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The JAZZ thread...

More amazing lyrics from Canadian singer and composer Gino Vannelli. A true genius.
Enjoy!

The sea is sad the world is stray
The love of earth has passed away
And war after war how we fail and ignore what we defend
And soon it will end

The pain is east the pain is west
The greed of all men has ravaged the blessed
And year after year every crime reappears without a care

Where are the summers of my life
Have the seasons all gone cold
Where are the lovers of this life
Who's drowned the fires of our souls
What have we done

If God is good then God be cruel
Take back the world you've granted to fools
Salvage the land that is best without man and all his grief

Where are the summers of my life
Have the seasons all gone cold
Where are the lovers of this life
Who's drowned the fires of our souls

Where are the summers of my life
Have the seasons all gone cold
Where are the lovers of this life
Who's drowned the fires of our souls

 
Kellee Patterson ~ See You Later

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George Duke ~ Up From The Sea It Arose And Ate Rio In One Swift Bite

 
Jimmy Scott (1925-2014)

Jimmy Scott, jazz vocalist with a distinctive high voice, dies at 88
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Don Heckman - June 14, 2014 - LA Times

Vocalist Jimmy Scott, often called "Little Jimmy Scott" for his small stature and memorable, high-pitched voice that was one of the jazz world's most unique sounds, died Thursday at his Las Vegas home. He was 88.

His wife, Jeanie Scott, reported that Scott died of complications from Kallmann syndrome, a genetic hormone deficiency that affected his entire life.

Scott used his voice, described as "ethereal" on NPR's A Blog Supreme, as a richly interpretive instrument, earning praise from the likes of Ray Charles, Madonna, Lou Reed, Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday and Nancy Wilson.

Often called "Little Jimmy Scott" for his small stature and memorable, high-pitched voice, Scott was one of the jazz world's most unique sounds. His voice earned praise from the likes of Ray Charles, Madonna and Lou Reed. He was 88.

Often called "Little Jimmy Scott" for his small stature and memorable, high-pitched voice, Scott was one of the jazz world's most unique sounds. His voice earned praise from the likes of Ray Charles, Madonna and Lou Reed.

The Village Voice called Scott "the greatest voice alive." The New York Times noted that his singing "recalls Edith Piaf," and the New York Daily News identified him as "a class act." In 2002, he was identified by the New York Times as "perhaps the most unjustly ignored American singer of the 20th century."

The combination of his high voice, which was often mistaken for that of a female, combined with his small stature, often led to mistaken identifications of Scott as a woman or a transsexual. His vocal on "Embraceable You" on the album "One Night in Birdland" was credited to a female vocalist.
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He first gained notice when he worked with Lionel Hampton in the late '40s. But here too Scott often failed to receive appropriate credit for his work. Although he sang lead vocals on Hampton's "Everybody's Somebody's Fool," a Top 10 R&B hit in 1950, Scott's name did not appear on the record label.

He was born James Victor Scott on July 17, 1925, in Cleveland, the third of 10 children. His mother died in an auto accident when he was 13, and his father left shortly thereafter; Scott and his siblings were raised in foster homes.

Scott was struck by Kallmann syndrome in late childhood. The malady prevented him from passing through puberty, leaving him with a high-pitched voice and limiting his height to 4 feet 11 inches until he was in his 30s. At 37, he grew 8 inches to his mature stature of 5 feet 7.

Nonetheless, despite its numerous ups and downs, Scott's long career, stretching more than six decades, included a long list of performances with artists in numerous musical genres. He appeared with jazz performers such as Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Quincy Jones and Bud Powell, as well as pop and rock artists David Byrne, Lou Reed, Michael Stipe and Pink Martini.

Scott was a product of the '40s and '50s, a time when the threads of jazz, swing, rhythm & blues, and the early manifestations of rock 'n' roll were becoming woven in and around each other. Although his catalog of recordings reveals some activity in the '50s and '60s, he spent many years in the '70s and beyond working in nonmusic jobs as a shipping clerk, waiter and a ward captain for the Democratic Party.

Over the next few decades, his career intermittently moved from high-visibility successes to virtual obscurity. And not because of any failures on his part.

For example, an album he considered his "masterpiece," "Falling in Love Is Wonderful," recorded in 1962, was withheld from release because of legal differences with the record company.

Recalling the situation, Scott identified it as one of the many negative personal encounters he faced as an African American artist.

"Black performers were like pieces of machines in a factory," he told The Times in 1990. "You only played a part when you could be useful. There was no interest in planning a career. No interest in making things happen over the long run. One week you could be recording with all those wonderful musicians, and the next week you might not know where your next meal was coming from."

His career was dramatically revived in 1991 when he sang at the funeral of blues singer-songwriter Doc Pomus and was heard by recording executive Seymour Stein. The encounter led to his 1992 Grammy-nominated comeback album, "All the Way." He continued to record and perform, occasionally in a wheelchair, until he was well into his '80s.

