Contact Me By Email

Atlanta, GA Weather from Weather Underground

Jackie McLean

John H. Armwood Jazz History Lecture Nashville's Cheekwood Arts Center 1989

Thursday, November 30, 2006

: "Down in Front
Sketches of Pain
Miles Davis’s estranged firstborn son speaks, softly but angrily
by Rob Harvilla
November 27th, 2006 3:40 PM

Down in Front
Sketches of Pain
Miles Davis’s estranged firstborn son speaks, softly but angrily
by Rob Harvilla
November 27th, 2006 3:40 PM





post to del.icio.us
post to furl


Listen. The greatest feeling I ever had in my life—with my clothes on—was when I first heard Diz & Bird together in St. Louis, Missouri, back in 1944.

Thus begins Miles, the (arguably) definitive Miles Davis autobiography, co-authored by Quincy Troupe and unleashed in 1989, 400-plus pages of warmly recalled terrible motherfuckers. As in "Sarah Vaughn was there also, and she's a http://wwwmotherfucker too" or "Goddamn, those motherfuckers were terrible." That's page 9. On page 10, Miles describes his first exposure to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker—"I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never quite got there," he writes. "I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though . . . "

Gregory Davis, Miles's firstborn son, also hints at that Miles-trying-to-make-it-feel-like-the-first-time phenomenon in his own new bio Dark Magus: The Jekyll and Hyde Life of Miles Davis. But in this case, he's talking about cocaine and/or heroin.

You better hope the imminent Miles biopic isn't the same goopy Oscar-bait treatment Johnny Cash and Ray Charles endured, or you'll spend three hours watching Chris Tucker or Charlie Murphy or whoever stomp around a movie screen, abusing women, drugs, and evidently, his son Gregory in equal measure. (Actually, let's do the Charlie Murphy version.) Critical, literary odes to Miles—his own autobio especially—certainly don't skimp on the details of his mercurial, hostile "Prince of Darkness" persona. And though Gregory abhors that phrase specifically, Dark Magus has its own particularly lurid moments.

"I love my father dearly," Gregory says, chatting on the phone with the Voice. "This is not a Daddy Dearest." Nonetheless, Daddy sounds like a terrible motherfucker.

Gregory is fighting for his piece of Miles's legacy, metaphorically and legally. For years he's been brawling with the brothers, sisters, cousins, and uncles-in-law who make up the Miles Davis estate that has almost entirely shut him out: Miles mysteriously left Gregory and his second-born son, Miles Jr., out of his will. (Gregory says Miles, never too fond of such details, signed it but didn't read it.) Just recently Gregory wrangled 25 percent of Miles's future royalties out of the estate; now he's targeting back pay. "They recognize they've been robbing me for years, but they're willing to 'go forward,' " Gregory scoffs. "What kinda attitude is that?"

Dark Magus's second half largely concerns this posthumous dispute, and its early pages plod through a truncated early timeline that other accounts, the Troupe autobio especially, cover with far greater color and detail. Casual Strand browsers should grab Magus and flip directly to page 90, the Kind of Blue section. (Every chapter is assigned a classic jazz album or tune; the one detailing Miles's marital history is, of course, Bitches Brew.) Kind of Blue subheadings include "Miles Becomes a Woman Beater," "Attacking a Model," "My Little Brother Slaps My Father," "He Had Demons Inside Himself," "You're Under Arrest," and "Kinky Sex With My Wife?" (Miles apparently suggested a foursome; Gregory, and presumably his wife, declined.) Gregory recalls being present as Miles attacked a girlfriend with a splintered drumstick. Accompanying his father on drug deals and punching out vengeful dealers when Miles mouthed off. Hearing tell of a bizarre incident (subhead: "A Great Miles Story") wherein a would-be burglar inadvertently drinks Miles's urine. And after several chapters of relatively polite reminiscences about his father's parents and surrounding family, Gregory suddenly muses that Miles's dark side is entirely due to the abuse, verbal and physical, Miles endured from his mother.

"I don't remember my grandmother ever being mean to me," Gregory writes. "But my father's sister—my Aunt Dorothy May—was also a bitch, and so was my sister for whatever her reasons were. Those were the two who successfully conspired to cut me out of Miles's will."

Well, now. Miles's estate declined an interview, releasing instead a brief statement: "The family has read the book and finds no fact or merit in its contents. We will have no further comment at this time."

Gregory's account of his early years with Miles is sometimes unbearably sad, especially his early, disastrous trumpet lessons. "I was always on the verge of tears," he writes. "I was 'every kind of asshole,' a 'simple motherfucka,' a 'no-blowing piece of shit.' " But he reserves the real bitterness for the legal battles over the estate. Writing this brought up "painful memories and delightful memories too," he tells me. "He was a man with a full life, and he would go through ordinary everyday unhappiness. Everyday unhappiness for him would be five times what a normal person would go through." Gregory clings to one incident—as a small child he choked on a penny, and a shoeless, nearly naked Miles ran with him to the hospital—as emblematic of his father's underlying love. "Maybe he really did have some father in him," he writes. "After all, didn't he run down the street almost naked to save my life?"

But it's the later years that Gregory especially hopes his book will illuminate, playing up a father-son bond he says no other estate member or outside biographer can hope to match. "You don't know him as someone who lived with him, by his side," he tells me. "I'm his son, I'm his first son, I'm his number one son. I traveled with him from the age of nine or 10 years old. Whenever he called on me, when I got older, I was by his side. I was his son, his nurse, his assistant road manager, his bodyguard. Whatever he needed, I was there by my father's side." He says his family's hostilities stem from a mixture of greed and jealousy.

