SUNDAY MUSIC: The Jazz Singer Part 2, by Wiggia

As I said in Part One, the likes of Sinatra will not have a place here, not because they shouldn’t be but simply because they require a piece on their own and they have been covered in depth for what seems like forever. I could add little to the many excellent biographies on the likes of Sinatra, Bennett and Nat King Cole, or little to their music, which is available in bucket loads everywhere, rightly so.

What I wanted to do was in this second part was to showcase some less well-known artists and some from the current era. The last is difficult as jazz singing for males (as opposed to females) is almost a lost art. Why I know not, other than alternative forms probably pay a lot more.

We start with one or two not-so-new artists.

The late Jimmy Scott (1925 – 2014) is unusual for one special reason: “His unusual singing voice was due to Kallmann syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that limited his height to 4 feet 11 inches (150 cm) until the age of 37, when he grew by 8 inches (20 cm). The syndrome prevented him from reaching puberty and left him with a high voice.“

Scott became prominent as the lead singer with Lionel Hampton and had a top R&B hit with Hampton in 1950 with Everybody's Somebody's Fool - for which he received no credit ! His career faded in the late sixties and he returned to more mundane work for quite a long period.

His career was kickstarted in ‘91 after singing at a funeral. In ‘92 his album All the Way was put forward for a Grammy award and several successful albums followed, some crossing into more popular areas. In his 65 year career he performed with many of the greats of the period: Parker, Marsalis, Sarah Vaughan, Mingus, Hampton, Bud Powell, Quincy Jones and more.

This is the best version available of his own composition “Holding Back the Years” (the live versions do not have the sound quality):



Andy Bey was allegedly Coltrane's favorite singer. Born in ‘39 he started out as a singer pianist and appeared on Connie Francis' television show Startime. At seventeen he started his own trio with his two sisters called, inevitably, Andy and the Bey Sisters, who toured Europe as a group  for 16 months. Later he did some good work with Horace Silver and Garry Bartz and Dee Dee Bridgewater, and won the best jazz vocalist for 2003, and his album American Song was forwarded for a Grammy in 2005.

A wide ranging baritone voice is put to good use here with Never Let Me Go from the American Song album. He always reminds me of being a male Sarah Vaughan or Abbey Lincoln, which can’t be bad:



Difficult to believe that Mark Murphy who died in ‘15 was 83; like so many, he seemed to us as we get older to be a contemporary - worrying !

Another from a musical family, he learned the piano at seven and joined his brother's jazz dance group as the singer. He majored at uni in music and drama and performed on campus. After moving to NY in ‘54 he did work where he could find it as an actor and singer. His debut album for Decca, Meet Mark Murphy, sold well and he then moved to LA recording for Capitol before returning to NY and Riverside Records. His best jazz albums, Rah! (1961) and his favourite album That's How I love the Blues (1963), were for that label.

Between ‘63 and ‘72 he lived in England, working mainly as an actor, though still singing in clubs and on radio. He returned to the States where he recorded an album a year for fourteen years. In the mid-eighties there was a change in direction as he started to record Brazilian-based music. He continued to work into his eighties.

Stolen Moments:



Of all the more contemporary singers Kurt Elling stands out as the one who has in a word cracked it. He started in a family with church music and learned to play several instruments, he sang in his college choir and toured with them and became interested in jazz after hearing Brubeck, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock and Ella Fitzgerald.

At the start in Chicago he had to work part time as a barman and other jobs to pay the bills. In ‘95 he put together a tape of nine songs that he sent to Blue Note records where his debut album Close Your Eyes was nominated for a Grammy. He did a total of six albums for Blue Note then signed for Concord in 2006 where he remains today.