In 2007, he received an NEA Jazz Master award and the Kennedy Center's "Jazz in Our Time" Living Legend award. Last year he was inducted into the R&B Music Hall of Fame in his hometown of Cleveland.

Scott was married five times; survivors include Jeanie Scott, whom he married in 2003.
 
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by William Michael Smith - Sunday, September 27, 2015

Houston and the world lost a giant today with the passing of Wilton Felder, saxophonist for the fabled Crusaders. Mr. Felder was 75. Word of his passing reached the Internet via longtime collaborator Ray Parker, Jr.’s Facebook page around 2 p.m. today.

Felder’s passing comes only a year after the death of his lifelong friend and fellow Crusader Joe Sample. Crusaders trombonist Wayne Henderson died in April, 2014, which now leaves drummer Nesbert “Stix” Hooper as the only living Crusader from the original four. Felder, Sample, and Hooper met early in life and formed their first band while attending Phillis Wheatley High School in the Fifth War. They added Henderson and took the name Jazz Crusaders while attending Texas Southern University, but they left school without graduating in 1959 and moved to Los Angeles. They quickly made a name for themselves in the West Coast bebop scene and recorded ten albums in the hard bop style of the day.

But the huge success of the band would wait ten years until 1971 when they dropped one of the first jazz-rock records to cross over into popular music culture, Pass the Plate. Pass the Plate put them on everyone’s radar; they received letters from the Beatles — they famously covered "Eleanor Rigby" — and garnered a slot opening for a Rolling Stones tour. They also were one of the headliners at the Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight championship fight in Zaire in 1974 between Muhammad Ali and Houstonian George Foreman.

But by the mid-70s, the individual members of the Crusaders had moved outside the band to work as session musicians and as producers. Felder became a house bass player for Motown’s West Coast studio operation, where he played on recordings by the Jackson 5 and Marvin Gaye. He also worked with a number of pop acts like America and Seals & Croft. He was one of three bassists on Randy Newman’s milestone album Sail Away. He also played on Billy Joel’s Piano Man and Streetlife Serenade albums, Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust, and John Cale’s Paris 1919.

Felder recorded his debut solo album, Bullitt, in 1970, and followed with We All Have a Star in 1978. He would go on to release seven more albums. His 1985 album Secrets, with Bobby Womack as primary vocalist, made it into the UK Albums chart and the single “No Matter How High I Get (I’ll Always Be Looking Up at You)” became a minor hit.

As of this posting, no official word has been released regarding Mr. Felder’s passing or any possible cause.
 
by Jimmy Nelson | December 26, 2016 | Something Else Reviews
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The Eleventh House (Mouzon 2nd from left)

A seminal force in the birth of fusion, the remarkably adaptable Alphonse Mouzon died today (December 26, 2016), having played drums alongside of dizzying array of jazz greats. The 68-year-old had earlier confirmed a cancer diagnosis.

He sat in with Gil Evans on his 1969 release Blues in Orbit, then Roy Ayers at the turn of the decade. Work with Larry Coryell established his rhythm persona — a great combination of power, style and speed — across a series of albums beginning with 1973’s Introducing the Eleventh House. That was a rawer, more groove-oriented sound than was coming out of John McLaughlin or Chick Corea’s groups of the same period.

The credit back then didn’t go to old jazz masters so much as a seminal rock and roller – kicking off a trend of flinty experimentation that continued throughout his life.

“We had more soul; it was almost like Southern home cooking,” Mouzon told Something Else!, in a discussion about the Coryell years. “Coming from that R&B background, it was different. That actually started back in 1969, when I touring with Chubby Checker — doing ‘The Twist’ and ‘Limbo Rock.’ (Laughs.) That’s where that started. Later, I went down to a jazz camp at Florida A&M, where I met Cannonball Adderly. He gave me some good advice, when he said: ‘You’ve got to get to New York.’ I paid my dues, played everywhere, and learned a lot. That’s why, as funky as we were, we could still go intellectual. I purposely wrote songs in 7/4, 5/4 — and wrote a song in 3/4 called ‘The Funky Waltz.'”

Alphonse Mouzon would collaborate with Jaco Pastorius, Donald Byrd and Arild Andersen, then had lengthy stints with McCoy Tyner, Larry Coryell and Herbie Hancock into the 1980s. He was later involved with one of Miles Davis’ final projects. That’s to say nothing of his underrated fusion dates as a band leader, and the celebrated debut album by Weather Report. “We were a jazz experiment,” Mouzon said of that period with Weather Report. “It was so open. I love that record, not because I am on it, but because it was so different — so refreshing.”

A fusion recording that ignores every convention, 1971’s Weather Report sounded something like an ambient, more acoustic version of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew — which, after all, featured two of the future members of Weather Report.

“We would play these motifs that usually Wayne [Shorter] or Joe [Zawinul] wrote. We would take these motifs, like a little passage, then we would listen and play,” Mouzon told Something Else! “It was orchestrated in a way, then we would start improvising and it all started coming together. It sounded like it was written down. We worked off cues from there, a nod of the head or somebody would lift two fingers. A lot of the songs were like that. We wrote motifs and played.”