Dark Magus also has harsh words for the critics and biographers poaching his father's legacy, but Troupe, for one, doesn't return the enmity. "I think Gregory is unappreciated, I really do," he says in a Voice interview. "I really think you have to be able to forgive people for their past problems. This is his sister. These are his brothers and sisters and cousins. They have to be able to forgive him if he did something to them. They ought to appreciate him for taking care of his dad. 'Cause he did. There's enough money for all of them. Damn."

Gregory's most painful recollections are of his father's death and its immediate aftermath—Miles on his deathbed in Malibu and Gregory stuck in New York City with no money for a plane ticket, shunned by the rest of the family. But Dark Magus, true to Gregory's word, never reads like outright vengeance, at least not toward Miles. Instead, he attacks misconceptions about his father. Miles wasn't defiantly turning his back on the audience onstage—he was facing and leading the band. As for hints of racism, Gregory writes, "Anytime you heard Miles say, 'You White motherfucka,' it was because he had thought of something this country had done to Black people, not because he hated White people."

If Gregory blames Miles for anything, its the apathy and inattentiveness that led to the hostile family takeover, which in turn caused Gregory's estrangement in his father's final years and the legal trouble following his death. "My father actually asked for my forgiveness," he tells me, several times. On his deathbed, Miles "told my uncle, his brother, 'Tell Gregory I tried to wait on him.' He was under the impression I was coming." Dark Magus admits that Gregory and Miles Jr. (the son who slapped Miles, incidentally) were rebuked and eventually disowned by their famously mercurial father, but Gregory has found other places to lay the blame. "What father isn't angry at his sons from time to time?" he asks me. "Especially this one."

Gregory Davis holds a book signing for Dark Magus Monday at Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction, mopitkins.com






post to del.icio.us
post to furl


Listen. The greatest feeling I ever had in my life—with my clothes on—was when I first heard Diz & Bird together in St. Louis, Missouri, back in 1944.

Thus begins Miles, the (arguably) definitive Miles Davis autobiography, co-authored by Quincy Troupe and unleashed in 1989, 400-plus pages of warmly recalled terrible motherfuckers. As in 'Sarah Vaughn was there also, and she's a http://wwwmotherfucker too' or 'Goddamn, those motherfuckers were terrible.' That's page 9. On page 10, Miles describes his first exposure to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker—'I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never quite got there,' he writes. 'I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though . . . '

Gregory Davis, Miles's firstborn son, also hints at that Miles-trying-to-make-it-feel-like-the-first-time phenomenon in his own new bio Dark Magus: The Jekyll and Hyde Life of Miles Davis. But in this case, he's talking about coc"

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Anita O'Day Dead at 87

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 23, 2006; 2:18 PM


Anita O'Day, 87 whose breathy voice and witty improvisation made her one of
the most dazzling jazz singers of the last century and whose sex appeal and
drug addiction earned her the nickname "the Jezebel of Jazz," died Nov. 23
in West Los Angeles, according to her Web site.

Ms. O'Day led one of the roughest lives in jazz, surpassed only by her idol,
Billie Holiday. Impoverished and largely abandoned in childhood, she left
her home in Chicago to work as a marathon walker and dancer during the
Depression. About that time, she changed her surname from Colton to O'Day,
pig Latin for "dough," slang for money.

A mental breakdown, a rape, numerous abortions, a 14-year addiction to
heroin and time in jail all contributed to her legend as a survivor over a
five-decade career. She could be cantankerous in manner and dismissive of
interviewers trying to moralize about her experiences. She seemed to live
always in the present, going so far as to claim she never read her 1981
as-told-to autobiography, appropriately titled "High Times, Hard Times."

First as a replacement singer in a nightclub, she honed a freely swinging
singing style that led to a career with some of the top bands of the period.
Critics wrote rhapsodically about her, with Nat Hentoff declaring her "the
most authentically hot jazz singer of all."

In the 1940s, when most "girl singers" were pert appendages to a featured
band, Ms. O'Day was a star attraction who often enlivened the orchestra with
her playful and inspired vocals. She said she saw herself as an
instrumentalist and was often seen wearing a band uniform, instead of an
evening gown, to publicly demonstrate her musicality over her striking
looks.

She was among the hippest women singers of the big-band period, lending rare
emotional resonance to the relentlessly uptempo and brassy big bands of Gene
Krupa and Stan Kenton. She gave both orchestras their first million-selling
hits, doing a rare interracial duet on "Let Me Off Uptown" with Krupa
trumpeter Roy Eldridge and then the novelty number "And Her Tears Flowed
Like Wine" with Kenton's ensemble.

With Verve records in the 1950s, she performed some of the most inventive
interpretations of jazz standards. Andy Razaf, who wrote the words to Fats
Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose," once said hers was the definitive version of
the tune -- even surpassing Waller's earlier recording of the song.

Ms. O'Day was sometimes compared with Holiday, with whom she shared a
tendency to project vulnerability through a calculated crack in her tone.
She also enjoyed the unpredictability of verbal improvisation and was highly
regarded for her scat singing.

As a rule, she once said, she sang the melody straight when accompanying big
bands but felt freer to mold the melody with her own ideas.

