Monday 18 March 2024

Willie King born 18 March 1943

Willie King (March 18, 1943 – March 8, 2009) was an American blues guitarist and singer, known for shunning fame and playing at a local bar in Mississippi. 

King was born in Prairie Point, Mississippi. After his father left the home, Willie and his siblings were raised by his grandparents, who were local sharecroppers. Music was important to the King family - Willie's grandfather was a gospel singer, and his absent father was an amateur blues musician. Young Willie made a diddley bo by nailing a baling wire to a tree in the yard. By age 9, he had a one-string guitar that he could bring indoors to play at night. 

Eventually he progressed to guitar, when his plantation owner, W.P. Morgan, brought him his first guitar, an acoustic Gibson, when he was 13 years old. King paid off the $60 price tag for the guitar by working on the plantation and feeding the plantation's cows in the morning. He made his professional debut at a house party in Mississippi, playing all night for two dollars. King focused his efforts on learning more tunes and expanded his repertoire to include tunes by Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, and John Lee Hooker. 

In 1967, Willie King moved to Chicago in an attempt to make more money than he could down South. After a year spent on the West and South Sides, he returned to Old Memphis, Alabama, just across the border from the Mississippi Prairie. A salesman of shoes, cologne, and other frivolities, Willie traveled the rural roads hawking goods and talking politics. Choosing not to work under the "old system" of unequal treatment, King joined the civil rights movement near the end of the decade which inspired him to write socially conscious blues songs.

Prior to recording, he worked in many occupations including as a sharecropper, and a moonshine maker. He later became active with the civil rights movement. In 1983, he founded the Rural Members Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the traditional rural skills King had grown up with, which he called 'survival skills,' and helping improve his local community. 

                              Here’s “Mamaluchi” from above album.

                                   

In 1987, a chance meeting at a festival in Eutaw, Alabama, blew Rooster Blues founder Jim O'Neal away: According to O'Neal, King's "juke-joint musical style and political lyrics knocked me down." The two kept in touch for the next 13 years, during which O'Neal relocated his label, and King concentrated on his own community, forging relationships with local youth through a blues education program, through his organization The Rural Members Association. 

In 1997, the RMA started the annual Freedom Creek blues festival, which has since received international recognition. King performed at national and international festivals but mostly played near his home, most notably as a regular at Bettie's Juke joint in Mississippi. He described his music as "struggling blues" because of its focus on the "injustices in life in the rural South". 

He began recording in 1999 and his 2000 recordings Freedom Creek and I Am The Blues, were the first of several acclaimed albums. King's follow up, Living In a New World, is nothing short of spectacular. Produced by Jim O'Neal and recorded at Easley Studio in Memphis, the album reminds the listener of Curtis Mayfield while allowing RL Burnside fans to rejoice as well. 

In addition to the two CD's on the Rooster Blues label, Willie has also four independently recorded CDs - Walkin' the Walk, Talkin' the Talk which was recorded with local Alabama bluesman "Birmingham" George Conner, and the widely acclaimed I Am The Blues. Jukin' At Bettie's was recorded live at Bettie's Place, a deep South rural juke joint. His last recording was One Love. 

Dutch film-makers Saskia Rietmeijer and Bart Drolenga (Visible World Films) wanted to produce a documentary about African American arts and culture in the Deep South. But they met Willie King and instead decided to devote their efforts to creating a documentary about King's life and times, titled Down in the Woods. King was also featured in Martin Scorsese's 2003 documentary series The Blues and Shout Factory's Blues Story the same year. 

King died from a massive heart attack shortly before his 66th birthday, near his home in the rural community of Old Memphis, Alabama, just a few miles from his birthplace. Willie touched the lives of so many with his amazing, spirit, music and message  and it is so important and wonderful that his legacy continues to be recognized. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, the Willie King web site & AllMusic)

 

Sunday 17 March 2024

Paul Katner born 17 March 1941

Paul Kantner (March 17, 1941 – January 28, 2016) was an American rock musician. He is best known as the co-founder, rhythm guitarist, and a secondary vocalist of Jefferson Airplane, a leading psychedelic rock band of the counterculture era. He continued these roles as a member of Jefferson Starship, Jefferson Airplane's successor band. 