That stint with McCoy Tyner followed, highlighted by Alphonse Mouzon’s appearance on the John Coltrane alum’s 1972 solo debut for Milestone, Sahara. An astonishing, fiercely individualistic, Grammy-nominated triumph, the album also featuring Sonny Fortune on saxes and flute. “With McCoy, it was all high energy,” Mouzon said. “More than on Weather Report, this was the same energy as rock. Sort of (Larry Coryell’s) Eleventh House but in a jazz context.”

Yet Mouzon’s appearance there remains no small surprise considering his initial successes with Weather Report. “It was a coming to an end,” Mouzon added. “After our tour of Europe, I wasn’t that happy with the situation. We were ready to part ways, anyway. So, it was perfect when I went with McCoy. I ended up doing four records with him. It was so open and free.”
Over time, that search for freedom led him into ever more adventurous waters.

Alphonse Mouzon’s 1974 album Mind Transplant – often cited as one fusion’s best records – featured a collaboration with Tommy Bolin, who had played with Deep Purple and Billy Cobham’s Spectrum. “He made that record, along with Lee Ritenour,” Alphonse Mouzon told Something Else! “There were actually three guitars, with Jay Graydon. I heard Bolin on the Spectrum record and I wanted him on guitar. We had met before, when we sat in back in Boulder in 1974. I had the night off and sat in. So, when I went back to New York and heard Spectrum, I had to have him. That was great. I just let him stretch.”

There were other rock connections. Robert Plant, in his acceptance speech on behalf of Led Zeppelin at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, named Mouzon as one the band’s principal influences. “John Bonham (Led Zeppelin’s late drummer) would listen to me all day – so they all knew me,” Alphonse Mouzon said. “This guy used to come and see me and Larry Coryell at the Bottom Line. … Hanging out with those guys was great. Mixing rock and jazz came easy. You heard more of that stuff back then. I used to hang out with Yes, at Jon Anderson’s house. … We listened to each other’s music. I have always been a rocker — and those guys wanted to play jazz.”

Though Mouzon’s legend was built around working as a drummer, he actually played everything from guitar to flute as a kid — and was featured on organ and synthesizer on classic albums like Mind Transplant, as well. Funky Snakefoot was an underrated 1973 blending of jazz, R&B and funk for Blue Note that showcased not just Mouzon’s skills as a drummer but also as an organist and Moog player. Even featured within a trio of keyboardists including Leon Pendarvis, Mouzon’s impassioned efforts stand out. He sang a little, too, in a kind of Stevie Wonder tour de force of funk-fusion. Later-era projects like 2011’s Angel Face, a terrific straight-ahead effort, found him on trumpet.
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“I get too bored to just play the drums,” Alphonse Mouzon once told Something Else! “I’m self taught. When I was in high school growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, I began messing around with the piano, the xylophone, marimbas. When I went to New York, I had a piano in my room. I was a drummer but I didn’t have any drums! (Laughs.) So, I agreed to help be a roadie for the organ player in a big band (the Ross Carnegie Society Orchestra) that was playing across the street, and they let me play a few numbers. That was Larry Young; he played like McCoy Tyner. A very different type of organ player, so free. It was great. I picked up things along the way.”

Along the way, he played on four Herbie Hancock recordings, including 1980’s Mr. Hands, and collaboration with former Yes keyboardist Patrick Moraz, Return to Forever’s Al Di Meola and with Wayne Shorter as a solo artist. A highlight career moment arrived with 1991’s Dingo, which offered Alphonse Mouzon the long-awaited chance to record with Hancock and Shorter’s old boss Miles Davis. This project wasn’t Mouzon’s first intersection with the trumpet legend, however.

“You know, I dated his ex-wife Betty Davis, the singer — and he dated an ex-girlfriend of mine,” Mouzon confided. “We met years before when I saw a girlfriend of his on the street after he and Betty had split; he ended up coming to see me with McCoy. He found my card in this girl’s purse. I saw her on the street, stopped and told her I was playing with McCoy Tyner at the Village Vanguard. She said: ‘Maybe me and my old man will come.’ That Friday, I saw this girl coming down the stairs from stage. She was fine! Then I said wait a minute — who’s that behind her? Is that Miles? They walked in together, and sat at a reserved seat up front. He sat there, staring right at me. (Laughs.) I couldn’t even look over there. I was scared. We played for an hour, and I never looked over!”

Angel Face, which featured the likes of Cedar Walton, Ernie Watts, Christian McBride, Bob Mintzer, Wallace Roney and Arturo Sandoval, would be his final studio effort. More than 10 years in the making, the album was a bold reminder of just how much Alphonse Mouzon has meant to the development of his instrument, and of the genre itself.

There was something more, though, a gift for his daughter that’s probably more special now than ever. The stand-out track “Stepping Stone” features an eight-part harmony vocal by Mouzon’s daughter Emma Alexandra — recorded at three different ages, 5, 12 and 13 years old.
 