Her signature sound was to create an elasticity with words, often to break
them down to faster eight and sixteenth notes instead of the quarter notes
that were harder for her to sustain. This tendency was the result of a
childhood tonsillectomy in which the doctor had accidentally removed her
uvula, the bit of flesh that hangs from the back of the mouth and that
vibrations of which control tone.

To compensate, she would stretch single-syllable words in a playful and
often sexy manner; "you" would be "you-ew-ew-ew," love would became
"lah-uh-uh-uv."

"When you haven't got that much voice, you have to use all the cracks and
crevices and the black and the white keys," she once said.

Even during her addiction to heroin in the 1950s and 1960s, Hentoff and
Leonard Feather noted her stunning vocal talents. As jazz fell out of
popular favor, she continued to sing but in smaller venues. She was not left
with much money -- much of it having gone to support her drug habit -- and
she wrote in her 1981 autobiography that she lived for singing.

In 1984, Ms. O'Day told The Washington Post that she viewed herself as a
stylist grounded in rhythm more than a singer with showy technique. "I even
took vocal lessons and I tried to get all these tones going and I never
thought to look inside the throat," she said. "It was all from inside, from
the heart, desire."

Ms. O'Day was born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago, where her father was a
printer and her mother worked at a meat-packing plant.

She recalled in her autobiography her parents constantly fighting--when her
alcoholic father bothered to show up at all. She wrote that they married
only after her mother became pregnant. Her father later left the family and
married a total of 10 women.

As a child, she listened to the radio and sang in church. In the mid-1930s,
she dropped out of school and hitchhiked to Muskegon, Mich., to enter a
walkathon, one of the Depression-era crazes in which the contestants were
fed in exchange for the brutal entertainment. She claimed to have walked 97
consecutive days upright and did not complain because "when you are 14, you
don't hurt."

She also sang at some of the events and at other clubs and burlesque houses.

By 1939, as Anita O'Day, she was performing in a downtown Chicago club with
Max Miller's band and received a positive review in Down Beat magazine.
Krupa noticed her in Chicago and hired her and Eldridge in 1941. The jazz
writer Will Friedwald once noted that the new additions "galvanized the
Krupa men and positively transformed the band into one of the most powerful
bands of the great era, putting it in a class with Ellington, Basie, Goodman
and Dorsey. The Krupa-O'Day combination also signified the first time since
Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb that a great jazz singer had been extensively
featured with a great jazz ensemble."

With her hip phrasing and sex appeal, she became a national name. She left
Krupa when he was arrested in 1943 for marijuana possession and rejoined him
in 1946 when he formed a new band. It was with that expert drummer that she
had her biggest renown in the 1940s, starting with her first million-selling
record--and best-known early recording--"Let Me Off Uptown."

That tune paired O'Day's hot and sultry vocalizing with Eldridge's raspy
voice and roaring trumpet. The sexy flirting between the white O'Day and
black Eldridge was groundbreaking. "Do you feel the heat?" she asks
Eldridge, before instructing him to "blow, Roy, blow!"

They also had hits with "Boogie Blues" and "Just a Little Bit South of North
Carolina."

Ms. O'Day worked with some of the loudest, brassiest and hardest-swinging of
mainstream big bands. Besides Krupa's group, she also spent shorter and
less-enjoyable stints with Woody Herman and Kenton, whose intellectual,
"modern" sound did not mesh with her accent on easy swing. She did, however,
credit Kenton with helping her better understand chord structure.

The relentless performing on tour triggered a nervous breakdown. She decided
in 1946 to settle in the Los Angeles area and work alone.

In 1947, she received her first jail sentence, for marijuana possession. In
1953, she was convicted for heroin possession, although she told
interviewers she was framed.

She downplayed her arrests, writing in her autobiography that she "looked on
serving my sentences as a kind of vacation. . . . Rehabilitated? Hardly.
Rested? Definitely."

Despite a period of recording less than scintillating songs, such as "The
Tennessee Waltz," her drug notoriety enhanced her career. Her handlers
dubbed her "the Jezebel of Jazz."

In Chicago, she, her second husband and a third partner opened a downtown
jazz club, the Hi Note, where she was the star attraction. Guest performers
included singer Carmen McRae and trumpeter Miles Davis.

In 1956, she was signed by Verve records. The nearly 20 albums she put out
on Verve during the next decade were among her most tantalizing, including
"Anita" (with "Honeysuckle Rose"), "Pick Yourself Up," "Anita O'Day Swings
Cole Porter," "Make Mine Blues," "All the Sad Young Men" and "Travelin'
Light."

She also played with Benny Goodman (who in the early 1940s refused to hire
her because she was not disciplined enough to stick to a music chart), Stan
Getz, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Joe
Williams and Oscar Peterson. She also had a 32-year musical association with
drummer John Poole, who she credited with introduced her to heroin. She said
the drug helped her off alcohol but also kept her financially insolvent for
many years.

Her vibrant appearance in the 1959 documentary "Jazz on a Summer's Day," a
film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, made her a celebrity on an
international level and brought her important musical dates in Japan and
England.

Then, in 1966, she nearly died from a heroin overdose in a bathroom in a Los
Angeles office building. The experience rattled her, and she quit heroin at
once.

Most of her money gone, she spent the rest of her life struggling to put
herself together.

In the early 1970s, she was living in a $3-a-night hotel in Los Angeles. But
by the end of the decade she had her own record label, Emily Records (named
after her dog), a series of enormously successful club dates with rave
reviews and a resurgence in popularity following her autobiography's
publication. The CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes" broadcast a segment on her.

