Florence Passy (August 7, 1931 – May 16, 2007) was a French pop
singer . She is known for having sung songs that have inspired, among others, Claude
Nougaro as well as Jean-Claude Pascal.
Florence Passiflora Cappoccia was born in Russange (Moselle,
France).She took piano and opera singing lessons at the Luxembourg Conservatory
where she obtained a state diploma. The singer Lina Margy advised her to try her
luck in Paris. Florence Passy followed the advice and met Jacques Canetti who
invited her to sing in his cabaret. The success was immediate and Florence
recorded many songs including, La valse parisienne, Ton adieu, Comme une
symphonie, Nous les amoureux (a song also covered by Jean-Claude Pascal).
In the early 1950s, she met the trumpeter Pierre Sellin who
became her accompanist and her husband. The couple then performed all
over the world and hosted many dance evenings, such as in La Baule, Monte-Carlo
and Évian-les-Bains. In the sixties, she covered hits of the time on the labels
'PBM', 'Actualité' or 'Disque du jour'.
In the 1970s, Florence Passy decided to put an end to her
career as an artist to take care of her disabled daughter.
She died in Paris on May 16, 2007. She was 75 years old.
Lillian Boutté (August
6, 1949 – May 23, 2025) was a versatile American jazz and gospel singer who was
capable of singing both New Orleans Dixieland standards and New Orleans
R&B, as well as swing-era tunes and contemporary originals.
Lillian Theresa Boutte’s career and influence stretched far
beyond her hometown New Orleans. She started young, winning a vocal contest
when she was 11, then joining the Golden Voices Choir, and went on to study
opera performance at the Xavier University of Louisiana, where she received a bachelor's degree in
music therapy, meanwhile she was singing in clubs at the same time. During the
1970’s she worked as a session musician in New Orleans, performing and touring as
a backup singer with Allen Toussaint, James Booker, Patti LaBelle, The Pointer
Sisters, Neville Brothers, and Dr. John.
What brought her first to national, and then international,
fame was in 1979 playing multiple roles in the second New Orleans cast of the
groundbreaking musical One Mo Time. After lengthy seasons in New Orleans, and
then New York City, she toured with the production to Sweden and Brazil. She became good friends with James Booker
during her tenure in the cast. She recorded a gospel album with the Olympia
Brass Band in 1980, and in 1982, made her first jazz album. After leaving the
show in 1983 she assembled a band to tour overseas, and became a star
performing in theaters and on television in Sweden, Germany, Poland, Italy,
England, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
In 1984, she married her bands clarinetist and saxophonist
Thomas L'Etienne. Their “Music Friends” ensemble toured internationally for many
years, working both in Europe and back in the USA. Lillian’s talent was to
connect immediately with an audience, whether in a tiny club or a vast concert
hall. For more than three decades, she made her home abroad, performing and
promoting the spirit of New Orleans music across international stages. Along
the way, she helped bring countless fellow musicians with her, offering them
opportunities to perform and grow beyond the city’s borders.
Here's " You Send Me" from above album.
Her music was rooted in New Orleans, but was not strictly
traditional jazz, incorporating New Orleans music from gospel onward. She could
belt out a vaudeville number with everyone clapping along, and, next moment,
hush the crowd to silence with a ballad or spiritual as highlighted when she
sang with pianist Sammy Price’s small group in an intimate studio theatre. In a
1986 interview with WWOZ, she said, "the people we entertain all over the
world seem to like music, they don't try to characterize my music, they don't
put it only as what some folks say 'Preservation Hall Music.' We play all of
the music, we play the blues, we play the traditional jazz, we play many
standard ballads, we play a little bit of boogie, we play soul, and a little
bit of rock and roll."
She returned often to New Orleans, and WWOZ broadcast many
of her performances from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and the
French Quarter Festival. In one performance in the French Market she shut down
Decatur Street as her audience spilled out of Dutch Alley into the street.
In 1986 she was named "New Orleans Musical
Ambassador" by Mayor Ernest "Dutch" Morial, only the second
person to hold that title after the city's first Ambassador, Louis Armstrong.