By Matt Schudel | February 12, 2017 | Washington Post
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Al Jarreau performing in 2010

Al Jarreau, a Grammy Award-winning singer whose versatile tenor voice and vibrant stage style blurred the lines between jazz, soul and pop music, died Feb. 12 at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 76.

His publicist, Joe Gordon, announced the death, saying the singer had been treated for exhaustion. The cause was not immediately known.

Mr. Jarreau was loosely classified as a jazz singer, but his eclectic style was entirely his own, polished through years of obscure apprenticeship in lonely nightclubs. He did not release his first album until 1975, when he was 35, but within two years he had won the first of his seven Grammy Awards and had begun to attract a wide following.

He was dubbed the “Acrobat of Scat” for the way he adopted the fast, wordless syllables of bebop jazz musicians, but he didn’t limit himself to the musical backdrop of an earlier generation. His approach emphasized the percussion-heavy and electronically amplified sound of rhythm-and-blues and funk music, and he had a particular gift for mimicking almost any kind of musical instrument or sound.

“Jarreau imitates the electronic and percussive hardware of the 1970s,” critic Robert Palmer wrote in Rolling Stone in 1979. “But he does more than that. He stands there and makes it all sound natural, singing so sweetly and unaffectedly you'd think he just happened on this remarkable vocal vocabulary.”

After winning awards and plaudits as a jazz singer, Mr. Jarreau found a wider audience with his 1981 album “Breakin’ Away,” which sold more than 1 million copies and included a Top 20 hit, “We're in This Love Together.” The album won Grammy Awards in the jazz and pop vocal categories, propelling Mr. Jarreau to widespread stardom.

He was soon appearing on television, touring with a 10-piece band and taking the stage with dramatic lighting and choreographed dance moves. He seemed poised for a popular breakthrough that never quite arrived. Despite his Grammy Awards and growing acclaim, Mr. Jarreau groused that Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder and Al Green sold more records, even though they — in the view of many, including Mr. Jarreau himself — couldn’t match his vocal chops.

As the 1980s wore on, Mr. Jarreau explored rock, reggae and international music, and recorded the theme song for the TV series “Moonlighting.” His 1992 album “Heaven and Earth” won a Grammy for best R&B vocal performance, giving Mr. Jarreau Grammys in three categories.

He branched out into other fields, performing with symphony orchestras and acting on Broadway in 1996 in the role of Teen Angel in “Grease.”

As time went on, Mr. Jarreau returned to his early inspiration in straight-ahead jazz. He recorded an album of jazz standards in 2004 called “Accentuate the Positive,” which included songs by Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Johnny Mercer and was considered a triumphant return to form.

“It's really the first jazz record I've ever done,” Mr. Jarreau told Billboard magazine. “Everything else that came before was pop and R&B. This is a thanks to the kind of music that made me the person I am today.”

Alwyn Lopez Jarreau was born March 12, 1940, in Milwaukee. His father, originally from New Orleans, was a onetime Seventh-day Adventist preacher, and his mother was a piano teacher. Mr. Jarreau sang gospel in church and doo-wop on street corners, absorbing the many musical styles of his melting-pot home town.

He had listened from an early age to Nat “King” Cole, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, but his two greatest influences were jazz scat artist Jon Hendricks and the smooth ballad singer Johnny Mathis.

“A lot of who I am is described in the qualities of those two guys — the fiery jazz singer and the balladeer — and how they performed,” he said in 2005. “Somewhere in there, too, is an R&B guy who went to Motown University.”

An excellent athlete, Mr. Jarreau tried out with the Milwaukee Braves baseball team and played basketball at Wisconsin's Ripon College, from which he graduated in 1962. He sang in dance bands in college and graduate school and, in 1964, received a master's degree in vocational rehabilitation from the University of Iowa.

After moving to San Francisco, Mr. Jarreau worked by day as a counselor for the disabled and sang in jazz clubs at night, quitting his counseling job in 1968 to devote himself to music. Working with a Brazilian guitarist, he learned to fill empty musical spaces with expressive improvisations. He devised inventive versions of songs by Joni Mitchell and the Beatles, wrote original tunes and seemed at home in any musical style.

In 2007, he won two more Grammys for a recording made with guitarist George Benson, “Givin’ It Up.” Mr. Jarreau remained in demand in recording studios and on concert stages around the world into his 70s. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001, hosted a public television program on jazz singing and established a scholarship fund at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee for students interested in becoming teachers.

His marriage to Phyllis Hall ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 39 years, Susan Player; and a son from his second marriage.

Never one to stay in one physical or musical place for long, Mr. Jarreau described his constantly evolving approach to music to the Chicago Tribune in 1989.

“Jazz, whatever we think its purest form is, is a dynamic and changing form,” he said. “It will never be the jazz of the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s, because it's changing and responding to its environment. That environment includes the influences of Michael Jackson, Sting and hip-hop just as much as Charlie Parker or bebop.”
 
