Cats Who Swing and Sing: Women Singer-Pianists of the 1940s and 50s
Posted in Shows on Feb 25th, 2008
Nellie Lutcher, a star pianist and singer of the late 1940s who mixed boogie and swing riffs on the keyboards with sly and humorously suggestive lyrics, once remarked that it was 1930s performer Cleo Brown who’d “sort of started a trend for girl piano players and vocalists” with her recording of the song “It’s a Heavenly Thing.” There had been an even earlier, blues-oriented practitioner of the style, Kansas City’s Julia Lee…
This week on Night Lights we pay tribute to the pianist and singer who passed away this past week at the age of 94. In the late 1940s Lutcher scored a series of hits such as “Hurry On Down” and “Fine Brown Frame” that blended jazz, pop, blues and R & B in a way that made her one of the era’s first crossover stars…