The Price event was at the Ascona Jazz Festival in Switzerland, where from
1985-89 she was known as the “Queen of Ascona”, playing to some of the
festival’s biggest crowds. In 1989, and a year or so later at the Barbican, she
performed with US pianist Butch Thompson.
She was a popular guest vocalist with Humphrey Lyttelton
from the late 1980s. Through the years, Lillian Boutte recorded for many labels
(mostly in Europe), including Herman, Feel the Jazz, High Society, Turning
Point, Timeless, Southland, Storyville, GHB, Calligraph , Blues Beacon, and
Dinosaur Entertainment.
She continued performing until 2017, when she began suffering
from dementia and Alzheimer’s. Part of the city’s famed Boutte musical lineage,
Lillian was the older sister of singer John Boutte and related to many others
in the family’s rich musical tradition. As her health declined, relatives
brought her back to New Orleans in 2017 to care for her. She had been living in
Hamburg, Germany for over 30 years. She died from the disease, on May 23, 2025,
at the age of 75.
(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic, Jazzwise & New Orleans
Jazz & Heritage Foundation)
Wilbur Whilt "Wib" Evans (August 5, 1905 – May 31,
1987) was an American actor and singer who performed on the radio, in opera, on
Broadway in films and early live television.
Evans was born in Philadelphia to parents Walter Percy and
Emma Whilt Evans, of Welsh descent. He had a brother, Walter, and a sister,
Emma, who died at an early age. As a child, he sang with the Welsh Singing
Society of Philadelphia and as a soloist in the choir of the First Unitarian Church
in Germantown, aged 5. His first stage appearance came at Holmes Junior High
School in a production of Daddy Long Legs. From 1921 to 1925, he attended West
Philadelphia High School for Boys, where he starred as Ko-Ko in The Mikado by
Gilbert and Sullivan.
After graduating from high school, Evans earned a two-year
scholarship at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. During his second
year at Curtis, in 1927, he entered the first national radio singing contest,
the Atwater Kent Foundation National Radio Singing Contest. Out of 50,000
contestants, Evans won the top male prize of $5,000 in cash and a two-year
scholarship for his junior and senior years at Curtis. Some have since referred
to Evans as one of the 'first American Idols.'
A baritone, Evans performed in radio early his career. In
1930, he moved to Los Angeles to perform on the radio, in concerts and to try
his hand has a performer in the movie-talkie fever that was sweeping the land.
However, with limited financial success, he returned to New York in 1931 to
resume his radio career.
Wilbur with Jeanette MacDonald
He signed with the Columbia Concert Management Agency
and its subsidiary, the Cooperative-Community Concerts Bureau, which organized
concert tours across the U.S. and Canada. These concerts were typically
promoted by local cultural leaders and brought classical music to regional
audiences. Evans found success in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. On
May 22 and 23, 1931, he performed as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance
with Philadelphia's Savoy Company at the Academy of Music, earning excellent
reviews. The Savoy Company, founded in 1901, is the world's oldest theatrical
group dedicated to Gilbert and Sullivan's works.
He returned to the Savoy stage on May 13 and 14, 1932,
playing Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard, also at the Academy of Music in
Philadelphia. He credited his performance in this demanding role to director
Pacie Ripple, who had appeared in D'Oyly Carte productions under Gilbert and
Sullivan themselves. His duet with Savoy veteran John Steele Williams became a
showstopper due to the audience's overwhelming applause. Evans made his final
Savoy appearance in 1936, starring in Utopia, Limited, marking both Savoy's and
Philadelphia's premiere of the opera. Once again directed by Pacie Ripple,
Evans received rave reviews from local press.
Evans toured widely across North America, performing in
concerts, operas, recitals and oratorios; he toured every state except North
Dakota. He made his grand opera debut in 1933 in Tristan und Isolde with Fritz
Reiner and the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. He served for two years in the
Marine Reserve during the 1930s. In 1942, he made his New York debut in The
Merry Widow at Carnegie Hall and later made his Broadway debut in Mexican
Hayride. He subsequently went on to perform in The New Moon, La Vie Parisienne
and Up in Central Park. He made his directional debut at the Lambertville Music
Circus in 1949.
