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

Obscure in one persona, perhaps, but not in another. I find this song by the less well-known half to be particularly entertaining.

 

Here we have one of the real rare and obscure ones. Singing pianist Ramona was primarily active in the 1930s and 1940s. She came to prominence when legendary bandleader Paul Whiteman hired her to replace departing Mildred Bailey, on the condition that she lost weight ... Here are photos of Paul and Mildred:



Mirror, mirror on the wall. In Whiteman's defense, about a year earlier his bride had agreed to marry him on the condition that he shed 100 pounds, and he had done so. Ramona also followed through, losing 40 pounds in four months. (Sacrifices for the business and all.)

Whiteman's intention was to pair her with his male singer Red McKenzie as a duo to be fittingly called Red & Ramona. Unfortunately, McKenzie was another one who left Whiteman's orchestra sooner than he expected. So did Ramona herself, after five years (1932-1937) and a failed court case, for which she alleged that (as others who were under the baton of the rotund, living-at-large bandleader had, and would) she was being occupationally exploited and financially under-compensated.

After leaving New York-based Whiteman, Ramona sought and found a modicum of fortune in London, but upon her return to the States she had to face the fact that job opportunities were substantially diminished without the clout of Whiteman's machinery behind her. In time, she retired from the entertainment business, leaving the search for paychecks to her in-demand sports-radio-announcer-husband, and spending much of her time playing piano or organ at church and civic affairs.

We are very fortunate to have one (and only one) full CD of Ramona's vocals. The front cover is pictured at the top of this message. Despite its humble appearance (black & white front cover, basic book paper), this CD release is excellent -- pretty good sound quality and quite extensive liner notes by historian-pianist-singer Peter Mintun. (All of the biographical details given above come from his notes.)

Here is live footage of Ramona Davies. The songs of choice are old-fashioned obscurities of little note, but they still allow us to appreciate Ramona's pianistic skills and pleasantly mellow vocals.

 

Here's a "Tale of Two Squires": a couple of singers from British lands who bear the same last name and who thus often get confused. One of them I like a bit; the other, not much.

Rosemary Squires is the one whose singing I enjoy well enough. Most everything I've heard from her is performed in a tasteful though not necessarily exciting manner. When at her best, she can come across as a hybrid of Sarah Vaughan and another Rosemary (Clooney). As for the life she led, I went in search of any details of interest and came away with the impression that she's lived a life almost as boring as mine -- no quirky happenings, no scandals! Active in the music business since 1940 (and working for BBC at various intervals), as of last year Rosemary was still performing. She will turn 90 next year. (Judging from a 2009 concert that is available on YouTube, she sounds her age. That's perfectly understandably, of course -- and it's nothing on the level of, say, Anita O'Day in her last album).

Here are some album pics:



And here she is in the flesh, around 1962, performing "Smoke Gets in your Eyes" on what I assume to be the Dutch TV show Muziek voor U!:



Let's now move on to the other Squires, who comes across as diametrically opposite to the one above .... in more ways that one! Her life was quite a mouthful.

The likes of Puss-y Galore and Honey Ryder has nothing on Edna May "Dorothy": this was the woman who agent 007 had the most reason to ever fear. About 12 years his senior, Dorothy Squires made Roger Moore her second husband and refused to let go of him after he took up with an Italian dish. She smashed a guitar on his head and threw bricks at the windows of at least two of his residences, including one he shared with the Italian lassie. Wikipedia recounts one of the brick incidents as follows: Moore said that "She threw a brick through my window. She reached through the glass and grabbed my shirt and she cut her arms doing it ... The police came and they said, 'Madam, you're bleeding' and she said, 'It's my heart that's bleeding'." On the day in which she was convicted of drunk driving, Dorothy finally granted Moore a divorce, thus making it possible for him to marry, at last, his Italian squeeze. It only took eight years for Dorothy to capitulate.

Bankrupt and homeless, she is said to have ended up a "poverty-stricken recluse" in her later days ... though, paradoxically, a comfortably living recluse, thanks to the largesse of one out-of-this-world fan who supplied her with a home.

And did you know that there is such a thing as a vexatious litigant? Yes, it's a legal term, and the courts summarily bestowed it on Dorothy at some point during the 15 years on which she filed 30 lawsuits.

There's more where all that came from (e..g, kicking a taxi driver, fleeing from her burning home with her dog in one hand and Roger Moore's love letter in the other, etc.), but I think that's enough for the purposes of this thread.