I fell in love with the show "Moonlighting" only because of his voice and that theme song. Miss those days.
 
[video=youtube;he5SzfgUQo8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he5SzfgUQo8[/video]
While the instrumentation of this group is similar to a typical jazz combo, their approach to music making is anything but typical. Each show features a highly spontaneous and interactive environment where each musician is continuously weaving in and out of musical ideas while cycling through various styles, feels, and moods. This comes from the band members' backgrounds in jazz improvisation which requires an uncanny ability to react in the moment with unlimited creativity. The group plays selections primarily from the jazz canon while combining elements from other genres such as rock, blues, New Orleans jazz, R&B, pop, funk, country, and even classical. It features vocals/piano, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, and a tap dancer. The core group, Jacob Dupre (vocals/piano) and Jon Blondell (bass/trombone), have performed together for about two years. Jacob, a Baton Rouge native, who is often likened to the great Harry Connick Jr. in ability, brings a broad musical background to the group, seasoned with his roots in the sounds and styles of Louisiana music.

About SXSW:
Started in 1987, South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of film, interactive, and music festivals and conferences that take place early each year in mid-March in Austin, Texas. SXSW’s original goal was to create an event that would act as a tool for creative people and the companies they work with to develop their careers, to bring together people from a wide area to meet and share ideas. That continues to be the goal today whether it is music, film or interactive technologies.
 
July 18, 2017 Grammy.com
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Quincy Jones is truly a GRAMMY Legend. In addition to being one of only 15 artists in history to be honored with a GRAMMY Legend Special Merit Award, he is also one of the winningest artists in GRAMMY history.

So it seems that just about everything Jones touches musically turns to gold. That's why we are excited about the announcement that he will be teaming with television producer and noted jazz patron Reza Ackbaraly to launch a brand-new subscription video on-demand service dedicated entirely to jazz and jazz-inspired music programming.

Qwest TV will debut in fall 2017, and is expected to be packed with a curated, personalized selection of exclusive original content encompassing live concerts, documentaries, interviews and archival footage.

The early plans for the network include a forward-thinking crowd-sourced pre-launch phase, which will open on Sept. 6 via Kickstarter. The first 1,500 users to sign up via the crowdfunding platform will be classed as "co-founding subscribers," and will receive a free year of premium access, as well as having a direct line of communication to the Qwest TV team to give consumer feedback, make specific feature requests, and a whole host of additional benefits only available through the Kickstarter promotion.

Sharing his excitement over the launch of the new platform, Jones explained, "The dream of Qwest TV is to let jazz and music lovers everywhere experience these incredibly rich and diverse musical traditions in a whole new way. …it is my hope that Qwest TV will serve to carry forth and build on the great legacy that is jazz for many generations to come."
 
by Ryan Parker & Mike Barnes November 20, 2017 The Hollywood Reporter
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Della Reese, the music legend and star of Touched by an Angel, has died, a rep for Reese's Touched by an Angel co-star Roma Downey confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. She was 86.

"On behalf of her husband, Franklin Lett, and all her friends and family, I share with you the news that our beloved Della Reese has passed away peacefully at her California home last evening surrounded by love," the statement reads. "She was an incredible Wife, Mother, Grandmother, friend and Pastor, as well as an award-winning actress and singer. Through her life and work she touched and inspired the lives of millions of people. She was a mother to me and I had the privilege of working with her side by side for so many years on Touched By An Angel. I know heaven has a brand new angel this day. Della Reese will be forever in our hearts. Rest In Peace, sweet angel. We love you."

People was first to report Reese's death.

"People need something to help them with their lives," Reese said in a 2008 interview with the Archive of American Television. "In Touched by an Angel, we didn't tell you what to do. If you were distraught and at a place where you felt there was nothing else to do, we would make a suggestion: 'Did you ever think about it like this? It doesn't have to be that way. You can change your mind and change your life.' It gave people at home, in the privacy of their homes, a chance to know that they too, could change their minds and change their life."

In a statement, CBS, which aired Touched by an Angel, said: "We’re deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Della Reese. She was a multi-talented, award-winning performer who shined brightly on soundstages and in concert halls. For nine years, we were privileged to have Della as part of the CBS family when she delivered encouragement and optimism to millions of viewers as Tess on Touched By An Angel. We will forever cherish her warm embraces and generosity of spirit. She will be greatly missed. Another angel has gotten her wings."

Touched by an Angel aired on CBS for nine seasons (1994–2003). It was a big family hit on Sunday nights. It also co-starred Roma Downey as the angel Monica, with Reese playing her tough supervisor, Tess. Reese was nominated for Emmy Awards in 1997 and 1998.

Delloreese Patricia Early was born on July 6, 1931, in Detroit.

Her father worked in a mill pouring steel, and her mother was a cook and housekeeper.

She had five sisters (one was 20 when she was born) and a brother.

