Serge Gainsbourg born 2 April 1928

Serge Gainsbourg (2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director, notorious for his voracious appetite for alcohol, cigarettes, and women, his scandalous, taboo-shattering output made him a legend in Europe but only a cult figure in America, where his lone hit "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" stalled on the pop charts -- fittingly enough -- at number 69.  Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize. His legacy has been firmly established, and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians.

Born Lucien Ginzberg in Paris, his parents were Russian Jews who fled to France following the events of the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. After studying art and teaching, he turned to painting before working as a bar pianist on the local cabaret circuit. Soon he was tapped to join the cast of the musical Milord L'Arsoille, where he reluctantly assumed a singing role; self-conscious about his rather homely appearance, Gainsbourg initially wanted only to carve out a niche as a composer and producer, not as a performer.

In 1945, Gainsbourg's father enrolled him in Beaux-Arts de Paris, a prestigious art school. Serge later transferred to the Académie de Montmartre, where he met his first wife, Elisabeth "Lize" Levitsky, the daughter of Russian aristocrats and a part-time model. Serge and Lize were married on November 3, 1951, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1957. By 1958 he made his recording debut with the album Du Chant a la Une; while strong efforts like 1961's L'Etonnant Serge Gainsbourg and 1964's Gainsbourg Confidentiel followed, his jazz-inflected solo work performed poorly on the charts, although compositions for vocalists ranging from Petula Clark to Juliette Greco to Dionne Warwick proved much more successful.

                                 

Gainsbourg married a second time on 7 January 1964, to Françoise-Antoinette "Béatrice" Pancrazzi, with whom he had two children: a daughter named Natacha and a son, Paul. He divorced Béatrice in February 1966. 

In the late '60s, he befriended the actress Brigitte Bardot, and later became her lover; with Bardot as his muse, Gainsbourg's lushly arranged music suddenly became erotic and delirious, and together, they performed a series of duets, including "Bonnie and Clyde," "Harley Davidson," and "Comic Strip" celebrating pop culture icons.

Gainsbourg's affair with Bardot was brief, but its effects were irrevocable: after he became involved with constant companion Jane Birkin, they recorded the 1969 duet "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus," a song he originally penned for Bardot complete with steamy lyrics and explicit heavy breathing. Although banned in many corners of the globe, it reached the top of the charts throughout Europe, and grew in stature to become an underground classic later covered by performers ranging from Donna Summer to Ray Conniff.

Serge with Jane Birkin

Gainsbourg returned in 1971 with Histoire de Melody Nelson, a dark, complex song cycle which signalled his increasing alienation from modern culture: drugs, disease, suicide and misanthropy became thematic fixtures of his work, which grew more esoteric, inflammatory, and outrageous with each passing release. Although Gainsbourg never again reached the commercial success of his late-'60s peak, he remained an imposing and controversial figure throughout Europe, where he was both vilified and celebrated for his shocking behaviour, which included burning 500 francs on a live television broadcast and recording a reggae version of the sacred "La Marseillaise." 

Money to burn

Along with his pop music oeuvre, Gainsbourg scored a number of films, and also directed and appeared in a handful of features, most notably 1976's Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus, which starred Birkin and Andy Warhol mainstay Joe Dallesandro. Having previously turned down the offer to score the popular softcore pornography film Emmanuelle (1974), he agreed to do so for one of its sequels Goodbye Emmanuelle in 1977. Jane Birkin left Gainsbourg in 1980, but the two remained close, with Gainsbourg becoming the godfather of Birkin and Jacques Doillon's daughter Lou and writing her next three albums. Gainsbourg's final reggae recording, Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles (1981), was recorded at Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas. Bob Marley, husband to The I Threes singer Rita Marley, was reportedly furious when he discovered that Gainsbourg had made his wife Rita sing erotic lyrics.

Gainsbourg posed in drag for the cover of 1984's Love on the Beat, a collection of songs about male hustlers, and made sexual advances towards Whitney Houston on a live TV broadcast. He also created a furore with the single "Lemon Incest," a duet with his daughter, the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. His 1986 film Charlotte for Ever further expanded on the themes found in "Lemon Incest". He starred in the film alongside Charlotte as a widowed, alcoholic father living with his daughter. An album of the same name by Charlotte was also written by Gainsbourg. His sixteenth and final studio album, You're Under Arrest (1987), largely retained a funky new wave sound of Love on the Beat, but also introduced hip hop elements.