She alternated between seclusion--she was hesitant to appear before crowds
who came to gawk--and going abroad on well-publicized engagements. She
received her first Grammy nomination in 1990 for "In a Mellow Tone" and in
1997 was given an American Jazz Masters award by the National Endowment for
the Arts.

When interviewed, her voice indicated an unyielding distress and frequent
irritation. She told one reporter that alcohol provided a welcome relief for
her at the end of the day. In 1996, she was diagnosed with permanent
alcoholic dementia.

She played jazz dates until late in life--with embarrassing results as her
frailties overtook her talent--and ended her autobiography by saying that
was all she had left. "It's a different world when the music stops," she
wrote.

But she was to be one of the "living legends" of jazz to be honored in March
2007 at the Kennedy Center as part of its "Jazz in Our Time" festival.

Her marriages to drummer Don Carter, which she said was never consummated,
and golfer Carl Hoff, whom she called unfaithful, ended in divorce.

She said she never wanted children, telling People magazine, "Ethel Kennedy
dropped 11. There are enough people in the world. I did my part by raising
dogs."

She dedicated her autobiography to her dog.


Web-Based Email :: Mail Index :: INBOX.Miles Davis List

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 23, 2006; 2:18 PM

Anita O'Day, 87, whose breathy voice and witty improvisation made her one of
the most dazzling jazz singers of the last century and whose sex appeal and
drug addiction earned her the nickname "the Jezebel of Jazz," died Nov. 23
in West Los Angeles, according to her Web site.

Ms. O'Day led one of the roughest lives in jazz, surpassed only by her idol,
Billie Holiday. Impoverished and largely abandoned in childhood, she left
her home in Chicago to work as a marathon walker and dancer during the
Depression. About that time, she changed her surname from Colton to O'Day,
pig Latin for "dough," slang for money.

A mental breakdown, a rape, numerous abortions, a 14-year addiction to
heroin and time in jail all contributed to her legend as a survivor over a
five-decade career. She could be cantankerous in manner and dismissive of
interviewers trying to moralize about her experiences. She seemed to live
always in the present, going so far as to claim she never read her 1981
as-told-to autobiography, appropriately titled "High Times, Hard Times."

First as a replacement singer in a nightclub, she honed a freely swinging
singing style that led to a career with some of the top bands of the period.
Critics wrote rhapsodically about her, with Nat Hentoff declaring her "the
most authentically hot jazz singer of all."

In the 1940s, when most "girl singers" were pert appendages to a featured
band, Ms. O'Day was a star attraction who often enlivened the orchestra with
her playful and inspired vocals. She said she saw herself as an
instrumentalist and was often seen wearing a band uniform, instead of an
evening gown, to publicly demonstrate her musicality over her striking
looks.

She was among the hippest women singers of the big-band period, lending rare
emotional resonance to the relentlessly uptempo and brassy big bands of Gene
Krupa and Stan Kenton. She gave both orchestras their first million-selling
hits, doing a rare interracial duet on "Let Me Off Uptown" with Krupa
trumpeter Roy Eldridge and then the novelty number "And Her Tears Flowed
Like Wine" with Kenton's ensemble.

With Verve records in the 1950s, she performed some of the most inventive
interpretations of jazz standards. Andy Razaf, who wrote the words to Fats
Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose," once said hers was the definitive version of
the tune -- even surpassing Waller's earlier recording of the song.

Ms. O'Day was sometimes compared with Holiday, with whom she shared a
tendency to project vulnerability through a calculated crack in her tone.
She also enjoyed the unpredictability of verbal improvisation and was highly
regarded for her scat singing.

As a rule, she once said, she sang the melody straight when accompanying big
bands but felt freer to mold the melody with her own ideas.

Her signature sound was to create an elasticity with words, often to break
them down to faster eight and sixteenth notes instead of the quarter notes
that were harder for her to sustain. This tendency was the result of a
childhood tonsillectomy in which the doctor had accidentally removed her
uvula, the bit of flesh that hangs from the back of the mouth and that
vibrations of which control tone.

To compensate, she would stretch single-syllable words in a playful and
often sexy manner; "you" would be "you-ew-ew-ew," love would became
"lah-uh-uh-uv."

"When you haven't got that much voice, you have to use all the cracks and
crevices and the black and the white keys," she once said.

Even during her addiction to heroin in the 1950s and 1960s, Hentoff and
Leonard Feather noted her stunning vocal talents. As jazz fell out of
popular favor, she continued to sing but in smaller venues. She was not left
with much money -- much of it having gone to support her drug habit -- and
she wrote in her 1981 autobiography that she lived for singing.

In 1984, Ms. O'Day told The Washington Post that she viewed herself as a
stylist grounded in rhythm more than a singer with showy technique. "I even
took vocal lessons and I tried to get all these tones going and I never
thought to look inside the throat," she said. "It was all from inside, from
the heart, desire."

Ms. O'Day was born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago, where her father was a
printer and her mother worked at a meat-packing plant.

She recalled in her autobiography her parents constantly fighting--when her
alcoholic father bothered to show up at all. She wrote that they married
only after her mother became pregnant. Her father later left the family and
married a total of 10 women.

As a child, she listened to the radio and sang in church. In the mid-1930s,
she dropped out of school and hitchhiked to Muskegon, Mich., to enter a
walkathon, one of the Depression-era crazes in which the contestants were
fed in exchange for the brutal entertainment. She claimed to have walked 97
consecutive days upright and did not complain because "when you are 14, you
don't hurt."