In 1951, Evans co-starred with Mary Martin in the original
London production of South Pacific at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In the
early 1950s, Evans and his wife, actress Susanna Foster, toured extensively in
operettas and musicals. He appeared in By the Beautiful Sea on Broadway in
1954, and became director of the Valley Forge Music Fair in 1955.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, he also performed in concerts and cabarets,
singing alongside stars including Mary Martin and Shirley Booth. He also
appeared in Man of La Mancha at the Mastbaum Theater in Philadelphia in 1966.
Between 1967 and 1971, he served as an Army officer
responsible for overseeing United Service Organizations shows in Vietnam. After
returning to the U.S. in 1971, he was appointed head of the music and theater
division at Fort Bliss, Texas, a position he held until his retirement from the
Army in 1974.
Evans died at the Elmer Community Hospital, Elner, New
Jersey on May 31, 1987, at the age of 81 and was survived by his fourth wife
Masako Ogura.
Edward Gates White (August 4, 1918 – December 27, 1992),
sometimes credited as Ed Gates or The Great Gates, was an American rhythm and
blues singer, pianist and bandleader who recorded in the 1940s and 1950s.
Although some sources claim he was born in Philadelphia,
researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give his birthplace as Alabama. His family
moved to California in 1922 and he studied music in school but hadn’t thought
of becoming a professional musician until he was working in dry cleaning and
was heard singing by his co-workers who encouraged him to give it a shot. He
then impressed the owner of a night club when he sang at a talent show held
there and the club owner offered him a steady job as a performer, which he
turned down, still not convinced he could make it. When the bandleader offered
to work with him to polish his performing skills he relented and was soon
earning a living singing under the name The Great Gates (Gates being his middle
name).
He established himself as a bandleader. With various bands,
credited as the Hollywood All Stars or the Wampus Cats, he recorded sporadically
for several labels between the mid-1940s and late 1950s. He also had a radio
show on NBC in the mid-1940s, when he was known as "The Man in the
Moon", which gave him another nickname which he’d continued to use
thereafter as strictly a club performer.
His biggest success as a recording artist came in 1949, when
"Late After Hours" on the Selective label, credited to "The
Great Gates", reached number 6 on the R&B chart. Though its success
was especially noteworthy considering Gates’ own inexperience, as well as that
of the teenaged band behind him (including future notable Marvin Phillips on
sax), not to mention the inexperience of the company which issued it, he never
was able to build off that early shot at fame.
In the years to come he bounced from one label to another,
releasing records under his full given name as well as his performing moniker,
always able to keep his career afloat yet never becoming a star as it briefly
appeared he might be able to do when starting out. In 1952, he recorded in
Chicago with bandleader Red Saunders, and later recorded in Los Angeles on the
Aladdin, 4 Star and Specialty labels. By the late 1950’s he’d opened a
nightclub and having difficulty with finding and keeping a pianist to anchor
the proceedings he learned the instrument himself and would go on to record as
an organist in 1962 with a few singles released on the Robins Nest
label, entitled The Man On The Moon Ed Gates On Organ.
Gates was still
active locally around Los Angeles until the mid-1980’s and died December 27,
1992 in Culver City, California, at the age of 74. Gates was typical of the
many West Coast-based artists who recorded consistently throughout most of the
50s, without ever really getting the recognition his superb records should have
earned him.
Lu Elliot (August 3, 1924 – March 5, 1987) was a jazz and
blues singer and recording artist. She also recorded some soul songs. Some of
the artists she worked with were B. B. King, The Duke Ellington Orchestra and
the Sam Williams Express.
Elliott was a tuba player in her high school band. As a
teenager she won first prize at the amateur night held at Harlem's Apollo
Theater. She was married to guitarist Horace C. Sims, who had played in a band
called Afro Cubanaires. In 1952, she and her husband bought a 14-room house in
East Orange, New Jersey. During her career she had appeared on the Steve Allen
Show and had spent a year working with BB King in the United States as well as
touring Europe. Her sister Billie Lee was also a singer.