In December 1988, while a judge at a film festival in Val d'Isère, he was extremely intoxicated at a local theatre where he was to do a presentation only to stagger offstage and collapse in a nearby seat. Subsequent years saw his health deteriorate, undergoing liver surgery in April 1989. In his ill health, he retired to a private apartment in Vézelay in July 1990, where he would spend six months.

Gainsbourg, who smoked five packs of unfiltered Gitanes cigarettes a day, died from a heart attack at his home on 2 March 1991, aged 62. He was buried in the Jewish section of the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. His funeral brought Paris to a standstill, and French President François Mitterrand said of him, "He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire... He elevated the song to the level of art." Gainsbourg's home at the well-known address rue de Verneuil is still covered in graffiti and poems.

(Info edited from All Music & Wikipedia) 

Duke Jordan born 1 April 1922

Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan (April 1, 1922 – August 8, 2006) was regarded as one of the great early American bebop pianists and composers. The sound that he helped to create in the post-war era was something new in the American landscape, and it remains a cornerstone of jazz.

Jordan was born in New York and raised in Brooklyn where he attended Boys High School. He studied classical music privately at an early age and performed with the trombonist Steve Pulliam at the New York World's Fair in 1939. Before his 21st birthday he was playing piano in big bands, including the Al Cooper's Savoy Sultans, the house orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom, in its day the world’s most famous dance hall. Gillespie once called the Savoy Sultans “the swingiest band there ever was.”  An imaginative and gifted pianist, Jordan also worked with Roy Eldridge's Big Band in 1946.

                               

While performing at the Three Deuces in New York in 1946 he was heard by Charlie Parker, who invited him to join a newly formed group with Miles Davis, Max Roach and Tommy Potter. He participated in Parker's Dial sessions in late 1947 that produced "Dewey Square", "Bongo Bop", "Bird of Paradise", and the ballad "Embraceable You". His work with Parker, recorded for the Dial and Savoy labels, soared with a lilting intensity. It was hard-driving and lyrical, heady and heartfelt, said Ira Gitler, a jazz critic who heard Mr. Jordan and Parker in 1947, at the Onyx Club and the Three Deuces, two long-vanished nightclubs on West 52nd Street in Manhattan. A handful of recordings from 1947 and 1948 are considered masterpieces. They include “Crazeology,” and “Scrapple From the Apple.”

He played with Parker regularly until autumn 1948 and occasionally thereafter. He also played with Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons (1950-51). Engagements with Stan Getz (1949, 1952-3) proved unsatisfying because he was given few opportunities to play solos. In 1952 he married the talented jazz singer Sheila Jordan, who often said that she loved Charlie Parker so much that she married his piano player. Their interracial marriage was unusual in the 1950’s, when segregation remained legal, and miscegenation was a crime in some states. The marriage did not last long, but their union produced a daughter, Tracey J. Jordan, who became a music promoter.

After periods accompanying Stitt and Getz, he performed and recorded in the trio format. He started recording as a leader in 1954, debuting his most famous composition, “Jor-Du,” the following year. Another of his compositions, "No Problem", has been recorded several times, notably by Art Blakey, under the title "No Hay Problema", and Chet Baker as well as others. From 1955 to 1962 he often played in bop groups with Cecil Payne, both as a leader and as a sideman. They performed and recorded with Rolf Ericson in Sweden (1956) and were engaged to play in the theatre production "The Connection", which toured Europe. After periods accompanying Stitt and Getz, he performed and recorded in the trio format. In 1959 he composed parts of the score to Roger Vadim's film "Les Liasons Dangereuses (1960).

Jordan, like many of his contemporaries, developed a heroin habit and by the mid 1960’s, was reduced to driving a taxicab in New York. By the 1970's he rehabilitated himself and resumed his career with a performance in New York (1972).Later he toured Scandinavia (1973-4, 1977-8) and Japan (1976,1982). He had began a new life as a leader of trios and quartets in Copenhagen, where he settled permanently in 1978. 

He recorded more than 30 albums for the Danish label Steeple Chase Records and performed in concerts and at jazz festivals worldwide. His first record date for the company was in 1973. He was reported not to have changed his style over the course of his career.

Duke Jordan died on August 8,2006 in Valby, Denmark, a suburb of Copenhagen. He was 84, and he had lived in self-imposed exile from the United States since 1978, continuing to perform in the musical tradition he helped create.

(Edited from New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Wikipedia & New York Times) 

Etta Baker born 31 March 1913

Etta Baker (March 31, 1913 – September 23, 2006) was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina who quietly enjoyed one of the blues' most enduring careers, working in almost total obscurity and recording only on the rarest of occasions while honing her craft throughout the greater part of the 20th century.