Paul Lorin Kantner born  in San Francisco, California was the son of Paul Sr, a travelling salesman and Cora (nee Fortier), who died when he was eight. His father sent him away to be educated by the Christian Brothers and then to a Jesuit school in Santa Clara. While studying at Santa Clara University and then San Jose State College he taught himself guitar and banjo, and set out to make a splash on the San Francisco folk circuit. Jefferson Airplane were formed in 1965, after the singer Marty Balin had met Kantner at the San Francisco folk club The Drinking Gourd. The original line-up included vocalist Signe Toly Anderson, Kaukonen, drummer Jerry Peloquin and a bluegrass-inclined double bass player, Bob Harvey. Their manager, Matthew Katz, bathetically dubbed their music “fo-jazz” (a mixture of folk and jazz).

Regular live performing soon brought changes, with Jack Casady coming in on bass – he was one of the most inventive and admired practitioners of the era – and the drum stool commandeered first by Skip Spence and then Spencer Dryden. In 1966 they released their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and sacked Katz. Two months later Anderson quit and was promptly replaced by Grace Slick, the privately educated daughter of an investment banker who had been singing with another San Francisco band, The Great Society. 

                                  

“After Bathing at Baxter’s, was an album in which the Airplane turned up the psychedelic dial with wandering songs, otherworldly lyrics, strange sound effects and a more improvisational style. At generation-defining events like the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock and the ill-fated Altamont Speedway Free Festival in 1969, the group embodied the look, the sound, the politics and the aspirations of the counterculture, specifically its San Francisco incarnation. 

The late 60’s saw the group reaching their peak, but by 1970 in-fighting was breaking out, and by 1971 both Dryden and Balin had left. In 1970 Kantner had signalled a possible new future for himself by embarking on a side project that led to a concept album, Blows Against the Empire, recorded with an ad hoc group of musicians he called Jefferson Starship and revealing his fascination with science fiction writers such as Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein. 

When the Airplane folded, Kantner went on to record a pair of albums with Slick, who by then had become his partner, and with whom he had a daughter, China. Then he made Jefferson Starship into a full-time affair, and between 1974 and 1984 the group had five Top 20 US albums in succession, with 1975’s Red Octopus hitting No 1 and delivering the No 3 hit Miracles. 

Kantner quit after their 1984 album, Nuclear Furniture, declaring himself unhappy with the group’s too-commercial direction. After his departure and as a result of a lawsuit he filed, Jefferson Starship became plain Starship, a band loved and loathed for the song “We Built This City”, while Kantner went on to record a one-off album in 1986 with Casady and Balin as the KBC Band. In 1989 he was involved in a Jefferson Airplane reunion tour and album, and in 1992 he reignited Jefferson Starship. 

After re-forming Jefferson Starship with Mr. Balin in the early 1990s, Mr. Kantner toured often with the group, which evolved into a solo vehicle for him, with guest musicians coming and going. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. “Their heady psychedelia, combustible group dynamic and adventuresome live shows made them one of the defining bands of the era,” their entry on the Hall of Fame website reads.

On March 25, 2015, it was reported that Kantner had suffered a heart attack. Kantner returned to the group later on in the year, in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jefferson Airplane with special shows that also featured Grateful Dead tribute group Jazz is Dead. Kantner died in San Francisco at the age of 74 on January 28, 2016, from multiple organ failure and septic shock. Shortly after Kantner's death, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart called Kantner the band's backbone and said Kantner should have received the kind of credit that Slick, Casady and Kaukonen received. Coincidentally, he died on the same day as Airplane co-founder Signe Toly Anderson. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & The Guardian) 

 

Saturday 16 March 2024

Fred Neil born 16 March 1936

Fred Neil (March 16, 1936 – July 7, 2001) was an American folk singer-songwriter active in the 1960s and early 1970s. He did not achieve commercial success as a performer and is mainly known through other people's recordings of his material – particularly "Everybody's Talkin'", which became a hit for Harry Nilsson after it was used in the film Midnight Cowboy in 1969. Though highly regarded by contemporary folk singers, he was reluctant to tour and spent much of the last 30 years of his life assisting with the preservation of dolphins. 

