval." It was the sound of a dutiful and angry Billie Holiday accidentally encountering the underage Hazel in what she considered less than ideal circumstances. She chased her off the stage and out of the place. It was this protective attitude that led Scott to forever think of Holiday as a big sister.

Scott's more-or-less "discoverer," Barney Josephson, was the owner of two New York night clubs, Cafe Society Uptown and Downtown, famous not only for the superb and eclectic mix of performers who could be heard there, but also for their progressive policy of total racial integration. "We believe in democracy," he once said, "and are willing to practice it even if it hurts our business." "Despite the potentially explosive mix of customers," writes James Gavin in Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret, Josephson created an atmosphere of tolerance; white customers who complained – `What have you got here, a nigger joint?' -- received a check and were asked to leave."

The first audition of Scott by the club owner resulted in a legendary amalgamation of talent and locale, much like that of Bobby Short and the Cafe Carlyle of more recent times. Josephson told her, "You have a home here for life," and she soon became the reigning queen of his little empire. Primarily appearing at the uptown operation, when she began in 1938, Scott earned $65 a week; seven years later she was pulling down $2000 weekly. At this point Scott was being offered even far greater sums to switch alliances but refused.

"Why should I work for any other night club in town? I'd be a jerk."

Later, describing the spell Hazel cast over the intimate night spot, Scott's eventual husband, New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., wrote: "Cafe Society was then THE supper club of New York and Hazel Scott was its grande vedette. No one came to challenge her in her domain. There was nothing like Cafe Society and there has been nothing like it since. Way at the end of the long room was the black concert grand piano sticking its nose up out of the audience. All the lights would go out, Hazel would make her way to the piano and then suddenly a spotlight would catch her. For a moment the audience would gasp, because it looked as it she were seated there nude -- the height of the piano, the bare-shouldered dress, nothing but the golden-brown shoulder and arms, super talented fingers."

The early years of World War II found Hazel Scott's career talking off with a velocity rare for an African-American. One New York department store alone reported that it had sold 3,000 copies of her "Swinging the Classics" album in just two weeks. In addition to features about her in Time ("Hot Classicist") and Newsweek ("Hep Hazel"), she was the subject of an in-depth profile in the popular Collier's magazine in which she announced she would be co-starring with Louis Armstrong in an upcoming Orson Welles project, "It's All True." As to exactly when the project might commence shooting was problematic: "He's [Welles] such a vague character," Hazel told Collier's.

It wasn't vagueness, though, that finally did the venture in: RKO Pictures was automatically expecting a light, frothy jazz musical from Welles; but what they were getting, they soon realized based on early footage sent back from Brazil, was a film about the plight of the black laboring class south of the border and the universality of African culture. Needless to say, the plug was soon pulled by frontoffice Hollywood on an aborted project that has since become legend.

Shortly thereafter came a film opportunity for Scott that seemed to represent a step down from starring for the Magnificent Orson -- a bit part in the new, not-quite-"A" musical, "Something to Shout About," to be directed by near-hack, Gregory Ratoff. In fact, so minimal was her participation, Hazel didn't even need to be flown to Hollywood; instead, she was filmed in New York. But when Columbia Pictures executives saw the footage of Scott who, by comparison, made "most sweater girls look underfed" -- Broadway columnist Earl Wilson once wrote -- they were so impressed that they singer her to a four-picture deal. Hazel was put on a plane for California to shoot her how beefed-up part in "Something to Shout About."

There is little doubt that what the studio had in mind for 20-year- old Hazel Scott -- a first rank night club and concert hall attraction and now about to make her film debut in a movie with a Cole Porter score -- was their own version of competing MGM's "exotic" black star Lena Horne. As such, she would be glamorously clad and used primarily in big musical production numbers which Columbia could conveniently snip out in the south or wherever else scenes featuring blacks might bring offense (a standardized practice in the motion picture industry at the time). Scott later admitted that she was troubled by lending a hand to such racist schemes, but with just about the only dramatic roles available to her as a black woman being domestics or quasi-prostitutes, in a rare occasion of compromise for her, she chose to take the route of the musical. After wrapping up work on "Something to Shout About," which went without a hitch, Scott was loaned out to MGM for two more similar all-musical inserts; one of which "I Dood It," featured not only Scott but Lena Horne as well. Then Scott returned to Columbia for "The Heat's On" and, she assumed, more gowns, glitz, and glamour lighting.

The film, made at the height of World War II, like many other musicals of the period, was to contain the perfunctory production number featuring women singing, dancing and rallying their men onward into battle. Then Scott found out how females in the all-black ensemble were to be depicted."My costume was fitted, and the guys were all fitted, too; then they started bringing the costumes for the girls. They were wearing aprons, and [choreographer] David Lichine said they looked too new. He told the make-up men to spray them with oil and I blew sky-high. I honestly did. I said `I don't understand you. How can you think that young women are going to see their sweethearts off to war wearing dirty aprons?'"