She was born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County, North Carolina, of African-American, Native American, and European-American heritage. Baker began playing guitar at the age of three. She was taught by her father, Boone Reid, a long-time player of the Piedmont blues on several instruments. He was her only musical instructor. She played both the 6-string and the 12-string acoustic guitar and the five-string banjo. Baker played the Piedmont blues for nearly ninety years.

The family moved to Keysville, Virginia, in 1916. There were eight Reid children, four girls and four boys. All but one survived into adulthood. Each of her siblings played instruments. Occasionally, Baker, her father, and her sister, Cora, would play together at dances on Saturday night. Boone Reid worked a series of jobs during the 1910s and 1920s, occasionally taking work in factories and shipyards in other states. The rest of the family lived with an uncle. By the time Etta Reid was 14 years old, the entire family worked on a tobacco farm in southern Virginia, which meant that they were together. She dropped out of school after tenth grade. For decades only relatives and friends ever heard her play, as she confined her performances solely to family gatherings and parties. 

                    Here's "One Dime Blues" from above album.

                                 

Baker was first recorded in the summer of 1956, after she and her father happened across the folksinger Paul Clayton while visiting the Cone mansion, in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, near their home in Morganton. Baker's father asked Clayton to listen to his daughter playing her signature "One Dime Blues". Clayton was impressed and arrived at the Baker house with his tape recorder the next day, recording several songs. Clayton recorded five solo guitar pieces by Baker, which were released as part of the 1956 album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, one of the first commercially released recordings of African American banjo music. Baker was not monetarily compensated for these early recordings. She stayed on at her factory job in Morganton, N.C., for some 50 years. Only after working with the Music Maker label later in life was she able to get rights back for this music.

Etta’s two-finger style (thumb and index finger) of playing guitar follows in the tradition of other great Piedmont guitarists and fellow North Carolinians like Elizabeth Cotten and Gary Davis.  Known for her beautiful arrangements and driving rhythm, Etta’s guitar repertoire ranges from late 19th-century parlor music to intimation of blues music styles that would define the post-World War II urban electric blues that became popular in Chicago and Detroit and gave birth to Rock ‘n Roll.

Baker said that she got inspiration for chords through her dreams, stating that it is "like putting a crossword puzzle together". Baker influenced many well-known musical artists, including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. In 1991 -- 35 years after her debut recording -- she issued the album One-Dime Blues and continued performing live throughout the decade to follow, returning in 1999 with Railroad Bill. Baker received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council in 1989, a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991, and the North Carolina Award in 2003. She was nominated for several Blues Music Awards (formerly the W. C. Handy Blues Awards): in the Traditional Blues Female Artist category in 1987 and 1989, and her album Railroad Bill in the Acoustic Album category in 2000. Along with her sister, Cora Phillips, she received the Brown-Hudson Folklore Award from the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1982.

Etta married Lee Baker, a piano player, in 1936 after courting for six years. They had nine children, one of whom was killed in the Vietnam War in 1967, the same year her husband died. For a while after these deaths, she stopped playing, but found she missed the consolation the blues brought her. She last lived in Morganton, North Carolina, and died September 23, 2006, at the age of 93 in Fairfax, Virginia, while visiting a daughter who had suffered a stroke.

(Edited from Wikipedia & the Etta Baker Project) 

Sonny Boy Williamson I born 30 March 1914

John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson (March 30, 1914 – June 1, 1948) was an American blues harmonica player and singer-songwriter. He is often regarded as the pioneer of the blues harp as a solo instrument. He played on hundreds of recordings by many pre–World War II blues artists. Under his own name, he was one of the most recorded blues musicians of the 1930s and 1940s and is closely associated with Chicago producer Lester Melrose and Bluebird Records. His popular songs, original or adapted, include "Good Morning, School Girl", "Sugar Mama", "Early in the Morning", and "Stop Breaking Down".

Williamson's harmonica style was a great influence on post-war performers. Later in his career, he was a mentor to many up-and-coming blues musicians who moved to Chicago, including Muddy Waters. In an attempt to capitalize on Williamson's fame, Aleck "Rice" Miller began recording and performing as Sonny Boy Williamson in the early 1940s, and later, to distinguish the two, John Lee Williamson came to be known as Sonny Boy Williamson I or "the original Sonny Boy".