Neil was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. His father worked for Wurlitzer, a jukebox manufacturer, and he sometimes took his son along when he traveled to nightspots in Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida to install and repair the machines. In the 1950s Fred Neil moved to New York where he pitched pop songs at the Brill Building (a music publishing and recording center). In 1956 a then-unknown Buddy Holly recorded one of his compositions, “Modern Don Juan,” and in 1961 Roy Orbison included “Candy Man” on the backside of “Crying.” 

Bob Dylan, Karen Dalton & Fred Neil

 On the back of this success, Neil moved to New York. Dylan later nominated him as one of his primary inspirations: "He had a powerful bass voice and a powerful sense of rhythm. I'd play harmonica for him, and once in a while get to sing a song." In 1963 three of his songs appeared on a compilation album released by the FM label called Hootenanny Live at the Bitter End. He also established himself in Coconut Grove, Florida, where a lively folk scene had grown up around singer Vince Martin in 1961. 


                                   

Neil performed in a duo with Vince Taylor, with whom he recorded the album, Tear Down The Walls. His first solo album, Bleecker & Mac Dougal (1965), named after streets in Greenwich Village, became a benchmark for many emergent young singer-songwriters, with one of the songs on the album, The Other Side Of This Life subsequently covered by Lovin' Spoonful, Jefferson Airplane and the Youngbloods. It was also the title of a live album recorded in Los Angeles, with the country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons among the backing musicians.Tiim Hardin, Tim Buckley and David Crosby were strongly influenced by Neil, and his songs were also covered by Richie Havens, HP Lovecraft and Casey Anderson. 

He was offered the opportunity to rerecord “Everybody’s Talkin’” in 1969 for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack but declined. Harry Nilsson recorded the song instead and it became a huge hit. Neil, however, reaped song-writing royalties from the song, allowing him to live his secluded life. He took flight almost from the day his song, Everybody's Talkin' ibecame a global hit in 1970, following its use as the theme of the Dustin Hoffman-Jon Voight movie Midnight Cowboy (1969). 

Neil rarely gave interviews, could not stomach fame, and appeared repulsed at the success of his song, a disdainful commentary on human alienation in public life. In fact, it had already appeared on Neil's 1966 solo album, alongside another song, The Dolphins, which reflected his fascination with mammals. 

Unimpressed by the trappings of fame, and with no interest in exploiting the opportunities offered by his hit, Neil had withdrawn by 1971 to set up a dolphin rescue project in Florida with marine biologist Richard O'Barry, who trained the dolphins for the television series Flipper.  He attempted to record one more album for Columbia in 1973, but the sessions were never issued. He continued to perform sporadically in 1975-76, attending charity functions to benefit the Dolphin Project, an action group dedicated to the abolition of dolphin captivity that he cofounded with marine biologist on Earth Day in 1970. 

Neil made his last appearance with Jackson Browne, Richie Havens, and others at a benefit concert in Japan in 1977. He refused all attempts to persuade him into a comeback, and devoted the rest of his life to protecting dolphins. Through the 1980s, Neil retreated from music and public life, living in Florida. In June 1987, in Miami, he was involved in a tragic accident that killed Christine Purcell, his girlfriend. Afterward, Neil moved from Coconut Grove, visiting New York, travelling to Mexico and Texas, then, by the early 1990s, relocating to coastal Oregon. 

In 1998, he remarked on a sore on his face that he claimed was a spider bite. It was the first sign of a later-diagnosed squamous-cell carcinoma, for which he received radiation treatment and surgery. The cancer returned in 2001, and he was scheduled to begin chemotherapy on July 16, but he was found dead on July 7, 2001 at his home in Summerland Key, Florida. He was 65 years old. Overlooked, underrated and doing his damndest to keep it that way: such was the mysterious life of Fred Neil. 