The racist implications seemed perfectly clear to Hazel; black women had so little pride or self-esteem that they didn't care what they were wearing when sending their loved ones into battle. She refused to do the number unless the costumes were cleaned up. Such non-self serving behavior as Scott's was as unheard of in Hollywood then as it is now and studio officials were puzzled. After all, Scott in a WAC outfit, wasn't called to wear one of the maid outfits herself. Before it was all over, production on "The Heat's On" number was held up for three days and several thousand dollars were lost. "So," she later crowed to jazz drummer-author Art Taylor in his "Notes and Tones," "I hit the man where it hurts most -- in his pocketbook." Hazel finally got her way (she usually did); but in the long run she suffered consequences far more severe than those she'd levied on Columbia. In retaliation, notoriously vindictive studio chief Cohn effectively blackballed her from films.

But the powerful Cohn's influence only reached so far. Fifteen years later she was able to secure a role in a film in France. It was "Le Disordre de la Nuit" ("Night Affair") starring Jean Gabin and Danielle Darrieux. An underworld melodrama, typical of the vehicles Gabin was turning out at that time, the film gave Scott some brief acting chores, but chiefly used her in a nightclub scene, singing and playing the piano. The French, it appears, were no better at utilizing her talents than the Americans.Scott reported one interesting sidelight to the shooting, however:

"I came home from the studio and picked up the Herald-Tribune from my door. When I looked at the paper, I started shaking all over. I had just finished my first day of shooting and Harry Cohn has said I'd never make another picture as long as he lived. I read in the paper that he'd dropped dead the previous night. Isn't that strange? You see why I don't fool with God."

"What Congressman has been stage-door johnnying with what boogie- woogie pianist? And don't think his wife doesn't know," read a wildly transparent "blind" item in the November 1944 issue of Ebony magazine. Everyone knew to whom the squib referred; the pair was undoubtedly Hazel Scott and charismatic black politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Although married, Powell had a reckless playboy image totally out of keeping with his dual roles as a congressman and pastor of the largest Christian congregation in North America, Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church (Powell had inherited the pastorship from his father).

By the time "Mr. Jesus," as Powell was known to his congregation, met and rapidly fell in love with Hazel, he was one of the most well- known blacks in the country. Powell later claimed that by then his first marriage had hit the skids because of his wife's failure to grow along with him.A little more than a month after Powell's quickie divorce from his first wife, Isabel, he and Scott were married in Connecticut on Aug. 1, 1945. This was followed by a reception later in the day at Cafe Society Uptown where 3,000 guests showed up, only a third of them invited. In the mirror world of black society, the union was considered a "storybook marriage," somewhat along the lines of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks of a slightly earlier era. Life magazine printed a two-page spread about the wedding and reception, showing a radiant-looking Powell and Scott, who called him a "rabble rousing champion of Negro rights."Almost from the beginning of her career, Scott had written into all of her contracts an anti-segregation clause (she was one of the first black performers to make such demands). The proviso stated that promoters would be legally obligated to forfeit half of her minimum guarantee and she not be expected to perform if she arrived for a performance to discover that the audience was racially segregated. "What justification can anyone have who comes to hear me and then objects to sitting next to another Negro?," Scott, defending her position, reasoned. She also refused to perform in any town where unsegregated hotel facilities weren't available: "If I'm not good enough to stay in a hotel in certain town, I figure those people arenot good enough to hear me play."

Still, there were slip-ups: In 1946 Scott arrived for a performance at the University of Texas and, looking around the auditorium, spotted a bright red carpet running down the middle of the 7,500-seat hall. Immediately sensing that it was nothing more than a tonier version of the notorious rope, which had been used for many years to separate black audiences from white in the South, she refused to perform and dared the university to sue her. The school declined. Later that same year there was a widely publicized incident in which Scott and a friend were both denied service at a restaurant in the eastern Washington city of Pasco. She later incredulously remarked, "If we'd been any farther north we'd have been in Canada!"

If the press was to be believed, the first few years of the Scott- Powell marriage were idyllic. The press also continued to carry news of the couple's continuing political activism, such as their successful attempt to bring about the integration of Veterans Administration hospitals.

The incident that triggered Scott's eventual listing in the notorious right-wing smear sheet Red Channels, which printed names of artists and performers suspected of being Communist fellow travelers, was her performance at a 1943 rally for Benjamin Davis, an avowed Communist who was running for New York City Council. Another such benefit performance, she later recalled in Essence magazine, "was for Russian War Relief at Madison Square Garden. Everyone did it. My manager booked me. Who are they kidding? Russia was our ally at the time."

