Obscure & Neglected Female Singers Of Jazz & Standards (1930s to 1960s)

First mentioned by Johnny B Good (page 2) and discussed by me at some length in this very page, just a few posts above yours (post #58).

I hope I'm not beginning to sound like a broken record: please let us all try to contribute something beyond a name and/or a pretty picture. One of the thread's main goals is to inspire those of us who don't know those singers to give them a listening. We are hoping to make them less obscure and less neglected. A mere name is not likely to be "inspirational" that way ...

 

Anne Phillips. (One of my all-time favorite jazz singers, and the poor woman only put out one album. The music scene was changing right when she put out her first LP, unfortunately!) She also put out a Christmas album with her choir group a few years later, The Anne Phillips Choir - Noel, Noel. Just try to find that insanely hard to find/rare LP!

 

- Love Lorez Alexandria!

 

- I'll help out on Timi! She's awesome. She also sounds a whole lot like Dinah Washington to me, but with some more rock in her soul!

 

Eugenie Baird. (Very smooth!)

 

Ketty Lester.

 

Oh, but she is. I would not miss Anita; she is one of my favorite singers! It's just that dmiller posted before he checked the opening message (just as most of us, including me, have done at one time or another).

By the way, being the thread starter, I'm slowly trying to post some comments about every mentioned singer, but I do not need to be the only one doing this. Positive, negative, or indifferent, all opinions about the qualifying singers are welcome.

 

Kitty White.

 

Toni Lee Scott. There is also a singer out there named Lee Scott, also a female vocalist from the same time period. Does anyone know if this is the same person? Thanks!

(PS - I own all of the ones I'm posting. Just so everyone doesn't think I'm running rampant online finding things willy nilly! )

 

I'm going to be doing a lot of listening here!

 

Toni Harper.

 

Claire Austin.

 

Ann Richards. (One of Stan Kenton's singers, along with June Christy, Chris Connor, Anita O'day, Jean Turner, etc.)

 

Ernestine Anderson. (Apologies if she's already been mentioned! - She's in that Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald area, just less well known.)

 

Her voice is so distinctive and powerful.

 

Barbara Dane. (Blues/folk.)

 

Easy Williams. (Hard to find vocalist. I think she's got a lot of Julie London to her style. Love her album cover! Only one album (to my knowledge.)



(She's so hard to find, there aren't even any songs on YouTube that I can find. Which is very sad. )

 

Myrna Fox. (Another hard to find one, though she at least has some songs on YouTube! How can you not love an album called "Mmmmm, Myrna!" Ha!)

 

Miss Toni Fisher (I like to say that) had several big pop hits, but I ventured to buy a full cd. It's uneven, but she treied a lot of unknown songs, which I like to hear (as opposed to the sometimes overly-familiar standards).

Here's one :

 

Gale Robbins. (I own this album, but I honestly haven't been able to get into it as of yet. No clue why! Sometimes they take a while!)

 

Hadda Brooks. (How can you not love this cover!)

 

Marilyn Moore. (Sounds exactly like Billie Holiday! She was so obsessed with her, she pretty much "became" her! Unfortunately, it also helped to ruin her career (who needs two Billie Holidays?)

 

I really wish some high quality record label would focus on female jazz/torch vocalist reissues. There are simply so many and their albums are so difficult to find many times. Jazz music gets a lot of reissue attention, as does 70's hard/metal rock. But female vocalists? Almost none as far as I'm concerned. Could you imagine a reissue line in the same manner as Nina Simone's recent reissues (something like eight albums all at once) for Dakota Staton's discography, or Julie London (I know they've done a few, but not many.) How about Helen Merrill's complete collection? Or Kitty White? Timi Yuro? I figure getting the rights would be hard as these singers were all over the place, but still... it would be wonderful. Some label could just do a whole line of branded "Forgotten Chanteuses" LP reissues!

I hope I didn't over-post on this thread! Just sharing! I love this type of music, so I got overly excited, perhaps! But hopefully everyone will enjoy the different singers!

 

Both Pinky and Audrey are alive AND they are friends. Both are very fine singers, too.

Until his passing, Pinky's life companion was Lou Levy, an excellent pianist who primarily accompanied Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. (Peggy nicknamed him "the silver fox," due to his prematurely white hair.)

Pinky has recorded about ten albums. Over half of them were made for the Japanese market in recent decades, and are quite expensive.

Her two earliest ones, which include the one posted above, were made for American record labels, in the 1950s. However, the labels in question were minor, relatively obscure ones. As a result, those albums sell at expensive prices, too. At least, most of the tracks can be currently found in YouTube.

Of the Pinky albums which I have heard, my favorite is her third one, Let's Be Buddies, recorded in 1985. Luckily, this LP is relatively easy to find at reasonable prices. Better yet, it was recently reissued on CD by Fresh Sound Records:



I'm not seeing any audio clips of this album in YouTube. Among my favorite tracks are "One Morning in May," "Never Will I Marry," and "You Are There."

 

I'm old enough to remember her Love Letters. Very popular in that era. Elvis recorded it too.

Another of those early 60s femme soul singers was Barbara Lewis

Baby I'm Yours is one of her many good ones



I have several cds of her work.

PS Have quite a few Timi Yuro tracks on 3 or 4 cds.