She also sang at some of the events and at other clubs and burlesque houses.

By 1939, as Anita O'Day, she was performing in a downtown Chicago club with
Max Miller's band and received a positive review in Down Beat magazine.
Krupa noticed her in Chicago and hired her and Eldridge in 1941. The jazz
writer Will Friedwald once noted that the new additions "galvanized the
Krupa men and positively transformed the band into one of the most powerful
bands of the great era, putting it in a class with Ellington, Basie, Goodman
and Dorsey. The Krupa-O'Day combination also signified the first time since
Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb that a great jazz singer had been extensively
featured with a great jazz ensemble."

With her hip phrasing and sex appeal, she became a national name. She left
Krupa when he was arrested in 1943 for marijuana possession and rejoined him
in 1946 when he formed a new band. It was with that expert drummer that she
had her biggest renown in the 1940s, starting with her first million-selling
record--and best-known early recording--"Let Me Off Uptown."

That tune paired O'Day's hot and sultry vocalizing with Eldridge's raspy
voice and roaring trumpet. The sexy flirting between the white O'Day and
black Eldridge was groundbreaking. "Do you feel the heat?" she asks
Eldridge, before instructing him to "blow, Roy, blow!"

They also had hits with "Boogie Blues" and "Just a Little Bit South of North
Carolina."

Ms. O'Day worked with some of the loudest, brassiest and hardest-swinging of
mainstream big bands. Besides Krupa's group, she also spent shorter and
less-enjoyable stints with Woody Herman and Kenton, whose intellectual,
"modern" sound did not mesh with her accent on easy swing. She did, however,
credit Kenton with helping her better understand chord structure.

The relentless performing on tour triggered a nervous breakdown. She decided
in 1946 to settle in the Los Angeles area and work alone.

In 1947, she received her first jail sentence, for marijuana possession. In
1953, she was convicted for heroin possession, although she told
interviewers she was framed.

She downplayed her arrests, writing in her autobiography that she "looked on
serving my sentences as a kind of vacation. . . . Rehabilitated? Hardly.
Rested? Definitely."

Despite a period of recording less than scintillating songs, such as "The
Tennessee Waltz," her drug notoriety enhanced her career. Her handlers
dubbed her "the Jezebel of Jazz."

In Chicago, she, her second husband and a third partner opened a downtown
jazz club, the Hi Note, where she was the star attraction. Guest performers
included singer Carmen McRae and trumpeter Miles Davis.

In 1956, she was signed by Verve records. The nearly 20 albums she put out
on Verve during the next decade were among her most tantalizing, including
"Anita" (with "Honeysuckle Rose"), "Pick Yourself Up," "Anita O'Day Swings
Cole Porter," "Make Mine Blues," "All the Sad Young Men" and "Travelin'
Light."

She also played with Benny Goodman (who in the early 1940s refused to hire
her because she was not disciplined enough to stick to a music chart), Stan
Getz, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Joe
Williams and Oscar Peterson. She also had a 32-year musical association with
drummer John Poole, who she credited with introduced her to heroin. She said
the drug helped her off alcohol but also kept her financially insolvent for
many years.

Her vibrant appearance in the 1959 documentary "Jazz on a Summer's Day," a
film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, made her a celebrity on an
international level and brought her important musical dates in Japan and
England.

Then, in 1966, she nearly died from a heroin overdose in a bathroom in a Los
Angeles office building. The experience rattled her, and she quit heroin at
once.

Most of her money gone, she spent the rest of her life struggling to put
herself together.

In the early 1970s, she was living in a $3-a-night hotel in Los Angeles. But
by the end of the decade she had her own record label, Emily Records (named
after her dog), a series of enormously successful club dates with rave
reviews and a resurgence in popularity following her autobiography's
publication. The CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes" broadcast a segment on her.

She alternated between seclusion--she was hesitant to appear before crowds
who came to gawk--and going abroad on well-publicized engagements. She
received her first Grammy nomination in 1990 for "In a Mellow Tone" and in
1997 was given an American Jazz Masters award by the National Endowment for
the Arts.

When interviewed, her voice indicated an unyielding distress and frequent
irritation. She told one reporter that alcohol provided a welcome relief for
her at the end of the day. In 1996, she was diagnosed with permanent
alcoholic dementia.

She played jazz dates until late in life--with embarrassing results as her
frailties overtook her talent--and ended her autobiography by saying that
was all she had left. "It's a different world when the music stops," she
wrote.

But she was to be one of the "living legends" of jazz to be honored in March
2007 at the Kennedy Center as part of its "Jazz in Our Time" festival.

Her marriages to drummer Don Carter, which she said was never consummated,
and golfer Carl Hoff, whom she called unfaithful, ended in divorce.

She said she never wanted children, telling People magazine, "Ethel Kennedy
dropped 11. There are enough people in the world. I did my part by raising
dogs."

She dedicated her autobiography to her dog.


Tuesday, November 21, 2006

RUTH BROWN, THE ORIGINAL QUEEN OF R&B AND ROYALTY REFORM PIONEER, DIES AT 78 :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz N

RUTH BROWN, THE ORIGINAL QUEEN OF R&B AND ROYALTY REFORM PIONEER, DIES AT 78 :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: Obituaries: RUTH BROWN, THE ORIGINAL QUEEN OF R&B AND ROYALTY REFORM PIONEER, DIES AT 78
Posted by: editoron Saturday, November 18, 2006 - 08:58 AM
Jazz News The incomparable Ruth Brown, whose musical legacy was matched by
her fight for royalty reform for herself and other R&B Artists,
passed away on November 17, 2006 in a Las Vegas area hospital from
complications following a stroke and heart attack. Howell Begle,
longtime friend and legal representative made the announcement for
the family.