Williamson was born in Madison County, Tennessee, near Jackson, in 1914. His original recordings are in the country blues style, but he soon demonstrated skill at making the harmonica a lead instrument for the blues and popularized it for the first time in a more urban blues setting. He has been called "the father of modern blues harp". While in his teens he joined Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes, playing with them in Tennessee and Arkansas. In 1934 he settled in Chicago.

                                  

Williamson first recorded in 1937, for Bluebird Records, and his first recording, "Good Morning, School Girl", became a standard. He was popular among black audiences throughout the southern United States and in Midwestern industrial cities, such as Detroit and Chicago, and his name was synonymous with the blues harmonica for the next decade. Other well-known recordings of his include "Sugar Mama", "Shake the Boogie", "Better Cut That Out", "Sloppy Drunk", "Early in the Morning", "Stop Breaking Down", and "Hoodoo Hoodoo" (also known as "Hoodoo Man Blues"). 

Sonny Boy & Big Bill Broonzy

In 1947, "Shake the Boogie" made number 4 on Billboard's Race Records chart. Williamson's style influenced many blues harmonica performers, including Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells, Sonny Terry, Little Walter, and Snooky Pryor. He was the most widely heard and influential blues harmonica player of his generation. His music was also influential on many of his non-harmonica-playing contemporaries and successors, including Muddy Waters (who played guitar with Williamson in the mid-1940s) and Jimmy Rogers (whose first recording in 1946 was as a harmonica player, performing an uncanny imitation of Williamson's style). These and other artists, both blues and rock, have helped popularize his songs through subsequent recordings.

Williamson recorded prolifically both as a bandleader and as a sideman over the course of his career, mainly for Bluebird. Before Bluebird moved to Chicago, where it eventually became part of RCA Records, many early sessions took place at the Leland Tower, a hotel in Aurora, Illinois. The top-floor nightclub at the Leland, known as the Sky Club, was used for live broadcasts of big bands on a local radio station and, during off hours, served as a recording studio for Williamson's early sessions and those of other Bluebird artists.

Sonny Boy & Lacey Belle Williamson

Williamson's final recording session took place in Chicago in December 1947, in which he accompanied Big Joe Williams. On June 1, 1948, Willia Williamson was killed in an apparent robbery on Chicago's South Side as he walked home from a performance at the Plantation Club, at 31st St. and Giles Avenue, a tavern just a block and a half from his home, at 3226 S. Giles. Williamson's final words are reported to have been "Lord have mercy". His killer was never traced. Williamson is buried at the former site of the Blairs Chapel Church, southwest of Jackson, Tennessee. In 1991, a red granite marker was purchased by fans and family to mark the site of his burial. A Tennessee historical marker, also placed in 1991, indicates the place of his birth and describes his influence on blues music.

Rice Miller 

His legacy has been somewhat overshadowed in the post-war blues era by the popularity of the musician who appropriated his name, Rice Miller. The recordings made by Williamson between 1937 and his death in 1948 and those made later by Rice Miller were all originally issued under the name Sonny Boy Williamson. It is believed that Miller adopted the name to deceive audiences (and his first record label) into thinking that he was the "original" Sonny Boy. In order to differentiate between the two musicians, many later scholars and biographers have referred to John Lee Williamson (1914–1948) as Sonny Boy Williamson I and Miller (c. 1912–1965) as Sonny Boy Williamson II. To add to the confusion, around 1940 the jazz pianist and singer Enoch Williams recorded for Decca under the name Sonny Boy Williams and in 1947 as Sunny Boy in the Sunny Boy Trio.

Enoch Sonny Boy Williams

Singer-songwriter Randy Newman included a song about Miller ripping off Williamson's name on his 2017 album Dark Matter - "Sonny Boy," in which Newman, singing from the original Sonny Boy Williamson's perspective, imagines Williamson encountering Miller in a concert hall and calling him out for impersonating him (in reality, the two bluesmen never met), before leaving the hall in a frenzy and being shot. Williamson, in Newman's song, laments being "the only bluesman in heaven" because he did not live long enough to sin. He also resents how Miller went on to fame and fortune using Williamson's name, though he adds that Miller eventually went to England to "teach those English boys the blues . . . and it killed him".

(Edited from Wikipedia)

Robert Gordon born 29 March 1947

Robert Gordon (March 29, 1947 – October 18, 2022) was an American rockabilly singer.