Elling has been the jazz singer in modern times. His poll-winning and awards are up there with the best. His delivery, smooth sound and timing are unquestionably spot on, but for me there has always been something missing. Is it the fact almost every number he sings sounds the same: the same tempo, the same delivery? This number is his most acclaimed and here he sings with the Sydney Orchestra. It makes no difference that he is not with a small jazz group as it sounds the same, very accomplished, but judge for yourselves:



A couple of lesser-knowns to finish. Well known in jazz circles but in the wide world outside not so much, Kevin Mahogany: his Wiki entry is quite short so a link is better than retyping parts on here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mahogany

A big man with a voice near to Joe Williams' (an insider's favourite), here he is live in ‘91 singing My Foolish Heart/Green Dolphin Street with the Ray Brown Trio:



Sachal Vasandani is not a well-known name over here. Born in Chicago in ‘78 he studied at the University of Michigan where he studied jazz and classical music. Originally he sang with Wynton Marsalis. His first album Eyes Wide Open was a success and his second in ‘09 We Move received critical acclaim; he also composes.

No More Tears:



What strikes me from the last three, and it is a purely personal view, is that there is little excitement. It is all very polished, crafted and delivered in a fault free style; there is none of the range put out by the likes of Torme or Sinatra and others. It is almost monotone, and maybe that is why the male jazz singer at this moment in time is in hibernation. We await someone who will get the old mojo going; at the moment, that is not likely.

Yet again, a victory for the wacko voting system

Labour got 262 seats out of the 650 in Parliament, on the basis of 40% of votes cast nationally. 40% of 650 seats is 260, so the actual result is a fair approximation, this time.

But although the Conservatives polled 42.4%, which proportionally should have given them 276 seats, actually they got 318 = 42 bonus Members of Parliament! 

So now they're getting back into bed with Ulster Protestants to make a workable coalition. What effect that will have in Northern Irish politics, who knows.

The system doesn't even work within individual constituencies, as I discussed six years ago*. In the 2005 General Election, only 220 MPs out of 650 obtained a majority of votes cast by their constituents; in 2010, only 217.

I expect it will turn out to be a similar picture when the results of this fiasco become available.

No wonder the inhabitants of The Bubble hate plebiscites like the EU Referendum; they're so used to gaming the usual rotten setup.

* http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/voting-reform-av-first-past-post.html

FRIDAY MUSIC: Billy Cowie, by JD

Some years ago I bought a CD called "La Chanson Bien Douce" which featured the poetry of Paul Verlaine set to music by Billy Cowie and sung by Cathryn and Lucie Robson. It is a beautiful and haunting record but I know very little about the artists involved. I have found this web site for Billy Cowie- http://billycowie.com/ and not much else.

But I have also found a wonderful and quirky selection of his music and dance choreography, including two songs from the aforementioned CD.

"Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."

William Shakespeare - The Tempest

SUNDAY MUSIC: The Jazz Singer

Al Jolson gives the title to this piece. Jolson and his climb from a child circus entertainer to the world's most popular entertainer is a story told on film and looked back upon in distaste today for performing in “blackface”, for those who believe he was in some way disrespectful of black people by some form of cultural appropriation; a label the progressives would love to and have hung on his memory, but they should read his life story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jolson to see how ridiculous their claims are.

Jolson was not a jazz singer in modern terms, yet was the man who recognised the format of singing what came into your head as opposed to that written down as "jazz", a new word in those early days: the development of the blues into other forms of music.

This the most famous of his performances is now remembered for all the wrong reasons but in it - and this was 1927 - you can hear the elements of early jazz singing:



Virtually all the early jazz singers came from a blues background or interpreted blues in their repertoire. Louis Armstrong is often quoted as a jazz singer, and he was, but much of his singing was a leftover from the Jolson days in many respects. As an addition to his trumpet, part of the “entertainment” and in many ways more gratuitous in performing as a very obvious black man to white audiences, it didn’t harm his career but in retrospect it can be a bit cringeworthy to watch the act.