Known as "The Girl with a Tear in her Voice", "The Original Queen of
Rhythm & Blues," "Miss Rhythm & Blues," and the well-known moniker
of "Miss Rhythm," the nickname given her by Mr. Rhythm, Frankie Lane,
Ruth Brown was also credited as the first star made by Atlantic
Records. Her regal hit-making reign from 1949 to the close of
the '50s helped tremendously to establish the New York label's
predominance in the R&B field, a track record for which the young
label was referred to as "The House That Ruth Built."

email thisprint thisreprint or license this
Ruth Brown, R&B star in 1950s, dies in Las Vegas at age 78
DAISY NGUYEN
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Ruth Brown's recordings of "Teardrops in My Eyes" and "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean" dominated the rhythm-and-blues charts in the 1950s and earned her the nickname "Miss Rhythm."

But her other nickname might as well be "Miss Survivor" for sustaining through the highs and lows of a six decades-long career.

Brown died Friday at a Las Vegas-area hospital of complications from a stroke and heart attack, said Lindajo Loftus, a publicist for the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which Brown helped found.

"Ruth was one of the most important and beloved figures in modern music," singer Bonnie Raitt said in a statement. "You can hear her influence in everyone from Little Richard to Etta (James), Aretha (Franklin), Janis (Joplin) and divas like Christina Aguilera today."

"She was my dear friend and I will miss her terribly," Raitt said.

Brown shot to stardom in 1949 when her recording of the ballad "So Long" became a hit. Her soulful voice produced dozens of hits for Atlantic Records, cementing the then-fledgling label's reputation as an R&B powerhouse.

Trained in a church choir in her hometown of Portsmouth, Va., Brown sang a range of style from jazz to gospel-blues in such hits as "5-10-15 Hours" and "Teardrops in My Eyes."

But as R&B fell out of style in the late 1950s and other artists took over the charts, Brown was forced to find other work. She worked as a maid, school bus driver and teacher to support herself and her two sons for the next decade and a half.

Brown made a comeback in the mid-70s when she began recording blues and jazz tunes for a variety of labels and found success on stage and in television, radio and movies.

She won acclaim in the R&B musical "Staggerlee" and a Tony Award for best actress in the Broadway revue "Black and Blue."

She had a memorable role as the feisty deejay Motormouth Maybelle in the 1988 cult movie "Hairspray." A year later, she won a Grammy for best jazz vocal performance for her album "Blues on Broadway."

Brown continued to perform and record in her later years, becoming a popular host of National Public Radio's "Harlem Hit Parade" and "BluesStage."

She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

In her latter years, she became a prominent advocate for R&B and blues musicians of her generation who were fighting to get unpaid royalties from record labels. Her effort led to the formation of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit dedicated to providing financial and medical assistance, as well as the historical and cultural preservation of the musical genre.

Brown was survived by sons Earl Swanson and Ron Jackson; brothers Leonard Weston, Benjamin Weston and Alvin Weston; and sister Delia Weston.

Funeral arrangements were pending. The Rhythm & Blues Foundation said details would be released soon regarding a public memorial for Brown to be held in New York City.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Jazz Bio, Alive at the Village Vanguard, Now Available :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Jazz Bio, Alive at the Village Vanguard, Now Available :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Jazz Bio, Alive at the Village Vanguard, Now Available
Posted by: editoron Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - 06:35 PM
Jazz News Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life In and Out of Jazz Time

Lorraine Gordon, proprietor of the Village Vanguard and one of the first ladies of jazz for more than 60 years, has just released her memoirs, Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life In and Out of Jazz Time. Since the 1940s, Lorraine has personally known, worked with and booked at her club all the greats of the jazz world, and the story of her life is truly fascinating. Alive at the Village Vanguard includes Eartha Kitt, Lenny Bruce, Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Henry Kissinger, Nina Simone, Oscar Peterson, Allen Ginsburg, Andy Warhol, Harry Belafonte, Nichols and May, Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett, Pete Seeger, Adolph Green, Betty Comden, Leonard Bernstein, Woody Allen, Maya Angelou, Jonathan Winters, and many, many more.
Alive at the Village Vanguard available now worldwide, in stores and online, is from Hal Leonard Performing Arts Book Group.

About Lorraine Gordon:

1937: Jazz aficionado from the age of fourteen. “I collected jazz records like a maniac. It was serious stuff and we treated it seriously—we read all the books, we listened to every recording ever made, we knew who the soloists were by their sound.”

1942: Married Blue Note Records founder Alfred Lion. “I learned to type. I did all the bookkeeping. And though I didn’t know what public relations meant, I did that too. We were little people in a little business. But we were selling something fabulous.”

1947: Discovered and championed Thelonious Monk. “We all sat down on Monk’s narrow bed―our legs straight out in front of us like children. The door closed. And Monk played, with his back to us. Thelonious Monk became my personal mission. Did his records sell at first? No. I went up to Harlem and those record stores didn’t want Monk or me.”

1950: Married Village Vanguard and Blue Angel proprietor Max Gordon. “The Village Vanguard had started out as Max Gordon’s living room. Max was a writer, a poet, a thinker. Max Gordon truly was a Bohemian.”