Gordon grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, United States, the son of Arlene and Samuel Gordon, an administrative law judge. His family was Jewish. At the age of nine, Gordon was greatly inspired by the Elvis Presley song "Heartbreak Hotel" playing on radio and decided to pursue a career as a rock and roll musician at that young age. Along with Elvis Presley, Gordon's influences during his childhood and teenage years included Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran among other notable rock 'n roll music artists of the period. He made his recording debut at age 17 in 1964 with a group called the Confidentials. He also actively performed with the Newports in his teenage years. At the age of 19 he got married, and shortly after had two children.

When asked how he related to the 1960s, Gordon replied "I didn't. He did not care much for the British Invasion but he identified with soul singers such as James Brown and Otis Redding whom he saw, among other great R&B acts, performing at Washington, D.C.'s famous Howard Theatre. During the turbulent times of the late 1960s, with the rioting and antiwar protests of the period, Gordon served in the National Guard in Washington, D.C. "I didn't want to be sent to Vietnam," he recalls.

Tuff Darts

By 1970, Gordon had relocated his family to New York City with the intent of operating a clothing boutique. His focus shifted to the punk rock scene at the nightclub CBGB. He became a member of the punk-pop band Tuff Darts. During 1976, the Tuff Darts recorded "All for the Love of Rock and Roll", "Head over Heels", and "Slash" for a compilation album called Live at CBGB's, which included a number of other local New York City bands. Gordon also appeared in a punk/new wave–style film entitled Unmade Beds, an homage to Jean-Luc Godard by underground filmmaker Amos Poe. Blondie lead singer Deborah Harry and painter Duncan Hannah also appeared in the film.

                                    

Record producer Richard Gottehrer discovered Gordon during a rehearsal one afternoon with Tuff Darts and soon afterward the two were talking about making a rock and roll record. Gottehrer was impressed with Gordon's voice and his rendition of Elvis Presley's "One Night". After some conversation, Gordon suggested working with guitar legend Link Wray. Wray was contacted and he agreed to work with them both. "Robert to me sounds a lot like the early Elvis, back when he was at Sun Records", he commented. In 1977, Robert Gordon with Link Wray on Private Stock Records was the result of this collaboration. After Elvis Presley's unexpected death in August, 1977, the album picked up some airplay, and the Private Stock label attempted to hype Gordon as the heir to Presley. In 1978, Gordon made a second album with Wray, for Private Stock called Fresh Fish Special. The record featured The Jordanaires, who had been background vocalists for Presley, and included the Bruce Springsteen song "Fire". Springsteen played keyboards on the track.

In 1978, RCA Records signed Gordon to a contract which he described as "a dream come true" to record for "Elvis's label". In February, 1979, the album Rock Billy Boogie was issued on the RCA Victor label, this time without Wray, as Chris Spedding joined Gordon, playing lead guitar. Writer Bruce Eder (AllMusic) hailed Gordon's next album, Bad Boy, released in 1980, as one of the best mature rockabilly albums ever recorded. Gordon's next and final album for RCA was 1981's Are You Gonna Be the One. The title track written by Marc Jonson. It is Gordon's best-selling album to date, with more than 200,000 copies sold. Danny Gatton played lead guitar on this record and Marshall Crenshaw penned the single "Someday, Someway", which went to No. 76 on the Billboard chart in 1981.During the early 1980s, Gordon toured briefly with Gatton. A recording of one of their performances was later released on NRG Records as "The Humbler".

In 1982, Gordon co-starred with Willem Dafoe in future Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow's first film, a 1950s-styled motor-biking movie (inspired by Marlon Brando's The Wild One) called The Loveless. This was Dafoe's first feature starring role. Critics generally liked the soundtrack but disliked the film. The Loveless did poorly at the box office but is now considered a cult favourite. Gordon also made numerous TV appearances including a 1981 skit on the popular comedy show SCTV in which he performed with his band, including Danny Gatton—after having been "mistakenly" booked on the show as the astronaut Gordon Cooper. The spoof of a space shuttle launch also featured SCTV regulars Dave Thomas as Walter Cronkite and Rick Moranis as David Brinkley.

Gordon & Spedding

In the early 1990s Gordon toured with Spedding, including Japan, Norway, Finland, United States, Spain and Sweden, with a number of live tracks later appearing on the 2006 Climate Control album Born To Rock. All was not well though, as Gordon experienced a great deal of tragedy in his private life during this period. In October 1994, guitarist Danny Gatton committed suicide, and even though they hadn’t played together in years, it was a shock to Gordon. One year later, he himself was nearly killed in a mugging in his hometown, New York City. A large scar on the right side of his face is a reminder of the attack. In March 1997, his drummer Bobby Chouinard apparently passed away from a heart attack. The ultimate blow came in January 1998, when Gordon’s youngest son Anthony suddenly died.