Joe Williams is always associated with the Basie band and quite rightly so as it was a match made in heaven. He sang with other big bands before Basie. Born in the deep South, he was taken to Chicago at an early age and sang in a gospel group in churches before singing with his first bands including Lionel Hampton without great success personally.

In 1950 he was singing in a club when Basie heard him. Their association lasted from ‘54 through to ‘61 and this was the period when “Number One Son” as Basie called him sprang to national prominence. After Basie, with whom he remained good friends, he toured,  performed and recorded as a solo artist and with various musicians and bands. He also had a regular television appearances and was in two films with Basie, plus the Crosby Show and Sesame Street. He worked on a regular basis until his death in Las Vegas in 1999 at the age of 80.

Here, inevitably with Basie, he sings his most influential song, one that saw him inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in’92 as having significant influence in jazz: Everyday I have the Blues, at a Basie reunion in ‘81 at Carnegie Hall:



Before Joe Williams, Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie for thirteen years from ‘35 - ‘48 and was considered by many to be the best of all blues singers. Another from a musical family, he was unusual in that he attended college where he studied musical theory and then went to university.

Here is "Mister Five by Five", with the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1958:



John Coltrane wanted to make this album, no hard be bop here, and choose Johnny Hartman to sing on this album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. It was the only vocal album Coltrane ever did, recorded as it would be at the time at the Rudi Van Gelder studio in 1963 it became an instant success and a jazz classic. Why Hartman never had a higher profile in music is a mystery; a voice like syrup, wonderful tone and diction, yet apart from this never really appreciated outside those who know better. A superb artist, Hartman till this time did not consider himself to be a jazz singer !

Clint Eastwood gave a more than nodding nudge to Hartman's quality when in ‘95 he included four tracks from Hartman's out of print album Once in Every Life in his film Bridges of Madison County.

This version of My One and Only Love is considered to be the definitive one:



Frank Sinatra is capable of filling several of these pieces with his own work and life. His qualities don’t need repeating, they were there for everyone to see for decades, so I am not including him here. He deserves a lot more space than a single number - and what number, era, backing band would you choose? - but one singer, a contemporary of Sinatra’s who although well known was never quite considered to be in that top drawer by the public, was Mel Torme, the “Velvet Fog”. Torme was a child prodigy performing for money at the age of four (!), was a drummer in his elementary school band and in the same period acted in three separate radio programs. At sixteen his first song that he wrote and was published, “Lament to Love”, was a hit for Harry James; at eighteen he made his film début in Frank Sinatra's first film and his second film at twenty-two, “Good News”, made him a teen idol. In ‘44 he formed the Mel - Tones, the first jazz-influenced singing group.

After the war he started a solo singing career around 1947, became involved in cool jazz and started recording jazz albums in earnest. He never really stopped either, singing, acting, arranging and writing books, one of which contained these words about Patti Andrews of Andrews Sisters fame:

"They had more hit records to their credit than you could count, and one of the main reasons for their popularity was Patty Andrews. She stood in the middle of her sisters, planted her feet apart, and belted out solos as well as singing the lead parts with zest and confidence. The kind of singing she did cannot be taught, it can't be studied in books, it can't be written down. Long experience as a singer and wide-open ears were her only teachers, and she learned her lessons well."

Another book was the biography of Buddy Rich, a friend after they met when Rich was in the Marines in ‘44. In total he wrote 250 songs. How he found time to do all this and then tour the world averaging 200 appearances a year is mind-blowing, but he did. A stroke halted his work in ‘96 and another killed him in ‘99 at the age of 73. I am biased, always have been, but he like Sinatra with his perfect diction has always been my favourite jazz singer.

Here he is with his old mate Buddy Rich performing Love for Sale. It includes two items I normally abhor: drum solos and scat singing; for these two real musical giants, I make an exception.



- and this lovely version of Stardust:



This I include for one obvious reason: not only to show the entertainer and virtuoso that Torme was but also to see another much better side of Dusty Springfield:



Lastly, with George Shearing at Newport in ‘89: “It Was Just One of Those Things”...