In September 1949 and new on the scene, she provided the
vocals on "He's The Greatest Thing There Is" with the Duke Ellington
Orchestra that was recorded in New York. She appeared on another recording by
the orchestra in late January 1950. Both she and Al Hibbler provided the vocals
on "How High the Moon". She left the band in February 1950. For a
period of time she was a singer in the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra. It was
revealed in the March 4, 1954 edition of Jet Magazine that she was the only
woman tuba player in the musicians union. In 1960, her single "One" /
"Big Joe" was released on ABC Paramount. Billboard referred to it as
an "Emotion packed" ballad.
In January 1967, it was reported that she was returning to
recording, with a three-year contract that had just been signed with
ABC-Paramount. In February, she began a nationwide tour with BB King. In April
1967, Billboard reported that she had gone to Australia for six weeks of dates
in hotels and theaters. Later that year, she appeared at the Chevron-Hilton in
Sydney, Australia. She stayed there for an extra month. Her 1967 album Way Out From Down Under received a favorable review
from Billboard. The album was arranged and conducted by Johnny Pate. It is
quite possible that her time in Australia was an influence on the title of the
album, which featured her with a kangaroo on the front cover.
In June 1968, she appeared on the Joey Bishop Show. Along
with Elliott, Johnny Mann and his Orchestra and The Collage appeared. Also in
1968, her With a Little Help from My Friends album was released on ABC Records.
The album included the Lennon & McCartney composition "With a Little
Help from My Friends", the Willie Cooper & Marshall Boxley composition
"Our Love Will Last Forever" and the Frank Loesser composition
"If I Were A Bell. It received a positive review in Billboard, with, on
"If I Were a Bell", her voice being powerful, yet comfortable and her
great choice of material commented on.
December 1970 saw her with The Chicki Horn appearing at
Jimmy and Wes Pemberton's 21 Club in The Virgin Islands. In March 1973, she and Al Hibbler sang at the funeral of Key
Club owner Walter C. Dawkins, who was believed to have committed suicide in his
club by shooting himself. In 1975, following the completion of a two week at
the Holiday House in Pittsburgh she was hospitalized as a result of severe
anemia. She spent a month in Columbus Hospital, Newark. A benefit event was
held for her at the Key Club, where she was one of the favorites.
Others that attended were her singer sister Billie Lee, her
husband Horace Sims, fashion designer Freddie Roach and photographer Irving
Overby. By the later part of the mid-1970s she was appearing at the Club
Daiquiri in St. Thomas with the Sam Williams Express, a group she had teamed up
with some years before. Returning to the band after her illness, they changed
the name of the band to the Sam Williams-Lu Elliott Experience. In addition to
updated jazz tunes, they were covering rock and soul material that included
covers of songs by Al Green and Barry White. By popular demand they were to
appear again in February 1976. Around 1979, she appeared on the Redd Foxx and
George Kirby shows in Las Vegas.
In the first quarter of 1981, Elliott had appeared at the
Bally Casino a few times for a period of nearly three months. In mid-March
1981, she appeared at The Cookery at East Eighth Street at University Place in
New York. She was covering material by Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday with
songs such as "Mood Indigo", "Sophisticated Lady" and
"It Don't Mean a Thing". Elliott was brought into the Cookery after
resident artist Alberta Hunter fell and
broke her hip.. In May of that year she was singing there from Tuesday to
Saturday, backed by Gerald Cook on Piano and with Jimmy Lewis on bass. On
Saturday, December 12, it was announced Miss Lu Elliott and her Jazz Trio were
to play a free show at the Citicorp market in New York. In January 1982, she
opened for several weeks at the Golden Nugget Casino.
She died of cancer on 5 March, 1987 (Edited from Wikipedia)
Big Walter Price (August 2, 1914 - March 8, 2012) was an
American musician (piano, vocals) and songwriter of the Texas blues. Though he
never had a national hit, he is often referred to as a blues legend. Walter
himself did not see himself exclusively as a blues singer, he considered
himself more versatile than that.