1961: Women Strike for Peace. “I wound up handling all the New York press relations, as well as marching, and I hosted evenings galore. We were forever demonstrating in Washington. We lobbied our senators. We attended disarmament conferences all over the world.”

1965: Traveled secretly to North Vietnam from the Soviet Union. “You couldn’t eat, sleep or drink without reading about the Vietnam War. Half of America was against it. You can’t just sit there. There was a group of North Vietnamese women we had made contact with who were looking to end the war. Let’s see, we said, if Lorraine can get to North Vietnam…”

1989: Assumed the helm at The Village Vanguard upon Max Gordon’s death. “I certainly had no fear. I just got into the swim as fast as I could; just held my nose and jumped in. I didn’t arrive at The Village Vanguard out of the blue. I stuck to what I loved. That was my art. Throughout my life I followed the course of the music that I loved. I loved jazz. And what I loved was terrific.”

2006: Now 84 years young and as impresario of The Village Vanguard, Lorraine Gordon remains a force of pure inspiration: “Life is so beautiful when you’re passionate about something, when you’re committed.”

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Dee Dee Bridgewater performs with Jon Faddis and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz New

Dee Dee Bridgewater performs with Jon Faddis and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: Club Listings / Gigs: Dee Dee Bridgewater performs with Jon Faddis and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble
Posted by: eJazzNews Readeron Monday, November 13, 2006 - 08:31 PM
Gig Listing THE CHICAGO JAZZ ENSEMBLE, CONDUCTED BY JON FADDIS, PRESENTS DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER AT HARRIS THEATER DECEMBER 15, 8:00 P.M.

CHICAGO, November 14, 2006 – The Chicago Jazz Ensemble (CJE) and Artistic Director Jon Faddis continue the Eighth American Heritage Series at the Harris Theater on Friday, December 15, at 8:00 p.m. in concert with special guest vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater. Tickets are $45, $35, $20 and $15 with a 10% discount to senior citizens and students and a 20% discount to groups of 10 or more. For tickets and information, visit www.harristheaterchicago.com or call (312) 334-7777.




An award-winning vocalist, actress and radio host, Bridgewater is known the world over as a vibrant storyteller and as the captivating host of National Public Radio’s JazzSet©. Making her debut with the CJE, she first performed with Faddis in 1971 when they were members of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band (now the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra). They also performed together at Chicago’s Symphony Center in the fall of 2004. Featuring holiday favorites, jazz standards and original tunes, the evening is sure to be full of surprises when these two old friends get together.

Bridgewater ranks among an elite group of artists. Few entertainers have been rewarded with Broadway’s coveted Tony Award (Best Featured Actress in a Musical for “The Wiz”); nominated for the London theater’s West End equivalent, the Laurence Olivier Award (Best Actress in a Musical for “Lady Day”); won two Grammy® Awards (1998’s Best Jazz Vocal Performance and Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocal for "Cottontail" and "Dear Ella "); and France’s 1998 top honor Victoire de la Musique (Best Jazz Vocal Album). She made her New York debut in 1970 as the lead vocalist with Jones and Lewis and later made her mark in concerts and on recordings with jazz giants including Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach and Roland Kirk. She also gained rich experiences with Norman Connors, Stanley Clarke and Frank Foster’s "Loud Minority." In 1974, she jumped at the chance to act and sing on Broadway where her voice, beauty and stage presence won her great success. This began a long line of awards and accolades as well as opportunities to work in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris and London. Taking over the reigns of JazzSet© from Branford Marsalis, Dee Dee continues to bring her message to listeners while presenting today's best jazz artists in performance on stages around the world.

The Chicago Jazz Ensemble is recognized internationally as one of America’s leading jazz ensembles. Founded in 1965 by distinguished composer and conductor William Russo, and currently led by trumpeter Jon Faddis, the CJE remains dedicated to preserving the innovative tradition of American jazz music, performing and reinterpreting the classics of big-band repertoire, while promoting the continuing evolution of the art form by regularly performing and commissioning contemporary works. As a professional jazz ensemble in residence at Columbia College Chicago, the CJE is equally committed to education, building new audiences and fostering the next generation of American talent by training and mentoring young musicians.


The 2006/2007 season marks the CJE’s 41st Anniversary and third year with Jon Faddis as Artistic Director. Faddis draws on more than 30 years experience in performing with superb big bands and leaders, including Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra (now the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra) and Gil Evans. Faddis served as music director for Dizzy Gillespie’s GrammyTM-award winning United Nation Orchestra, for Dizzy Gillespie’s 70th Birthday Big Band, and, after his mentor’s passing, Faddis led the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars Big Band. Renowned for his leadership of the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, Faddis conducted more than 40 concerts in 10 years at Carnegie Hall, featuring over 135 musicians and 70 guest artists. Faddis is reaping great audience and critical acclaim with his new album, Teranga, which was released on Koch Records in June.

The American Heritage Series continues at the Harris Theater on February 16, at 8:00 p.m., with guest artist Ramsey Lewis; three concerts at The Black Orchid Supper Club, March 15, at 8:00 p.m., with “Women in Jazz” featuring saxophonist Ada Rovatti, pianist Helen Sung, plus vocalist Bobbi Wilsyn and SHE on April 12, at 8:00 p.m. and The Chicago Jazz Ensemble Cabaret Event on May 10, at 8:00 p.m.; and the CJE stars in an additional concert at the Hot House on December 16, at 3:00 p.m.