I have indulged myself with Torme just a bit but he should have a lot more. He belonged to that group of people who grew up having to learn all the aspects of show business as well as their music. All were great entertainers who seemingly could turn their hand to whatever was required. It was a golden age and as with so much, not likely to return.

Part 2 of The Jazz Singer will follow.

Friday Night Is Music Night: 50 Years Of Sergeant Pepper, by JD

50 years ago! It really doesn't seem like it but it is indeed 50 years since the release of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The BBC are celebrating the occasion with a series of programmes on TV and radio.

The composer Howard Goodall will be presenting a documentary on the musical significance of this particular record. Writing in the Radio Times he explains why the Beatles' music is so innovative and, more importantly, why it is so good. But it’s these five tracks, he says, that raised the bar the highest:

Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite
She's Leaving Home
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Within You Without You
A Day In The Life

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-05-26/5-songs-on-sgt-pepper-that-changed-pop-forever

But this album didn't just come out of nowhere. They had been exploring new ideas and new sounds for a few years prior to 1967 and the evidence can be heard on some of their singles, notably Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane and in their two previous albums, Rubber Soul and Revolver.

For this selection I have taken three of Goodall's choices and added some others from those two earlier albums.















To fully understand the music and the culture of the sixties this book is essential; Revolution In The Head by Ian MacDonald - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolution-Head-Beatles-Records-Sixties/dp/1844138283

It is a popular misconception that the Beatles were somehow the 'leaders' of the societal upheaval and the revolutionary protests of the sixties but that is just not true.

They were not revolutionary, they were radical which is a different thing entirely. The purpose of a Revolution, any revolution, is to overthrow the existing social and political order and replace it with a new order, to start again from scratch and usually based on some ideal to create some sort of utopia. A radical, on the other hand, will wish to effect change within an existing system because that system is perceived to have become sclerotic in its functioning or the people have become indolent. A radical idea will breathe new life into an existing tradition and tradition is no more than accumulated wisdom.

the English Radical Tradition - http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2014/03/tony-benn-and-englands-radical-tradition

The four Beatles were traditionalists, they were conservative with a small 'c' as can be seen in the first video above where they bow to their audience at the end of the song.

And they were small 'c' conservative in their attitude to the idea of rewards for endeavour (the labourer is worthy of his hire ) which is why Harrison wrote the song Taxman to reflect the 95% that was taken from their earnings by the Government. It wasn't just the sharks of the music industry trying to fleece them, they realised that the Government, then as now, is the biggest shark.



Seeing the 'revolutionary' fervour and the desire of these 'revolutionaries' to 'smash the system' and the obvious anarchic mayhem that would result from such thinking, the Beatles' thoughts were crystallised back to their traditional and conservative roots. They recorded three versions of the song Revolution but the single released in 1968 (as a double A side with Hey Jude) was unequivocal in its condemnation of such upheaval with lyrics including:

"But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out"
"But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait"
"But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"

That couldn't be clearer and the record produced a furious reaction from the intelligentsia of the counter-culture. They accused the Beatles of betrayal! Of what, precisely? MacDonald in his book writes that the 'revolutionaries' all ended up with secure, well-paid jobs in advertising. It would be more accurate to say that the student protestors and the 'peace and love' hippies of the sixties grew up to become the 'greed is good' yuppies of the eighties. As Robert Anton Wilson wryly observed, "It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."



But the music endures. As I noted in a previous post (on art), in 100 years from now all the 'fussing and fighting' will be forgotten and the focus will be on the music because it is not politics which wins hearts and minds, it is art.

Vita brevis, ars longa.

Wine: a Tale of Change and Fashion, by Wiggia

Those of you who believe that wine is a product made by artisans who tend the grapes' every need and sit in the vineyards during the winter talking to the vines and then with love ferment and mature the wine in oak casks before bottling and hand labelling, should look at the above picture.