(Edited from The Guardian, Encyclopedia.com & Wikipedia)


Friday 15 March 2024

Bertha "Chippie" Hill born 15 March 1905


Bertha "Chippie" Hill (March 15, 1905 – May 7, 1950) was an American blues and vaudeville singer and dancer, best known for her recordings with Louis Armstrong. 

Hill was born in Charleston, South Carolina, one of sixteen children. The family moved to New York in 1915. She began her career as a dancer in Harlem and by 1919 was working with Ethel Waters. At this young age, during a stint at Leroy's, a noted New York nightclub, Hill was nicknamed "Chippie" because of her youth and small size. She also performed with Ma Rainey as part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. She later established her own song and dance act and toured on the TOBA circuit in the early 1920s. About 1925, she settled in Chicago, where she worked at various venues with King Oliver's Jazz Band. 


                                  

The majority of Bertha Chippie Hill's records were made for the General Phonograph Corporation and later for the Okeh Phonograph Corporation, issued on their Okeh label between 1925 and 1929. Consequently, the company's A. and R. man in Chicago, Richard M. Jones, influenced the choice of material Chippie Hill was to record, the majority of the songs being written by him. 

Fortunately, he wrote some excellent blues and was a fine pianist too, being present on many her recordings. Ten recordings also feature the remarkable cornet playing of Louis Armstrong including "Pratt City Blues", "Low Land Blues" and "Kid Man Blues" in 1925 and "Georgia Man" and "Trouble in Mind" in 1926. 

Anyone seeking insights about blues, jazz, and human nature needs to savour Armstrong's interactions with Bertha "Chippie" Hill. She is also backed by Richard M. Jones' Jazz Wizards (with clarinettist Artie Starks doing his best to complement her passionate delivery); guitarist Lonnie Johnson, who recorded during this period with artists as diverse as Duke Ellington, Texas Alexander, and Eddie Lang; guitarist Scrapper Blackwell and pianist Leroy Carr; pianist and songwriter Georgia Tom (Thomas A. Dorsey); and guitarist Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker) and bassist Bill Johnson of New Orleans. The gravitational pull of the blues is nicely counterweighted by the 1929 recording of"Non-Skid Tread," an amusing study in hokum for kazoo and continuo with "Scrapper" Blackwell and the Two Roys, with Leroy Carr on piano. 

In the 1930s she retired from singing to raise her seven children. Hill occasionally sang during the next 15 years (including with Jimmie Noone) but mostly worked outside of music. She was rediscovered by writer Rudi Blesh in 1946, working in a bakery. Appearances on Blesh's This Is Jazz radio series resulted in her coming back to the music scene, performing at the Village Vanguard, Jimmy Ryan's and even appearing at Carnegie Hall in 1948 with Kid Ory. She also sang at the Paris Jazz Festival, and worked with Art Hodes in Chicago.

 At the age of 45, she was back in prime form in 1950, when she was struck and killed by a hit and run driver in New York City in 1950. She is buried at the Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island, Illinois. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Document Record notes & AllMusic)

Thursday 14 March 2024

John Graas born 14 March 1917

John Graas (March 14, 1917 – April 13, 1962) was an American jazz French horn player, composer, and arranger from the 1940s through 1962. He had a short but busy career on the West Coast, and became known as a pioneer of the French horn in jazz. 

John Jacob Graas was born in Dubuque, Iowa. His father was born in Luxembourg, as well as his mother's parents, and they emigrated to the United States before settling in Dubuque. His mother was a very talented pianist and had perfect pitch. His brother was Vincent Graas. In 1931 Graas' parents gave their son a French horn while he was a student at Jefferson Junior High School and played in the band and orchestra. 