Her first husband, with whom she shared a 16-bedroom home, was British songwriter and bandleader Billy Reid. As a result, Dorothy got to introduce and popularize such Reid compositions as "A Tree in the Meadow," "The Gypsy," and "I'm Walking Behind You," all of which were subsequently exported to the United States and turned into chart hits by several American popular singers -- Margaret Whiting, Dinah Shore, Eddie Fisher.

Conversely, Dorothy took three or four numbers that had charted in the United States and turned them into British hits, too. Not surprisingly, she seems to have become particularly associated with her top 25 version of "My Way": Dorothy Squires » . She also made the charts with "Till" ( Dorothy Squires Till 1969 » ) and "For Once in my Life" ( Peter Anderson Presents Dorothy Squires FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE » ).

 

That's like a Tale of Two Cities. Didn't like the vocal on Smoke too much, though the music was really nice. But that dress! That's one retro look that's best forgotten

I didn't enjoy the second singer's version of Till, partly because it seemed to have too much symphony orchestra behind it, but when Caterina Valente in Italian came up next, I was much happier.

 

What the devil is she trying to do with that tree?

 

Tree's company?

 

Ha, we all wondered about the same thing. "What unspeakable things is she planning to do to that poor defenseless tree?," is what I asked myself ...... Is she humping it?

This LP was released in 1970. I thought about the practice of tree hugging, which was already around in the 1970s in English-speaking countries. Were she proven to be hugging it, then her wearing of a green dress could further be interpreted as an attempt at becoming "one" with the tree. However, there is nothing in the album's liner notes or track listing to indicate that she is actually going for a bear hug here. (And if she were, it would rank as a miserable fail! The tree is too much of a "bear" for her to hug.)

In the end, I have to assume that she was just trying to strike a side glance pose, and hoping to come across as "charming" in the photo.

By the way, the album's title, which initially confused me, is a reference to the fact that she co-wrote all the songs in it.

A Tale of Two Cities is exactly what was in my mind; thanks for noticing. On that note, an album cover that looks Dickensian (and weird) to me, and which I didn't previously include, is this one:

Always interesting, to read reactions to the numbers. Thank you. About the Rosemary vocal, I'm somewhere in the middle. I like it okay, but I'm not, like, enthusiastic or wowed by it. I also feel that The Platters' version has become so engraved in one's mind (well, in mine, at least) that it can be difficult to give full appreciation to other versions of this song.

As for "Till," Dorothy's hit interpretations are generally too histrionic for me. I gave a listen to Caterina's version (sung in Italian), and certainly preferred it over Dorothy's.

Rosemary's "bulbous-bee" ballerina dress is out there, yet it still nothing much when compared to what Dorothy enjoyed wrapping herself with. How many Muppets did she have to skin to put together the two dresses that she is wearing in the two non-tree LP covers above (plus the pics below)??

 

So, you have a vocal competition whose contestants include

Jane Moonheit
Roberta Gambarini
Tierney Sutton
Teri Thornton

Who do you think is going to get the trophy?

Do not think too much, because this is not a hypothetical scenario: it did take place in 1998 at the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz, and the trophy was won by an overwhelming margin. How glad the many millions of young Janes and Tierney would have been, to capture it, but no, an "aged Cinderella" easily wore the judges' resistance. They all ended up confessing to having a crush on her, to the tune of a $20,000 cash prize. Diana Krall, Dianne Reeves, Joe Williams, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Nnenna Freelon constituted the distinguished panel of judges. The interpretation with which the 64-year-old winner blew the judges and the audience away (two standing ovations) was a song that she herself had written, "I'll Be Easy to Find." But was she, really?

Teri Thornton was one of those talented singers for whom bad luck and unforeseen circumstances meant that they never achieved the heightened level of recognition that they deserved. Her singing career first took off in the early 1960s, when she was in her late 20s and early 30s. Teri had previously sung with the likes of Cannonball Adderly and would next go on to sing on record with the likes of Clark Terry. From 1961 to 1963, she made three albums on three different record companies, including the prestigious Riverside jazz label. Here are the albums, starting with the last, and including one that was released twice:




During that early 1960s period, Teri did pretty well, recording not only these three albums but also headlining clubs across the nation and making guest appearances in many TV variety shows. She made the Billboard music charts, too.