That is the manufacturing plant of E&J Gallo in Fresno, California, the world's biggest winery! No, it is not an oil refinery.

Wine has been evolving and changing since it was first made - in ancient Greece?*

The acceleration of change in the last twenty or thirty years has been of a different magnitude on all levels. The science employed in the making of wine has matched the new knowledge employed by the winemakers and their ability to overcome indifferent sites and soil as well as temperature changes, and to enhance even further the already good sites.

On top of this the proliferation of countries manufacturing wine, yes it is an industry, now cover ever more areas of the globe. Not only are old forgotten areas being revived but new ones are emerging. All this should bring joy to a wine lover's heart, yet there are caveats.

The fashion in wine styles and the promotion of the next big thing grape-wise has meant in many cases whole areas being ploughed up and replanted to serve that fad. As wine is not produced overnight, and the vines take several years before becoming productive, you are taking a big chance jumping ship for another, and if you don’t move you could be stuck with an oversupply of the wrong wine.

Nowhere is fashion in wine and its downsides more clearly emphasized than in Jerez. The bulk sherry market has collapsed and grape growers are grubbing up vines and planting more profitable crops. Sherry has been struggling for years as has port, even aggressive advertising and assurances it is on the “up” have failed to stop the slide. The only good thing about all this at the moment is that high quality sherries and even vintage port have never been cheaper for those left still drinking them; even in Madeira much of the land growing vines has been lost as the demand dropped. All this is part of a cyclical pattern of drinking tastes and fashion.

None of this applies to those perennial top end regions such as Bordeaux or Burgundy, where demand at this moment in time exceeds supply and the prices correspond with that shortage.

What prompted this piece was an article written for the NYT by Bianca Bosker, a sommelier who in the piece debunks the snobbery against bulk wines and the fads in other areas like the current trendy “natural” wines - along with "bio dynamic" and "organic", these are the buzz words in the wine trade at the moment. "Organic" in its reference to wine is interesting as these days most wines outside of big brands are as near organic as you can get anyway, so no big deal with that on the label; "bio dynamic" is the picking and planting according to the position of stars or moon or something and while quite a few top class wines now claim to be bio dynamic would you really know and could you tell the difference? I think not; and "natural": well, if you plant, cultivate, pick and process the grape, that part is pretty natural by definition.The link to Bianca Bosker's piece is here, it’s a good read, if slightly indulgent:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/sunday/ignore-the-snobs-drink-the-cheap-delicious-wine.html?_r=0

Producing wine is at its most basic agriculture, it’s an agricultural product and all agriculture is governed by the same rules as to site, soil and climate. Even the technical side has infiltrated into growing the humble spud. It is only when the wine maker puts his own stamp and expertise into the product that the differences emerge and for that you need good fruit and a lot of faith.

But this is about the fads and fancies of everyday drinking. Few can afford cru class wines for daily consumption if at all; most will remain financially out of reach whatever our status in life. No, this is about that go-to bottle on the supermarket shelf, the one that may have been transported here in a boat and a giant plastic bag for reasons of finance, as it is cheaper to bottle here than transport in bottle with the added weight - read the link for all the technical “food” expertise that is now put into wine, quite legally. For the big brands, it is no different from being hi jacked in the street to say which is your favourite burger from a choice of six: the favourite goes on the market. There is absolutely no point in the big brands putting out a wine designed by experts and loved by experts if the public doesn’t love it. It is food sampling for the masses.

What the “expert” says about this is usually derogatory and sometimes they are right, but they miss the point: these wines are for the masses, us, and there is absolutely nothing wrong in that.

The problem with that approach is that eventually, as with buying a car, so much research has gone into supplying the “right” product that a uniformity starts to emerge, and where this has become more noticeable than anywhere else, probably, is with Australian wines that are available here. Australia almost single-handedly dragged the everyday wine out of the plonk era and replaced that awful French,  Spanish and Italian bottom end rubbish with a reliable drinkable product, and for that alone we should be eternally grateful.