Walter Travis Price was born in Gonzales, Texas and brought
up by his aunt, who would beat him when he didn't pick enough cotton. He
described his childhood in Gonzales as "horrible". Around the age of
eleven, he moved to San Antonio and lived in big cities ever since. "I
never have fooled with cotton no more". He received very little schooling
("first grade is as far as I ever went") and worked at all sorts of
low-paying jobs until he got involved in music in the 1940s. That's when he
began writing songs (all of Price's recordings are his own compositions) and
learned to play the piano in the key of C.
His first musical experience was with a gospel group called
the Northern Wonders. He started playing barrelhouse swag and jive-talking
blues, and in San Antonio, Junior Moore and Spot Barnett were the original
Thunderbirds who made up the group. Price
was already in his early forties when he made his first records, for Bob
Tanner's TNT label in San Antonio. Three TNT singles were released in 1955, the
first of which, "Calling Margie", sold quite well locally. They were
credited to "Big Walter and his Thunderbirds". Soon Price would call
himself "Big Walter the Thunderbird".
Later in 1955, Walter moved to Houston and joined his friend
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown at Don Robey's Peacock label. Of the five
Peacock singles that were issued in 1956-57, the first two are the best known
and also the strongest sellers. "Shirley Jean" sounds like an early
swamp pop song and was later recorded by several "real" swamp pop
artists from Louisiana. On "Pack Fair And Square" (clearly inspired by
"Flip Flop And Fly"), Price was backed by a few members of Little
Richard's band, the Upsetters (Grady Gaines, Clifford Burks, Nat Douglas). The
song was revived in the 1970s by the J. Geils Band and Nine Below Zero.
In 1958, Price recorded two singles for Eddie Shuler's
Goldband label in Lake Charles, LA, "San Antonio" and "Oh
Ramona". John Broven calls these records "good rumbustious
efforts" in his book "South To Louisiana", but they failed to
sell. In the 1960s Price saw further unsuccessful releases on several labels,
including Myrl, Global, Tear Drop, and Jetstream. Big Walter’s biggest fan base
was in Europe, where he felt at home. Germany had always welcomed him, and his
fans sang along with him while he belted out his songs.
The 1980s saw three Big Walter LP releases with previously
unissued material (on Lunar, Ace and P-Vine), but according to Price, he never
received any royalties. Four CD's issued between 1994 and 2003 but were
considered as bootlegs by Big Walter. During his career, he appeared in the
zombie movie Sugar Hill as the preacher (1974). He also worked as a disc jockey
at KCOH radio station in Houston, and he owned a music store and the Dinosaur
Publishing Company.
Big Walter received twenty-six proclamations from the city
of Houston, and June 6, 1989, was declared “Big Walter Day.” That same year he
was honored as Artist of the Year at the Juneteenth Blues Festival. In 1998
Congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee presented his family with one more
proclamation to “pay tribute to one of Houston’s best-known blues legends” and
stated that Big Walter “found music to be a consolation for the troubles of
life and strove to bring gospel and blues to others as a gift of the spirit.”
He was always very bitter about the way he was treated by
record companies and had been involved in several lawsuits. In spite of his
lack of education, Price was always supremely confident. At his 90th birthday
party in 2004, he launched the release of the first of four CD's issued with
his authorization, on the Sons Of Sunshine label. These four CD's (46 tracks
altogether) contain more or less his complete studio recordings.
He died in a Houston Nursing Home, Texas March 8, 2012 aged
94 (though he claimed to be 97).
(Edited from Texas State Historical Society & This Is My
story)
Paddy Moloney (1 August 1938 – 12 October 2021) was an Irish
musician, composer, and record producer. He co-founded and led the Irish
musical group the Chieftains, playing on all of their 44 albums. He was
particularly associated with the revival of the uilleann pipes.
