Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on Oct 9th, 2008
Johnny Green may not have been the most prolific of composers, but some of the songs he wrote music for turned into significant standards, including “Body and Soul,” “Out of Nowhere,” and “I Wanna Be Loved.” Although Green is best remembered for these compositions, he actually spent the bulk of his career working in the movie industry.
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Posted in WFIU Jazz Shows & Specials on Oct 9th, 2008
Composer Johnny Green wrote the music for several songs that went on to become staples of the jazz-and-popular-song canon, including “Body and Soul,” “Out of Nowhere,” and “I Cover the Waterfront.” Born in New York City on October 10, 1908, he went to Harvard at the age of 15, did some early arranging work for Guy Lombardo, and notched his first hit with “Coquette.” After an unhappy turn as a stockbroker, Green abandoned Wall Street…
Posted in Jazz Notes on Jul 18th, 2008
Jo Stafford, one of the last great vocalists from the “songbird” era of big band vocalists, passed away Wednesday at the age of 90. A World War II icon dubbed “GI Jo” and beloved by soldiers for her performances and recordings such as “Long Ago and Far Away,” Stafford possessed one of the most graceful, limpid voices in the postwar popular music world, and she retained her popularity into the 1950s, scoring hits on her own and with Frankie Laine.
Posted in Jazz Notes on Jul 4th, 2008
Jazz vocalist Rene Marie turned a relatively pedestrian event–this past Tuesday’s “State of the City” address from Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper–into a media tempest over patriotism when she sang the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner” but imported lyrics from James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing, long referred to as “the black national anthem.”
Posted in Shows on Apr 14th, 2008
Mary Ann McCall, whom Johnny Mandel once called “the greatest of all the big band singers,” is a secret heroine of American jazz vocal music. Little-known today, and not widely recorded during even the most active periods of her career, she has sometimes…
Posted in Shows on Apr 7th, 2008
Music has been an important part of the Disney formula ever since the studio began making films in the late 1920s, and the enormous success of the so-called “Magic Kingdom” has pushed many of its movie songs to the…
Posted in Jazz Notes on Apr 5th, 2008
Rifftides blogger and jazz eminence Doug Ramsey hipped readers several days ago to a Sunday, April 6 broadcast of Benny Carter’s rarely-heard “Kansas City Suite.” It’s at 1 p.m. PDT on KPLU.org…
Posted in Shows on Mar 3rd, 2008
One of the most expressive and original singers to come out of the post-World War II era, Betty Carter thrilled audiences with her daring vocal improvisations and her no-nonsense jazz attitude. She emerged from the Detroit bebop scene and joined Lionel Hampton’s big band in 1948, then went on to record sporadically throughout the 1950s and 1960s, making her biggest mark through a duets album with Ray Charles. After taking several years off to…
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