In my view the problem that Australia now has, having grabbed a large chunk of the world's wine market and especially supermarket wines, is lack of variety, not just in grapes but in what you drink from the bottle. Their industry has been built on the great god Shiraz, 27% of the wine land is planted with the grape, and very well built too, but it is these very wines that now fail to inspire as they universally conspire to be user-friendly and to a large degree, as with so many of the big brands, they are  indistinguishable from one another other than on price. You have to pay an awful lot more now if you want something better. Yes, they do grow Cabernet and other grapes, but Shiraz is what they built their reputation on and that is what the public remember and expect from them. It is changing, but slowly.

The same with New Zealand: having conquered the Sauvignon Blanc world and now attempting to do the same with Pinot Noir they have little to fall back on as other countries muscle in on their patch and some very successfully. So far sales are holding up, yet for how long? as South Africa starts to up its game with other wines besides Chenin Blanc and is making a very good job of it. South America is really making an impact, with Chile’s big wineries making inroads into the bulk market; and Argentina is very well placed, having sold well in the USA with Malbec and now doing the same here and having many fine smaller wineries; and even at this relatively early stage in its wine evolution, Chile is diversifying in the planting of grape varieties. All this of course bodes well for the consumer in the long run, if you are interested in wine; if you are not, it makes no difference.

You will not be pouring your purchase down the sink in disgust as so much was years ago, or you shouldn’t be, so much has the quality of production changed, and as you open another bottle of Wolf Blass Cabernet you will enjoy it as you did the last time. After all, as a "yoof" I consumed indecent amounts of Watney's Red Barrel; that seemed perfectly OK at the time for getting blotto on, no need for a hand-crafted micro brewery beer for that purpose.

In some ways the fashion in wine is interesting. Who could predict the fall from grace in the mass market of Chardonnay, the great white grape of Burgundy? Who could have foreseen the emergence of Pinot Grigio?

And why, when Sauvignon Blanc offered a still better alternative at the same price, why the rise of rosé, when if you were blind you would never know you were drinking one? The colour, almost certainly - another success for fashion and the world of marketing, and as in other arenas such as fashion clothing itself there is nothing wrong with that. In today's world, somebody who has never purchased a bottle of wine in their life can now pick up at a decent price something they will probably enjoy and then return for another. Those wines of old would have had the opposite effect.

The majority of those buyers will never venture far from their chosen bottle. Does it matter? Not a jot, as long as they are happy; and the big brands intend to keep them happy. What I think is irrelevant, and when at your next "barby" the host pours you a fifth or six glass of the red he insists has a slightly mineral taste on the tongue and there is just a hint of herby medicinal after-taste, you can smile and just be thankful it is drinkable and you don’t really care if it was fermented in an upside down yurt. It really doesn’t matter.

More weasel piss, anyone ?

____________________________________________________
*Or Georgia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wine (Ed.)

Sunday Music: the Hammond Organ, by Wiggia

The one thing that can be said about the Hammond Organ is its fall from grace was as quick as its rise. During the sixties several musicians formed groups including this keyboard instrument and Jimmy Smith in particular sold an awful lot of albums for Blue Note during that period.

He wasn’t the first and he wasn’t the only one to front a group using it, but he was the biggest star and the one name that endured in the time since. In modern parlance the Hammond Organ is a Marmite instrument, you like it or don’t and there are few people in between. On a purely personal basis I found it to be wearing for an album of it, but certain numbers can and do come across well, and of course it is out of the mainstream of jazz whilst a mainstay of prog rock, gospel, R&B etc.

Hammond organs were first manufactured in 1935 and the company went out of business in ‘85, so its reign was relatively short though Suzuki Musical Instruments took over the name and are still supplying to various groups in rock and blues and for churches. In jazz it appears infrequently as a backing instrument but rarely now as a lead. And of course the Hammond was an electronic forerunner to the plethora of electronic keyboards used today mainly in rock, though even there digitally produced sounds are taking over.