"My mother says that when I was born and they slapped me, I didn't cough, I began to sing, and I never stopped," she said. "When she was 6, I sang continuously until people were nervous."

One day, one of Mahalia Jackson's backing singers, who was pregnant, fainted in church and was prohibited by a doctor to accompany the gospel legend on a tour on the South. Reese, 13 at the time, then took her place.

"I thought when I got away from my mother I would be able to get down and break it loose, but Mahalia was stricter than my mother was," she said.

Reese attended Wayne State for two years, moved to New York to pursue a singing career and worked with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.

Her first tour was with Nat King Cole, whom she adored. She appeared 17 times on The Ed Sullivan Show, the first time in 1957.

In 1969, Reese began a career transition into acting; her first onscreen appearance as an actor came on a 1968 episode of The Mod Squad. She followed with stints on such shows as The Bold Ones: The New Doctors, Police Woman, The Rookies, McCloud and Chico and the Man. Reese played Della Rodgers on that NBC show, which ran from 1974-1978. She also starred opposite Redd Foxx on the CBS sitcom, The Royal Family.

Reese appeared in Eddie Murphy's 1989 film, Harlem Nights.

Reese hosted her own talk show-variety show, Della, in 1969-70, and once co-hosted The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. In 1980, Reese was taping a song for that night's Tonight Show when she suffered a brain aneurysm that nearly killed her. Ten days after surgery, she said she was doing commercials for Campbell’s Soup. She became an ordained minister in the 1980s.
 
by Kevin Le Gendre April 6, 2018 Jazzwise
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With the passing of Cecil Taylor it could be argued that jazz has lost another titan. But the pianist was never defined by the word 'jazz', let alone music in the broadest sense. Taylor wrote poetry, often disarmingly abstract, that was inextricably linked to his interest in language and culture, which in turn led to a range of Afro-centric and surreal titles for his recordings, be it Nefertitti, The Beautiful One Has Come, It's In The Brewing Luminous or One Too Many Salty Swift And Not Goodbye. Furthermore, there was a deep fascination with choreography and movement, which coalesced with his commitment to spoken word and music in both humorous and engaging ways. When Taylor played an unforgettable duet with drummer Max Roach at the Barbican in London in 1999 he first did a solo set, entering the stage in futurist leggings and jersey, trademark skullcap and antennae dreads – his sartorial style caught the eye as much as his music the ear – and executed some playful pirouettes as he recited verse. Taylor told me sometime before the concert: "When you go right into battle with Maximilian you have to be fully armed and ready", as a mark of great respect for his equally inspirational partner, as well as of his commitment to the demanding art of spontaneous composition, which he saw as a kind of ballet in beats or intense corps-a-corps with others where there was no room for compromise on form and content.

Raised in Queens, New York, Taylor was immersed in music from an early age, playing piano at six before going on to study at the New York College of Music and New England Conservatory, and while his initial work in the 1950s showed his absorption of the techniques of Tatum, Ellington and Monk, it also provided a glimpse of the lexicon he would subsequently develop. Taylor took the percussive playing of his forebears to new heights, creating barrages of polyrhythms and juddering motifs, often at high tempo, in which the right hand, rather than stating just one theme, acted practically as a whirling ride cymbal while the left sculpted pithy melody like a bass drum. The low end was as much a well of lyricism as it was chordal accompaniment. Constant momentum, whirlwind tonalities and unbroken streams of ideas, no matter how abrasive, were among Taylor's key contributions to post-war piano vocabulary.

Like many other American improvisers Taylor was interested in European composers such as Bartók but, perhaps cognizant of the ways of his mother, a renowned dancer, he brought torrid physicality to his music between the 1960s and noughties. His classic group albums, such as Unit Structures, Conquistador, Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) and 3 Phasis, saw him work with brilliant players such as Jimmy Lyons, Sunny Murray, William Parker, Gunter Hampel, Tomasz Stańko and David S.Ware among others, while his several majestic solo albums, such as Air Above Mountains, underlined his ability to use the keyboard as a source of great orchestral richness.

Taylor had quite a mischievous side to his character that often led to slights on other musicians, but his influence, heard in anybody from Don Pullen and Matthew Shipp to Craig Taborn, Vijay Iyer and Alexander Hawkins, has been immense. A rebellious, subversive and cerebral figure, Taylor was a very complex person, a man fully aware of many kinds of minority status who challenged stereotypes and claimed ownership of his aesthetic, professing as much in the expression Dark To Themselves.

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New York Times
 
Tony Bennett & Diana Krall

from their new duets album Love Is Here To Stay
 
new Bobby McFerrin interview on Questlove Supreme (Episode 103)

Questlove has a podcast on Pandora, so it might not be available everywhere. The show is free though. Listen here
 
By Adam Bernstein December 14, 2018 Washington Post
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Nancy Wilson, an award-winning singer whose beguiling expressiveness in jazz, R&B, gospel, soul and pop made her a crossover recording star for five decades and who also had a prolific career as an actress, activist and commercial spokeswoman, died Dec. 13 at her home in Pioneertown, Calif. She was 81.