His musical gift on the instrument appeared quickly. In 1932 at Dubuque Senior High School, he placed first in an elimination contest of musicians and finished third in the state district meet. In 1933 he took first in the district tournament and finished second in the state finals. In 1934, Graas won state and national honors as a French horn musician. He was the only entry in the French horn event to win superior rating. 

Upon his graduation in 1934, Graas joined the National Musical Ensemble of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1935--1936 he joined another touring group, a concert band led by the noted cornet virtuoso and conductor, Bohumir Kryl. Graas returned home in time to play with the Cadet band in their preparation for the Chicago music festival and made the trip with them. Graas received invitations to play with the Houston symphony, the Miami, Florida municipal band, and an offer to be the assistant band director at the University of Nebraska. He turned them down in hopes of becoming a conductor of a major symphony. 

He enrolled and commuted from Columbia to Chicago to study with Max Pottag of the Chicago Symphony. In June 1940 he received a scholarship to the Tanglewood Camp at the Berkshire Music Center where he played under conductor Serge Koussevitzky and studied there with Willem Valkenier, principal horn with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. 

                                  

He soon became interested in jazz and studied ways to bring jazz and classical music together, an early effort at what would later be called Third Stream music. Following the path of his dual interests, he was a member of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (1941). Graas left classical music for a brief time in May 1942, when he became a member of the Claude Thornhill cool bop big band. He recorded several songs featuring him, including "Buster's Last Stand" and "Lullaby in the Rain" before returning to Tanglewood under Koussevitsky. 

Graas was drafted into the Army in 1942 and spent the most of his time with the 145th Army Ground Forces Band in Virginia. He also saw training at the Army Music School, Fort Meyer, Florida. While there, he was one of several performers asked to perform at the White House for President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Graas played a French horn solo and sang in the school chorus. It was during his military life that Graas developed his love of jazz. 


After his military discharge, Graas became a member of the Mark Warnow band, playing at the Capitol Theater in New York City. He also played with the NBC Studio Orchestra, the Lucky Strike Hit Parade Band, and the Hall of Fame Band conducted by Paul Whiteman. He frequently heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie play bebop at Minton's Playhouse and began to study with Lennie Tristano. From 1947 to 1949 Graas became a member of the Tex beneke Orchestra, then from 1950 to 1953 the Stan Kenton Orchestra. 

Liberace with John Graas

The 1950s were a period of intense activity by Graas, as performer, composer, and arranger. Besides groups under his own name, he appeared in the musical aggregations of Shorty Rogers, Maynard Ferguson, Billy May, Pete Rugolo, Mel Lewis, and others. In 1955 Graas played with the Liberace TV Orchestra for one year. The famed pianist referred to Graas as "the greatest French horn player in the world." He continued recording fairly regularly as a leader up to 1958. He began working with Universal Studios, where he was first horn, and studied and later taught jazz arranging at Westlake College in Los Angeles.

The 1960s began with equal intensity, including recordings with Henry Mancini, Bobby Darin, Heinie Beau, and others, until his career was cut short when he was found dead on April 13, 1962, slumped over the horn he loved so much, apparently of a heart attack at the age of 45, in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles. He was buried in Arlington Cemetery. 

(Edited from Encyclopedia Dubuque & Wikipedia)

Here's John Graas with Shorty Rogers and His Giants performing Wig Alley (a.k.a. Morpo) in the 1953 film Dementia. The musicians on the track (all of whom are featured in the film except for drummer Shelly Manne, who was replaced by an actor) are Shorty Rogers (tp), Milt Bernhart (tb), John Graas (fhr), Jimmy Giuffre (ts), Frank Patchen (p), Howard Rumsey (b), Gene Englund (tu), Rodney Evans Bacon (congos), Shelly Manne (dr).

 

Wednesday 13 March 2024

Ronnie Hazlehurst born 13 March 1928

Ronald Hazlehurst (13 March 1928 – 1 October 2007) was an English composer and conductor who, having joined the BBC in 1961, became its Light Entertainment Musical Director. 