The Chicago Jazz EnsembleTM is: JON FADDIS, Artistic Director & trumpet; JOHN WOJCIECHOWSKI, alto saxophone; JARRED HARRIS, alto saxophone; PAT MALLINGER, tenor saxophone; ROB DENTY, tenor saxophone; TED HOGARTH, baritone saxophone; AUDREY MORRISON, trombone; TIM COFFMAN, trombone; TRACY KIRK, trombone; JOHN BLANE, bass trombone; MARK OLEN, trumpet; LARRY BOWEN, trumpet; SCOTT HALL, trumpet & Music Director; ART HOYLE, trumpet; PHAREZ WHITTED, trumpet; PETER SAXE, piano; FRANK DAWSON, guitar; DAN ANDERSON, bass; DANA HALL, drums; BOBBI WILSYN, vocals.

For more information on performances by the CJE, visit www.chijazz.com.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Legacy Band “Maximum Firepower” CD-2006 Savant :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz

Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Legacy Band “Maximum Firepower” CD-2006 Savant :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: CD Reviews: Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Legacy Band “Maximum Firepower” CD-2006 Savant
Posted by: adminon Thursday, October 05, 2006 - 11:00 PM
Reviews By Glenn Astarita

Drummer Louis Hayes' performing/recording days with Nat and Cannonball Adderley signifies a lineage here. Engineered by Rudy Van Gelder, this studio session benefits from a beefy analogue sound, witnessed during the days when LPs ruled the roost. Here, alto saxophonist Vincent Herring’s lyrically-rich choruses cast a radiant glow. As pianists, Anthony Wonsey and Rick Germanson alternate duties throughout. And Hayes is in top-form via his slashing accents and buoyant sense of swing. He primes the ensemble while dropping some bombs along the way.

The artists profess a zealous jazz vibe from start to finish. With Herring and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s darting lines and tight-knit unison choruses, the band zips through selections culled from the Adderley brothers' register of favorites. They fuse a samba pulse on “This Here,” where Pelt’s brash and brassy soloing generates chutzpah and momentum. In other spots, the band tempers the flow, especially on Pelt’s warm ballad – dedicated to Cannonball and Nat – titled “The Two Of Them.” In sum, the quintet transmits either a cool breeze or they come right at you with brazen and snappy hard-bop motifs. More than just a retro type mindset, the musicians contemporize a panoramic slice of a legendary jazz unit with power and finesse.

Additional information: http://www.jazzdepot.com

This is one hip CD-- John H. Armwood

WYNTON MARSALIS SELECTED AS ONE OF "AMERICA'S BEST LEADERS" :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

WYNTON MARSALIS SELECTED AS ONE OF "AMERICA'S BEST LEADERS" :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: WYNTON MARSALIS SELECTED AS ONE OF "AMERICA'S BEST LEADERS"
Posted by: editoron Monday, October 23, 2006 - 10:26 AM
Jazz News Washington, D.C.(October 23, 2006) U.S. News & World Report today announced its 2006 listing of "America's Best Leaders." The second annual feature is on newsstands today. Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center is one of these leaders.

In a series of profiles and essays, "America's Best Leaders" reveals the country's foremost current leaders and explores the critical elements of leading in the 21st century, while celebrating those individuals who are making a lasting impact.

The project was undertaken in collaboration with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, whose mission is to further leadership for the common good through excellence in leadership research, education, and development.

The honorees' profiles are available at www.usnews.com.

"There has never been a more critical time to examine leadership in our country," said David Gergen, U.S.News' Editor-at-Large and Director of the Center for Public Leadership. "At a time when the public's confidence in leadership is low, 'America's Best Leaders' celebrates individuals who exemplify true leadership and serve as models for others."

U.S. News & World Report and Center for Public Leadership
2006 "America's Best Leaders"

Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant, United States Coast Guard
Nancy M. Barry, former President and CEO, Women's World Banking
Donald Berwick, Founder, Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Michael Bloomberg, Mayor, City of New York
Michael Brown, President and Co-Founder, City Year, Inc.
Warren Buffett, Chief Executive Officer, Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.
Charles Elachi, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Frank Gehry, Architect and Partner, Gehry Partners LLC
Alan Khazei, CEO and Co-Founder, City Year, Inc.
Joel I. Klein, Chancellor, New York City Department of Education
Wendy Kopp, President and Founder, Teach for America
A. G. Lafley, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO, The Proctor & Gamble Company
Eric Lander, Director, The Eli and Edythe Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
Patrick Lawler, CEO, Youth Villages
Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Robert Moses, Founder, President, Educator and Organizer, The Algebra Project, Inc.
Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chairman and CEO, Carlson Companies, Inc.
The Staff of the New Orleans Times-Picayune
Sandra Day O'Connor, Former Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
Paul Vallas, CEO, School District of Philadelphia


***
For a bio on Wynton Marsalis, please visit:

http://www.jalc.org/about/lcjo_pdf/wynton_marsalis_bio.pdf

Ed Bradley Passes :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily

Ed Bradley Passes :: eJazzNews.com : The Number One Jazz News Resource On The Net :: Jazz News Daily: Ed Bradley Passes
Posted by: editoron Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 03:49 PM
Jazz News “Ed Bradley was a great American, one of our definitive cultural figures, a man of unsurpassed curiosity, intelligence, dignity and heart. We of course are shocked and experiencing that unspeakable grief that always attends the finality of the death of a loved one. We have lost a trusted friend and mentor. Our nation has lost a voice of integrity and wisdom. We love him and miss him and it will always be that way.”



-Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center