Alas, the streak of luck didn't last. She was another of the vocalists who were summarily dropped by Columbia once their one-album deals did not generate any commercial success. She was also one of the young jazz-pop artists who were just beginning to become noticed when the British invasion took over and washed them off shore. Just as significant, if not more so, were the personal struggle with alcohol and substance abuse that she was beginning to face, too.

By the late 1960s, the once promising headliner was making ends meet as a cab driver (among other jobs). Already divorced and with two children by the time that she was 19, Teri now had two marital separations behind her, and not two but three children to support.

The survivor still managed to keep one foot in the industry, especially from the 1980s onwards. She got something of a foothold as a songwriter, whose numbers were recorded by some major names (Mel Torme, for one); as the voice of poetry albums on an obscure tiny label; and, gradually, as a singer at bars, lounges, restaurants, and other little-noticed facilities.

In 1998, her win at the Thelonius Monk changed it all. Teri's became a much talked and written-about name in the jazz press, and Verve signed her to record one album:



Sadly, this comeback to the big leagues was not a lasting one. Months before the competition, she had collapsed on stage, subsequently receiving a bladder cancer diagnosis. The cancer temporarily went into remission, but, before the century was over, it had made a return. She passed away in the year 2000.

Incidentally (and going back to a topic discussed several pages back, in connection with Marilyn Maye), Teri Thornton was yet another singer that ever-gushing Ella Fitzgerald momentarily called her favorite singer, only to move on to a new "favorite" soon afterwards.

Here's the song with which Tri is most frequently associated, the theme of the 1960s police TV show Naked City (composed by Billy May):



And here's the title song from her Riverside album: Lullaby of the Leaves »

Finally, here's the self-penned number with which she won the Monk competition (as re-arranged and recorded for Verve): I'll Be Easy to Find »

 

Oh, you might or might not recognize her, but she's definitely been around for a long while. If you have been watching the TV show Empire, you have been watching her: she's Lucious Lyon's bipolar mom. Nearly 40 years ago, she was Kizzy in the legendary TV series Roots, a role for which she was Emmy-nominated. Some 60 years ago, she was the lead female singer on a musical TV show that is remembered fondly by some, direly by others: Sing Along With Mitch featuring Miss Leslie Uggams ». By going back even farther in time, all the way to the year 1951, we can even catch her next to Ethel Waters in the TV show Beulah, playing the titular character's niece.



Theatre audiences might be the ones that know her best, though, because that's the medium in which she has had some of her biggest triumphs. She earned a Tony award for her very first role, given to her after Lena Horne had bowed out from the production (1967). More recently, she impersonated Lena in another theatrical production (2009).



I can't say that I'm much of a fan of Leslie's singing. Her voice does not appeal to me. But she's made a couple of fine albums -- maybe more. The pretty good performance heard above was picked for inclusion in the Smithsonian set American Popular Song, which was meant to be (independently of whether you personally agree with the choices) a definitive collection.

 

That's one bloody album -- and I do not mean "bloody" in the British sense of the word. Doesn't all that viscous stuff look like blood? (No, it is not a stained album copy. That's exactly how the original album release looks!) I have not figured out what the rationale for all the red staining was.

The album is called Introducing Milli Vernon, and Storyville's George Wein set up its session date in 1956. The singing is very good throughout. But it is the lineup of celebrated jazz musicians that has garnered this album the most attention: Ruby Braff on trumpet, Dave McKenna on piano, Wyatt Reuther on bass, Jimmy Raney on guitar, and Jo Jones on drums.

Back when she started out in 1943 (singing for a big band), this vocalist went by the name of Pat Cameron. In 1956 and 1957, on the strength of her solo debut LP, Nat Hentoff and other jazz aficionados predicted a bright future for her in the jazz field. During those years, Milli also frequented hipster circles, becoming a member of the Lord Buckley clique. The Lord nicknamed her Lady Renaissance. It was at a feast in his court that the newly annointed royalty met the lord whom she would marry, drummer Dick Zalud.

Vernon and Zalud moved into the (financially rewarding?) field of singing at cruise ships and clubs all over the world. Though not mutually exclusive, it would seem that this move into the cruise-and-travel circuit prevented or delayed her pursuit of a career in the jazz field.

She did not make any more albums until the 1980s. There were two in that decade, and a final date taped in 2002 but not issued until 2007. In all three of those, her name is spelled as "Millie" instead of "Milli."

While the cover of her debut LP makes it look like she had to enter into a blood pact in order to make it, the title of that final CD suggests that she is ready for her crucifixion!