Ronald Hazlehurst was born in Dukinfield, Cheshire, in 1928, to a railway worker father and a piano teacher mother. Having attended St John's Church of England primary then Hyde County Grammar School, he left at the age of 14 and became a clerk in a cotton mill for £1 a week. From 1947 to 1949 he did his National Service as a bandsman in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards. 

Over the next few years he played the trumpet with the bands of George Chambers, Nat Allen, George Elrick, Harry Parry and Melville Christie and also had his first experience of arranging, before being called up for National Service in 1947. He served his time as a bandsman, and was the solo cornet with the band of 4th/7th Dragoon Guards, for which he also produced arrangements. During his time in the Army, Hazlehurst was nominated to attend Kneller Hall (the Royal Military School of Music near Twickenham) as a student. He was de-mobbed in 1949, and spent some time working for a series of dance bands, mostly in the north of England, and also developed his skills as an orchestrator. 

Ronnie Hazlehurst worked at Granada for about a year in 1955 and, after he left there, worked on a market stall in Watford to make ends meet. But by 1957 Hazlehurst had largely abandoned his role as a trumpeter in favour of orchestration and arrangement, mostly for Granada. In 1961 he moved to the BBC as a staff arranger and the following year undertook his first big job when he scored and arranged the programme for a concert at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the BBC. 

From 1964 he worked mostly for BBC television, producing the music for The Likely Lads, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais's sitcom which was first shown that December. The following year he provided the score for Dennis Potter's play Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton. He was to remain with the BBC until the 1990s, beginning with the title orchestrations manager, then as head of music for light entertainment and musical adviser (light entertainment). 

Hazlehurst's particular talent lay in his ability to combine a catchy theme with the tone appropriate for the programme. All this Hazlehurst achieved with remarkably limited resources; by the time the music had to be commissioned the programme makers had often overspent their budget. For Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em he had been asked to provide a Morse Code rendition of the title (a technique emulated by Barrington Pheloung for the Inspector Morse theme), but he had to fight hard to secure a second piccolo for the piece. 

                                  

One of his best-loved melodies, the theme for Last of the Summer Wine (1973), was initially rejected by the programme makers. But it proved so popular with viewers that a CD of music from the series was produced to mark the show's 25th anniversary. He also composed the music for Are You Being Served ?, The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, Blankety and then Les Dawson and Lily Savage. 

Hazlehurst was also involved with the Eurovision Song Contest and was the musical director when the event was hosted by the United Kingdom in 1974, 1977 and 1982. He also conducted the British entry on seven occasions, in 1977, 1982, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1992. In 1977, as well as conducting the British entry, he also conducted the German entry. To conduct the British entry that year, Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran, he used a closed umbrella instead of a baton and wore a bowler hat. 

He also arranged and conducted two singers' performances of their voice-overs for opening credits, Clare Torry for Butterflies ("Love Is like a Butterfly") and Paul Nicholas for Just Good Friends. He also recorded some LPs and CDs with his orchestra including a 2-CD box set of Laurel and Hardy film music; his orchestra also backed singer Marti Caine on an album that was released on CD. Hazlehurst moved from Hendon, North London, to Guernsey in about 1997. In 1999, he was awarded a Gold Badge from the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters. 


Music was Hazlehurst's life and passion as well as his work and he continued to work right up to his heart bypass operation in October 2006. On 27 September 2007 he suffered a stroke and, without regaining consciousness, died on 1 October in Princess Elizabeth Hospital, St Martin, Guernsey at the age of 79. Having been married twice, with two sons from his second marriage, at the time of his death his partner was Jean Fitzgerald. 

(Edited from The Telegraph)

 

Tuesday 12 March 2024

Al Jarreau born 12 March 1940

Al Jarreau (March 12, 1940 – February 12, 2017) was an American singer and songwriter. His 1981 album Breakin' Away spent two years on the Billboard 200 and is considered one of the finest examples of the Los Angeles pop and R&B sound. His 1981 album Breakin' Away spent two years on the Billboard 200 and is considered one of the finest examples of the Los Angeles pop and R&B sound. The album won Jarreau the 1982 Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. In all, he won seven Grammy Awards and was nominated for over a dozen more during his career. 