Jimmy Smith started playing the Hammond in the fifties though the first to start playing jazz on the instrument was one Ethel Smith, but Fats Waller was the prime mover and Count Basie also used it for a period.

If you Google jazz organists quite a list appears but few specialised and few became famous. Besides Smith the obvious candidates were Wild Bill Davis, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff, Johnny “Hammond” Smith, and Richard “Groove” Holmes, Larry Young and some minor players or occasional ones.

Its jazz base has always been a black one; the black churches did and still do use the instrument, hence the sales of organ jazz have historically been to the black population. It never really took hold with white jazz lovers.

This is Fats in ‘42 playing the Jitterbug Waltz. He had played an earlier pre Hammond organ as far back as the mid twenties but this is an early Hammond recording.


One of Richard “Groove” Holmes' efforts from ‘66 “Living Soul”:


Of the top protagonists Shirley Scott outlasted them all. This, The Blues Ain’t Nothin But Some Pain from her ‘64 Great Scott album was the first time she had sung on record and she wrote this number and words the day before the recording date. For me she is up there with the best, in fact I prefer most of her music even over Jimmy Smith, somehow she makes the organ sit well with other instruments, few do. She was an admirer of Jimmy Smith but in many ways she surpassed him. She died in 2002 having recorded and performed till ‘92 .

Her health began to fail after using the now banned diet drug combination "Fen-phen", which she began taking in 1995. By 1997 she had developed primary pulmonary hypertension as a result of the drugs, and was permanently bed-ridden. She sued the manufacturer and the prescribing doctor, and was awarded a settlement of 8 million dollars in 2000.


This ‘61 rendition of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” from the album Satin Doll recorded by Rudy Van Gelder is as good as it gets from Shirley:


This live number from the Antibes Jazz Festival in ‘64 has “Brother” Jack McDuff leading his own group and the film shows in part the dexterity required to play any organ with its multiple keyboards. McDuff is in the Jimmy Smith mould as you will hear later.


Larry Young has featured with me before and this is from the same ‘65 album Unity. He probably gets his organ nearer to modern jazz than anyone else and this album was voted one of the best in its period. The stellar lineup with Young was Woody Shaw trumpet Joe Henderson tenor and Elvin Jones drums; to me this is the best Hammond album full stop and the about the only one I keep playing after all these years.

Moontrane:


Jimmy Smith has to be here, such a big star for Blue Note in the sixties with those tremendous album covers they did then. He was in all ways very distinctive and very much the showman live.

The Sermon, the title track from the album of the same name is one of his big hits. In ‘64 Jimmy was a big star and for this reason there is some live footage of him in action:


Born in 1925 or 28, there is some dispute over this for reasons I have yet to fathom. He like so many when it came to putting bread on the table joined his father in a song and dance routine in clubs at the age of six, then self taught to play the piano, and at nine won a boogie-woogie contest on that instrument. In ‘48 - ‘49 he went to musical colleges, he began to play the organ then and joined some R&B bands playing piano. He never really left R&B as later in his career he went from hard bop to mainstream jazz funk and jazz fusion.

Smith's popularity dipped along with many others in the jazz fraternity in the 70s but he had a big revival starting in the eighties and toured to much popular acclaim. He then moved with his wife Lola to Arizona in 2004 where soon after she died of cancer. He was found dead of natural causes not long after in 2005 shortly after agreeing to go on tour again.

His pure jazz days (?) were in the 50s and 60s in those Blue Note years; in the 70s Smith opened a supper club in North Hollywood and here he recorded “The 1972 album Root Down, considered a seminal influence on later generations of funk and hip-hop musicians, was recorded live at the club.”


and finish with this from ‘97, Stormy Monday with Kenny Burrel on guitar:


Marmite ?