Her manager and publicist Devra Hall Levy confirmed the death but did not know the specific cause.

Ms. Wilson resisted the label of “jazz singer” for much of her career, although jazz was the form to which she returned time and again and in which she had her greatest critical and popular success. She considered herself above all “a song stylist,” she once told The Washington Post. “That’s my essence,” she said, “to weave words, to be dramatic.”

She sought to meld the seemingly incongruous styles of her two greatest influences: the ethereal Jimmy Scott and the penetrating and sultry Dinah Washington. Ms. Wilson’s singing was at once regal and vulnerable, and she inspired two generations of singers, including Patti LaBelle, Anita Baker and Nnenna Freelon. “She has such a classy sound, but she’s never afraid to be a woman, or to tell it like it is,” Freelon once told the San Jose Mercury News.

Jazz historian and critic Will Friedwald, in his volume “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” called Ms. Wilson a formidable presence in pop, jazz and blues — “the most important vocalist to come along after these three genres were codified and move freely among them.”

As she looked to expand her audience, Ms. Wilson frustrated some critics with what Friedwald called her “increasingly mannered and even pretentious” string- and synthesizer-laden funk-pop romantic ballad albums of the 1980s and early 1990s. She was, in this view, a stylist who had become too stylized.

Whatever the genre, no matter how glossy the arrangement, Ms. Wilson’s trademark remained her talent for achieving emotive crescendos — from sensuous whisper to soaring release — in a single track.

She was a supple interpreter of composers as varied as George Gershwin (“Someone to Watch Over Me”), Marvin Gaye (“Come Get to This”), Van Morrison (“Moondance”) and George Michael (“Careless Whisper”). She transformed two gossamer 1960s pop tunes, “Our Day Will Come” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” into soulful barnburners.

Trained in church choirs, Ms. Wilson became a connoisseur of secular music in her teens and left Central State College (now University) in Wilberforce, Ohio, to pursue a lucrative nightclub-touring career in her native Ohio. She vaulted to prominence in the early 1960s through jazz collaborations with pianist George Shearing and saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. Pieces such as “The Things We Did Last Summer,” “He’s My Guy,” and “The Masquerade Is Over” were particular showcases for her talent.

“Her repertory is a treatise on variety and taste, spun by a voice of agile grace and knowing jazz inflection and phrasing,” a Time magazine critic wrote in 1964, calling her an heir apparent to Ella Fitzgerald.

In a subsequent flurry of albums, Ms. Wilson excelled at jazzy torch songs — stories about melancholy women and once-fiery love affairs burned down to their final embers.

“Guess Who I Saw Today,” one of Ms. Wilson’s signature hits, told the story of a housewife who casually informs her indiscreet husband that she saw him during his afternoon tryst. Her brassily rendered “Face It Girl, It’s Over” was an anthem about maintaining pride and strength by ending an unrequited relationship before it gets worse.

Her 1964 release “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am,” an exhilaratingly optimistic ode to love with a swirling jazz-pop arrangement, proved a Top 20 Billboard hit and earned her a Grammy Award for best rhythm-and-blues recording.
For a period, she became one of Capitol Records’ biggest-selling stars — second only to the Beatles. In addition to making $30,000 a week from concert engagements, she and her first husband, drummer Kenny Dennis, began a management, music publishing and TV production company that reportedly grossed $1 million a year.

She became one of the first black spokeswomen to appear in national radio and TV ads, pitching products including Thunderbird wine and Campbell’s Soup. She later worked in commercials for companies including Stroh’s beer — whose groovy theme she was often called on to sing at concerts — to Johnson & Johnson baby products and the car company Infiniti.

Willowy and photogenic, she hosted a self-titled NBC variety show in 1966 and became a regular on similar programs hosted by Flip Wilson, Carol Burnett and Andy Williams. She appeared on 1960s TV shows such as “I Spy,” starring her close friend Bill Cosby, and two decades later played Denise Huxtable’s mother-in-law on “The Cosby Show.” In the early 1990s, she played the mother of comedian Sinbad on his sitcom “The Sinbad Show.”

As she began to enjoy the fruits of her labor, she told jazz writer Leonard Feather that she “couldn’t care less” about reviewers who felt that she had strayed too far from her jazz roots or those who tried to narrow her musical boundaries.

“After all, what do you get into this business for in the first place if not to become a success?” she said. “Those jazz critics all want you to sing their way. . . . If you’re some funky down-and-out, working in a noisy, smoky joint, they’re liable to rave about you. But just you get cleaned up and buy some new clothes and work the big hotel rooms and begin to sell records, and they’ll turn against you for being ‘commercial.’ ”

Nancy Sue Wilson was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Feb. 20, 1937, and she grew up in Columbus, where her father was an iron worker and her mother was a domestic. Her parents divorced but lived within a few blocks of each other. She said the women in her life — her mother, stepmother and grandmother — were “rocks” who encouraged the vocal talent that she first displayed in the church choir.