As was also the case for a fair number of the more obscure jazz singers that have been mentioned here, Millie found a specially favorable audience in Japan. The CD above is a Japanese release, and so is this 1986 LP:



Lady Renaissance was in her seventies when she went to the aforementioned 2002 date. She passed away two years later, reportedly after battling Alzheimer's.



Through Introducing Milli Vernon, her singing often shifts from cool and quiet to a declamatory, relatively louder (though still tasteful) style. The later albums show a more overtly declamatory manner as well as a more mature, deeper voice --- so much so that, if you don't know any better, you might occasionally think that it is a man singing. That's particularly true of this LP from 1982:



It has been released on CD, with bonus tracks: Here's That Rainy Day » .

 

I like the samples of Teri Thornton and Millie Vernon (the ones that play on You Tube up here), but there doesn't seem to be many on You Tube by Leslie Uggams, though hers is the only name I have heard of. The few I've listened to on You Tube aren't very appealing.

The song from Naked City has a lot that I am attracted to, late night atmosphere, a tough voice, noirish lyrics, varied instrumentation.

That album jacket for Open Highway is a winner!

 

She will be 100 years old in just four months. She was all the rage back in the late 1930s, beating Ella Fitzgerald at the top of the "best female vocalist" charts and scoring hit after hit with "Heart and Soul," "Cry, Baby, Cry," "Deep Purple," and "My Reverie." All four of those are estimated to have made it to number 1 in the music charts, and over 15 more Bea vocals are also deemed to have charted within the space of just a year (November 1937 - November 1938).

Something else that was the rage: Beatrice's New Yawk accent, very audible in her singing. To my ears, it actually adds charm and distinctiveness to her style. Other ears might react differently, though. Here she is singing "My Reverie" (a Debussy melody with an added lyric credited to sweet bandleader Larry Clinton, with whose orchestra Bea scored all of the aforementioned hits). The vocal comes around the 2:00 mark:



Going solo in January of 1939, Bea enjoyed four additional hits (1940-1941) before a record ban and her own busy schedule (radio shows & concerts) prevented her from recording more. The years kept on slipping by and, what do you know, she never made another commercial record again. There are post-1941 radio performances, however, and she continued to sing live all the way into this century. Here is a 1947 performance, with Ellis Larkins on piano: Fools Rush In/Everything I Have Is Yours »

In addition to live singing, Bea kept up her radio career. She and her husband André Baruch (a disc jockey, announcer, news commentator, etc.) saw it fit to remain in the medium of radio. They worked together on several shows over the decades -- starting back in the late 1940s with their Mr. and Mrs. Music shows on WMCA (New York). They also remained married for over 50 years, until he passed away.

Live footage of Bea Wain & the Larry Clinton Orchestra: Bea Wain, Larry Clinton - Heart And Soul (1939) »

 

Sweetest Sounds was Susannah Young's very first recording ... and also her last. What a shame. In her one and only outing, this British tympanist proved to be a tasteful, smart, tuneful, melodious -- in a word, solid -- singer.

The album was originally released in the United Kingdom (1966), then in the United States (1967). It's interesting to see not only the change of artwork but also the re-organization of the track listing:



I highly appreciate her version of "Witchcraft." Half way through it, you will hear the song's verse ("... Lucretia Borgia ...") which was not sung by Frank Sinatra, nor by those who covered the song in the wake of Frank's top 20 hit version. Here's Susannah's vocal:



(Cy Coleman, the song's composer, also sang this verse, and placed it in the middle as well. Meanwhile, Ella Fitzgerald sang it at the beginning. I actually like it best in the middle.)

Since "Witchcraft" is an uptempo, and starts off the American version of the album, let me also showcase a ballad from the LP. Here is the track with which the British version of the album opens: Susannah Young...."Lazy Afternoon" »

 

I like that treatment of My Reverie (the long introduction, as in Jane Morgan's Fascination), and the sample of Susannah Young is very enticing. I see the latter singer doesn't have a cd existence

 

Here is the "other" Lee Scott. Not really the same game...

 

Here is the "other" Lee Scott. Not really the same game...

 

Lurlean Hunter is as beautiful as her voice...

 

Sallie Blair is also a wonder... Now I know how to post bigger pics !

 

Monica Lewis... But beautiful.

 

Ruth Olay in 1966

 

Yes Lita Roza was beautiful. Day and night...

 

The later Claire Austin album. 1975

 

Tina Louise was really red...

 

Another red one... and a beautiful one. Also a good singer.

 

Alice Babs is close to red...