R.I.P. Annie Ross

[medjuck]

7 minutes ago, duaneiac said:

I posted about an Annie Ross GoFundMe campaign here back in April.

.  Thanks for posting it even though I somehow missed it.  

[Ken Dryden]

I did a phone interview with her for a Hot House profile, then saw her at The Metropolitan Room while I was in New York City for IAJE. My seat mate was none other than Lee Konitz... I remember Warren Vaché and Tardo Hammer accompanying her.

 

[RogerF]

I loved her album with the Tony Kinsey Quintet: Loguerhythms: Songs from the Establishment with Tony Kinsey (Transatlantic, 1963 and reissued by Esoteric on CD). Her memorably sardonic delivery was equal to Christopher Logue's witty lyrics. RIP Annie.

Edited July 22, 2020 by RogerF

[mikeweil]

Camille Bertault posted a beautiful photo today on her facebook page:

The torch is in good hands ....

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Or maybe it's stress release, a way of trying to shake it away because counting the numbers would lead to a breakdown, the reality of just how much "old" and "new" there has been. There are statistics to be had there, whether or not a person can get to them internally or not.

Dark stuff.

And i think it's not accidental.

Oh yeah, check out the second bridge, where she does those shakes - there's no separation between the word "love" that ends the bridge and the one that begins the last A. It's like she's about to breakdown thinking about it, but snaps out of it before she does - "old love, new love, any love but true love...….for sale".

Shattering, to use the cliché.

I mean, I like LH&R just fine, and sure Joni Mitchell made "Twisted" cool for the boomers and all that, but this is the sort of thing that shows a person's deepest parts.

 

[Brad]

25 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

Camille Bertault posted a beautiful photo today on her facebook page:

The torch is in good hands ....

Camille is a fantastic talent. 

[sidewinder]

Her (Scottish) brother Jimmy Logan used to be frequently seen on TV and films too. A talented clan.

[medjuck]

14 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

Exactly.

This is the only jazz version I know that gets at the real  grit of prostitution. The verse helps set it up, but that's not all. Her swinging phrasing, the sensual way she straddles the tempo, and the way she italicizes certain words with a sly smirk or snarl, gets under the skin of the song.  Yet also note the brassy, exuberant shakes she adds to the words "old" and "new" in the second bridge -- like maybe there's a part of walking the streets she kinda digs. Or maybe she's just pretending to enjoy it. After all, that's the gig.
 

I don't think I've ever heard the verse  before.  Some interesting stuff here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_for_Sale_(song)

Edited July 23, 2020 by medjuck

[Quasimado]

Nice tribute and song selection from Marc Myers here https://www.jazzwax.com/

[Big Beat Steve]

38 minutes ago, Quasimado said:

Nice tribute and song selection from Marc Myers here https://www.jazzwax.com/

Nice interview with Creed Taylor on "Sing A Song of Basie" too.

 

But I was puzzled by this part:

JW: What did Basie think of the album?
CT: I don’t know. Basie was on another road all the time. He was such a self-made bandleader. I’m sure he heard it, but he never mentioned it to me. And I never asked.

 

After all, "Sing Along with Basie" was recorded in 1958 as THE follow-up album to "Sing A Song of Basie". So Basie must have more than just "heard" the first album. Was Creed Taylor being evasive? Why was he being evasive? Because it wasn't him who produced that one? Surely Basie wasn't manhandled at gunpoint by Morris Levy into making that album?

Edited July 24, 2020 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

Wouldn't surprise me if Basie's people told him, hey, you got a date to make this record with these people on such-and-such a date, you know, they did balblahblah, Basie probably knew of the record, said cool, and then went about his business.

I read an interview with Frank Foster saying that when he finally came off the raod with Basie in 1963? that he was pretty much stunned by how insulated from the music scene in general and jazz in particular he had become. Communications was nothing like it is today, and a gig like Basie's came with it's won self-contained lifestyle.

[Big Beat Steve]

That sounds plausible. I just re-read the section in Basie's autobiography "Good Morning Blues" where he talks about the record he made with L,H&R, and that section certainly does not exactly read like Basie's own "write" (judging by other sections of the book, Basie was not exactly the most articulate writer of all time ) but rather like something that his "ghost" writer Albert Murray put in.

[JSngry]

It might be hard to imagine the life of some of those bands, constant one-nighters, travel by bus, no internet/wireless, snail mail/telegraph/operator, get me.... it really was an independent ecosystem, really. A week or two in a club, hey, that was like a vacation!

[mikeweil]

BBC Documentary on Annie Ross by Gil Parry, linked by Marc Myers in the features linked above but deserving a more direct link.

https://vimeo.com/317095376

[sidewinder]

24 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

BBC Documentary on Annie Ross by Gil Parry, linked by Marc Myers in the features linked above but deserving a more direct link.

https://vimeo.com/317095376

Thanks for that - I didn’t see the Marc Myers link and really wanted to see this documentary.

To me she looked extremely Scottish - even more so as she got older. Plus the red hair. Technically English by birth though, born in Surrey !

Edited July 25, 2020 by sidewinder

[Teasing the Korean]

I pulled out my mono LP copies of the first two Columbia LHR LPs, and the balances on these are so much better than on the extreme stereo mixes. 

[JSngry]

Found that on James Harrod's site: https://jazzresearch.com/world-pacific-1957-new-york-sessions/

[Bluesnik]

On 7/22/2020 at 3:56 PM, Jim Duckworth said:

   This is the one I go to regularly.

This one I also have and keep returning to very often.

[Quasimado]

On 7/25/2020 at 9:09 PM, mikeweil said:

BBC Documentary on Annie Ross by Gil Parry, linked by Marc Myers in the features linked above but deserving a more direct link.

https://vimeo.com/317095376

Fine video!

[mikeweil]

On 22.7.2020 at 8:44 AM, sidewinder said:

Remember seeing her in at least one 80s movie - a horror film, I think. Extremely versatile !

Her singing plays an important role in Short Cuts - the DVD seems to be OOP, however:

But there is a soundtrack CD:

Edited September 2, 2020 by mikeweil

[mikeweil]

The link to the BBC documentary does not work anymore, but it can be found on Youtube:

... and this interview mihjt be of interest, too:

https://youtu.be/LccR9TidLmc

Edited March 23, 2022 by mikeweil