He was born Alwin Lopez Jarreau in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was a minister with a fine singing voice, and his mother a piano teacher and accompanist to the church choir – in which the young Al began performing from the age of four, also learning close-harmony singing with his siblings in his early years. He continued to perform in local groups at weekends during his years as a psychology student at Ripon College, Wisconsin, in 1962 took a master’s in vocational rehabilitation at the University of Iowa and subsequently moved to San Francisco to become a rehabilitation counselor. 

But music exerted an irresistible pull on Jarreau, and in his spare time he began performing regularly with the pianist George Duke, who would go on to an illustrious jazz and rock career with the saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and Frank Zappa. Jarreau also formed a duo with the guitarist Julio Martinez, and the pair’s popularity at Gatsby’s club in Sausalito led Jarreau to make music his career in 1968. He moved first to Los Angeles to work at high-profile haunts including Dino’s and the Troubadour, and on his move to New York began to appear on the TV shows of Johnny Carson and David Frost, and to work regularly at the Improv comedy club. 

                                   

In 1975, Jarreau made his debut album, We Got By, for Warner Brothers – a session that extended the singer’s growing fan-club to Europe, with that album and its successor Glow (1976) going on to win two Echo awards in Germany. Jarreau performed on Saturday Night Live in 1976 and won his first Grammy for jazz vocal performance for Look to the Rainbow (1978, a collection of live takes from his first world tour), before the million-selling Breakin’ Away made him a mainstream star. Jarreau’s versatility and curiosity led him to explore more R&B-oriented styles in the mid-80s, and his crossover reputation was further secured by his TV performances of the Moonlighting theme, for which he also wrote the lyrics. 

Jarreau’s remarkable vocal range spanned the soulfully jazzy romantic lightness of an African-American male tradition running from Nat King Cole to George Benson and on to José James, and a bebop-derived improv agility as a wordless scat singer that always reflected the methods of his first jazz model, Jon Hendricks. Jarreau could also mimic the sounds of all manner of instruments with such uncanny accuracy that a ghostly Brazilian berimbau-player or a battalion of samba-shuffling Latin percussionists could often seem to be hiding in the wings. 

Jarreau toured relentlessly, but throttled back in the 90s to focus on the recording studio – winning another Grammy for the R&B-oriented Heaven and Earth (1992), and enlisting a cast of jazz stars including the saxophonist David Sanborn under the direction of the producer/bassist Marcus Miller for Tenderness (1994). He took a three-month acting diversion in the Broadway production of Grease! in 1996, and from 1999 began to work with symphony orchestras on widely acclaimed makeovers of Broadway classics and his own hits. 

Jarreau continued to play symphonic concerts, festivals and clubs, and regularly visit the studio. In 2004 he made the jazz album Accentuate the Positive – featuring songs associated with Duke Ellington, Bill Evans and Betty Carter, among others. Two years later came a typical contrast, on Givin’ It Up, a duet with Benson’s silky voice and sleek guitar sound, and star guests including Patti Austin, Herbie Hancock and Paul McCartney – who happened to be working in an adjoining studio when an enthusiastic Benson roped him in. 

In 2010, Jarreau had to go to hospital while on tour in France with respiratory and cardiac problems and again in 2012 after a bout of pneumonia. But he returned to live music making which was always his first love as a performer, until almost the end of his life. In February 2014, the chipper and delighted-looking Jarreau accepted the young British trumpeter Tom Walsh’s invitation to rerun the punchy R&B songs from his eponymous 1983 album at Ronnie Scott’s club. At the end of the performance, it was hard to tell whether Jarreau or the audience were the more grateful for the opportunity. 


On February 8, 2017, after being hospitalized for exhaustion in Los Angeles, Jarreau canceled his remaining 2017 tour dates. He died of respiratory failure, at the age of 76 on February 12, just two days after announcing his retirement, and one month before his 77th birthday.

(Edited from obit by John Fordham @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)