Moloney was born in Donnycarney, north Dublin, to John, an
army sergeant and Catherine (nee Conroy), both of them were musicians, as were
countless family members, especially those living near his maternal
grandparents in Co Laois. Almost before he started at St Mary’s school, his mother
recognised his musical talents and bought him a tin whistle. Paddy soon
persuaded his parents to buy him a practice set of pipes, costing a whole
week’s wages, and he enrolled at the school of music run by the master piper,
Leo Rowsome.
He made his public debut, aged eight, with fellow musicians
in Phoenix Park, and was soon winning prizes at competitions. Still in short
trousers, he played alongside piping greats such as Séamus Ennis and Willie
Clancy and was soon a regular performer at Dublin’s Pipers’ club. After
finishing school, Moloney accepted a position as an accountant for a major
building firm, Baxendales. Music remained an important part of his life,
however, as he balanced his accounting career with collaborations with such
stellar Irish musicians as Sean Potts, Michael Tubridy, and Martin Fay.
In the late '50s, Moloney began playing with Sean O'Riada,
who subsequently formed a band, Ceoltoiri Cualann. In 1962, Moloney assembled
several of the band's musicians, including Sean Potts, Mick Tubridy, Martin
Fay, and Peadar Mercier to record an album entitled The Chieftains for Garech
Browne’s new Claddagh record label, with Moloney arranging all the music. Intended
as a one-time project, the album was so well received that the musicians agreed
to continue as a more-formal ensemble. It was later followed by The Chieftains
2 (1969), then The Chieftains 3 and so on, right up to number 10 in 1980. There
was a turnover of band members, but the central and dominating figure of
Moloney ensured that the Chieftains’ winning style continued.
The band did not perform in public until 1964 and only
turned professional in the mid-1970s, so their initial reputation was based
almost entirely on the recordings. The first album achieved almost cult status
when featured by John Peel on his BBC Radio 1 Top Gear broadcasts, and when
they did perform live, sometimes at pop festivals, their suits and ties made
them unlikely targets for hippy adulation. But they and their music captivated
audiences of all types and ages.
Paddy with Paul McCartney
Browne enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and Moloney often
performed at his parties, where he impressed friends such as Marianne Faithfull
and Mick Jagger. During the post-production of Chieftains 2 at the Abbey Road
studios, Moloney gained another Chieftains fan in Paul McCartney, who later
invited Moloney to play on a couple of album tracks. Over the years, Moloney
was sought after as a session or guest musician by artists such as Jagger,
Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, Luciano Pavarotti and even The Muppets.
Moloney continued to work at Baxendales until 1968 when he
was hired to work for a new record label, Claddagh. During the five years that
he worked for the label, he produced or co-produced more than four dozen albums
by such Irish musicians as Paddy Taylor, Maire Ni Dhonnchadha, and Denis
Murphy. The decision to turn professional came after a widely acclaimed concert
in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on St Patrick’s night 1975. The same year,
Moloney arranged numbers for the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry
Lyndon. Further film work included The Grey Fox (1982) and Treasure Island
(1990), and Moloney also arranged the music for live performances by the band
of a ballet version of The Playboy of the Western World. In 1988, Moloney
received an honorary doctorate in music from Trinity College in Dublin.
In 1979, the Chieftains played for Pope John Paul II and a
million people in Phoenix Park, Dublin, and, with substantial international
touring, it was no surprise that they became Ireland’s honorary musical
ambassadors in 1989, later performing for the Queen and President Mary McAleese
in 2011. Moloney received the Ohtli Award, Mexico's highest cultural award, on
13 September 2012. On 28 June of the following year, he and the other members
of the Chieftains received the Castelao Medal by the Government of Galicia,
Spain for services to Galician culture and society. He was named a Commander of
the Order of Civil Merit in Spain four years later.
The Chieftains’ last show, according to NPR, was an early
St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Philadelphia in 2020 before the pandemic led
to them canceling the rest of their tour. Moloney died suddenly at a hospital
in Dublin on 12 October 2021, at the age of 83. His funeral was held on 15
October at St. Kevin's Church in Glendalough, followed by a burial at the
adjoining cemetery.
(Edited from Derek
Schofield obit @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)
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