“When I was 4 years old, I knew I had a voice,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “The voice was there and it was in my face.”
At 15, after participating in a talent contest, she starred on a short-lived local TV show taking song requests from callers. Her hectic performing schedule in a local college led her to drop out after a year to work in a touring outfit led by saxophonist Rusty Bryant.

While on a swing through Columbus, Adderley was impressed with Ms. Wilson’s voice and her onstage poise. His recommendation to his manager led to a contract for Ms. Wilson with Capitol Records, home to singers such as Nat “King” Cole and Peggy Lee.

Capitol produced several acclaimed albums featuring Ms. Wilson backed by big-band arranger Billy May, as well as her well-received collaborations, both in 1961, with Shearing (“The Swingin’s Mutual!”) and Adderley (“Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley”).

The releases established her as a commercial force, and she readily adapted to the times by mingling jazz and pop on albums noted for their consistently excellent production qualities: “Today, Tomorrow, Forever” (1964), “Lush Life” (1967), “Welcome to My Love” (1968) — with her tours de force of “For Once in My Life” and “You Don’t Know Me” — and “Now I’m a Woman” (1970), the last with a lustrous interpretation of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s title song.

Her first marriage ended in divorce and, in 1973, she married the Rev. Wiley Burton. He died in 2008. Survivors include a son from her first marriage, Kacy Dennis; two daughters from her second marriage, Samantha Burton and Sheryl Burton; two sisters; and five grandchildren.

In the 1980s, Ms. Wilson worked with jazz musicians including pianists Ramsey Lewis and Hank Jones, among others. She became a staple of the “new adult contemporary” radio market, with its emphasis on soothing love ballads with a funk-rhythm beat, such as “If I Had My Way.” She also put out Christmas albums.

Her material was perhaps not to every taste, but Ms. Wilson managed to please her core audience and impress reviewers even after a half-century of relentless touring with the impeccable strength of her voice.

She received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters award in 2004 and, from 1996 to 2005, hosted the National Public Radio program “Jazz Profiles.” She recorded two Grammy-winning celebrity-duet albums — “R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal)” in 2004 and “Turned to Blue” in 2006 — before gradually winding down her career.

Ms. Wilson used her celebrity to draw attention to social causes such as literacy and education among low-income black children. She also participated in civil rights marches, was a spokeswoman for the Urban League and used her stature in black communities to promote AIDS awareness, prenatal care and breast-cancer screenings.

She criticized rap and hip-hop performers — and the record companies that she said encouraged them — for denigrating women and romanticizing violence through their music.

Reflecting on her own career and the pressures she faced, she told the Kansas City Star in 2007 that she always took complete artistic responsibility for her music. “Never have I gone anywhere and said, ‘Make me somebody,’ ” she said. “I came here as somebody. Consequently, you can’t turn me away from what I believe. These are the songs I like. And I’ve never recorded anything that totally wasn’t my choice.”
 
Jazzmeia Horn talks about Ella Fitzgerald & scat singing (Sept. 2019)

 
We have a Jazz thread? :love:

Thanks for unearthing this, so much to check out! :listeningtomusic
 
I...must say, i am starting to develop a taste for jazz. My mother , her side of the family and some aspects of my culter and environment have contributed toward my foundation in rythem and blues. But it's also inspired from TCM movies, those times have grown on me and i now find that i'd like to attend a jazz concert or a club and just dress in some thing elegant and sensual and groove my little heart out. 30% of me is a TCM black and white kind of gal.
 
Postmodern Jukebox ft. David Simmons, Jr. - This Is How We Do It

new
 
by DownBeat Apr. 1, 2020
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Pianist ​Ellis Marsalis, the head of a New Orleans family that significantly impacted how jazz is seen and heard across the world, died Wednesday. He was 85.

The elder Marsalis reportedly suffered COVID-19 symptoms and was awaiting test results.

“Ellis Marsalis was a legend. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a statement. “The love and the prayers of all of our people go out to his family, and to all of those whose lives he touched. He was a teacher, a father, and an icon—and words aren’t sufficient to describe the art, the joy and the wonder he showed the world. This loss cuts us deeply. May we wrap his family in our love and our gratitude, and may we honor his memory by coming together in spirit—even as the outbreak keeps us apart, for a time.”

About a year ago, Marsalis appeared with his sons—Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason Marsalis—at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Its 2020 edition likely will be rescheduled.

The pianist, also a lauded educator in New Orleans, was the namesake of a piano competition, as well as an NEA Jazz Master. Fittingly, he was enshrined along with his family in 2011.

In addition to playing on several of his sons’ albums, he also recorded many discs as a leader himself, including Ellis Marsalis Trio (Blue Note, 1991), Whistle Stop (Columbia, 1994) and On The First Occasion (Elm, 2013).
 
I think i'm beginning to fall deeply in love with rhythm and blues...
Oh, did i already say this?
 
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