In 1950 after her name was placed in Red Channels, Scott defended herself before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Unlike most witnesses who appeared before HUAC, Scott was not subpoenaed to appear. She requested to testify.

Before taking the stand, she was addressed directly by Congressman Woods of Georgia, who was also a Ku Klux Klan member. When he said, "We have agreed to hear you because you are the wife of a colleague [Powell]," Scott's reply sent shock waves through the room: "Well, what about the 400 others [i.e. names appearing in Red Channels] who are not?"

Scott went on to rail out against "Channels," deeming it a "vile and un-American act," and to lambaste HUAC itself as being "un-American." Strong, courageous words long before newsman Edward R. Murrow's historic tide-turning anti-HUAC TV editorial in 1954. Shortly after her HUAC appearance, she proposed that musicians and performers boycott all radio and TV networks suspending those listed in Red Channels.

At the time, Scott was earning $100,000 annually for about five months of work a year. But overall public sentiment against her, which had been building for some time because of her politics, reached critical mass with her HUAC appearance. Shortly afterward, her TV show on the Dumont network -- one of the first such ventures for a black on national TV -- was yanked off the air.

By the mid-1950s much of the luster of Scott's career began to dim; and her marriage was similarly in decline. In 1956 she and Powell legally separated, then divorced.

But the end of her marriage also marked a beginning for Scott: She went to Paris for three weeks to rest and play an engagement. Powell, with whom she was still on friendly terms, advised her: "If you're not happy here [in the U.S.] why don't you stay over there for a little while and work.""A little while" would end up lasting more than three years.

When Scott finally returned to the U.S. in 1960, it was to a country where the increasingly prevalent attitude among young, militant blacks was to publicly attack certain entertainment figures for their failure to take an active in-your-face part in the rapidly escalating attack on the racial status quo. Scott did not escape this.

"Since my return to America," she wrote in Ebony in 1960, "I have been attacked by some misinformed people who say I have been away from the problem. In one New York hotel where I was staying the room service waiter said, `I once thought you were the greatest, but you have fallen in my estimation because you left America where the fight is.'" She tended to slough off such attacks, remarking that racism was worldwide.

Scott's return to America didn't last much longer than it took for her to gauge the political and occupational climate and then leave once more. By the end of the year she was again in Paris where the colony of American jazz musicians living there, and visiting artists, actors and musicians, were glad to have her back.

"I'd have a dozen musicians maybe out of the Ellington band in the living room," she told jazz critic Leonard Feather, who in 1937 had produced her first recordings. "You'd go in the next room and there stretched out on a couch because he hurt his back at the studio that day is Anthony Quinn. You keep going and there in the kitchen is Quincy Jones testing what I have in the pot."

It was during this second stay in Paris that Scott could also be seen one morning -- on the same day as the event in the U.S. -- leading a band of disparate artists, including James Baldwin, Richard Avedon and Anthony Quinn, from the American Church to the door of the U.S. Embassy to deliver a petition in support of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 march on Washington, D.C.Coming back to the United States in 1966 (this time for good), Scott began more forcefully to defend herself against the kind of attacks first leveled against her a few years earlier."People would say to me," she later told drummer Art Taylor in his book, "Notes and Tones," "`You went away from the fight' and I'd say, `Come on, you're looking for a fat lip! While you were sitting very comfortable in your Jim Crow quarters or your all-white quarters or in the North in Harlem or on the South Side of Chicago, I was down South desegregating audiences in town after town getting one jumpahead of the sheriff. So don't be telling me I ran away from the fight.'"

Scott came home because of her son, then living in the U.S. alone due to Powell's flight from the country to escape legal problems. She sought out dramatic roles in TV and films, but after landing only a handful of parts on shows such as "Julia" and "The Bold Ones," Scott refocused her energies on music. The jobs she was able to land, however, were a far cry from her Cafe Society glory years. Many of the dates were at Holiday Inns along the West Coast where, instead of typically staring the audience down to achieve silence, she made no attempt at all to quash the inevitable chattering patrons who were paying little or no attention.

By the fall of 1981, Scott knew for several months that she was dying of cancer, but continued performing for her small but devoted New York following at the Milford Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. By now she had almost totally abandoned the gimmicky boogie/Bach style that had first brought public attention and was concentrating on playing straight-ahead jazz of the kind she had recorded with Max Roach and Charlie Mingus on her 1955 album, "Relaxed Piano Moods."

During the era of World War II, Hazel Scott was a household name to most of the nation's blacks and to a large part of sophisticated white America. She was also among the first entertainers of any race to combine political activism with professional undertakings as a performer. By the 1960s, thanks in no small part to a war waged against her by Communist witch hunters, Scott, who had accomplished so much in the area of civil rights throughout her career, had disappeared from public consciousness almost without blip. She died in New York City at age 61 on Oct. 2, 1981.

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