In 2005, after years of not working together, Gordon and guitar player Chris Spedding reconnected and toured Europe. Highlights from the shows in Denmark, Sweden and Finland were released on The Reunion Tour, on their own Climate Control label. The French label Last Call released a DVD from the Amsterdam concert, entitled Rockin' the Paradiso. They also recorded an album of 15 Elvis Presley songs with the Jordanaires for the 30th anniversary of Presley's death, entitled It's Now Or Never, released on the Rykodisc label. In 2007 Robert Gordon had a small European tour, backed by Marco DiMaggio and his band. During that tour Robert performed in Moscow, Russia. According to Robert's manager it was one of the very best gigs of that tour. In 2009 and 2010 Gordon toured with an all-star line-up, "The Gang They Couldn't Hang" ("TGTCH"), that included Chris Spedding, Slim Jim Phantom and Glen Matlock. Notable "Gang" dates included the Byron Bay Blues Festival in Australia, and the Azkena Rock Festival in Spain where Gordon and TGTCH performed on a bill with Kiss and Bob Dylan in front of a crowd of 20,000.

Gordon continued to release music in his later years. In 2014, He released the album I'm Coming Home. He toured the U.S. and Europe, and on April 19, 2014, he performed at the 17th annual Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender at The Car Show event in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 he released Rockabilly for Life, and on November 25, 2022 Hellafied was released posthumously. Sadly, his July 2022 tour which was supposed to reunite him with Chris Spedding, Anton Fig and Tony Garnier, had to be cancelled due to his failing health.

Robert Gordon had been in treatment for acute myeloid leukemia in the last years of his life; he died in Manhattan, New York City on October 18, 2022 at the age of 75.

(Edited from Wikipedia & Dignity Memorial) 

Meredith d'Ambrosio born 28 March

Meredith d'Ambrosio (born March 20, 1941) is an American jazz singer and artist from Boston, Massachusetts who has successfully combined careers in the musical and visual arts. As a jazz singer, her dulcet, soft-toned tenor delivers intelligent and inspired interpretations of standards and original songs; she is also a fine pianist. Despite having released nearly 20 albums under her own name, she is an internationally acclaimed visual artist. Her award-winning watercolors, black pencil studies, and eggshell mosaics have graced exhibitions from New York to Paris, as well as the covers of magazines, books, and recordings.

Meredith was born in Boston into a musical family. Her father sang with big bands while her mother played piano in nightclubs under the name of Sherry Linden. At six, d'Ambrosio began to study piano and sing. At 15, she appeared on Boston television singing "Prelude to a Kiss" with a studio band. She credits her success with learning how to concentrate and to disperse her nervousness. Her first live paid jazz performance was at 17 with Roger Kellaway's group in a Boston jazz club. After graduating from high school, d'Ambrosio attended the Boston Museum School (1958 and 1959) on a fine arts scholarship. She worked as a musician in addition to painting. 

In 1959, she developed her eggshell mosaics technique in several paintings that were included in the book Making Mosaics by Beatrice Freeman-Lewis. In 1960, at age 19, she married and had a daughter, but divorced 18 months later and returned to live with her parents. She made money by doing calligraphy for wedding invitations, cards, envelopes, diplomas, citations, and illuminating scrolls. At night she sang at the Beaconsfield Hotel's Hunt Room, and a bit later at The Charter House in Newton. It was a tough existence for d'Ambrosio, who was involved in prolonged custody litigation with her ex-husband, and literally scuffling to make a living as an artist while playing piano and singing in area jazz clubs.

In 1965, d'Ambrosio's friend Robin Hemingway took her to hear the John Coltrane Quartet play Boston's Jazz Workshop over several evenings. After one gig, d'Ambrosio accompanied Coltrane and Hemingway to breakfast. The saxophonist asked her to sing something and she complied. He was so moved, he asked her to come with him to Japan and sing with the quartet. D'Ambrosio, feeling she wasn't yet ready -- she didn't yet consider herself a professional musician, but a visual artist and parent to a pre-school-aged daughter -- politely refused. It took more than a decade for d'Ambrosio to begin her recording career, and even then, she didn't think she'd be able to do it.

                                   

Her piano tuner and friend worked at the Longview Farm Recording Studios near Boston. He had free rein of the studio one day. He asked her -- supposedly just for fun -- to come sing while accompanying herself on the piano. She recorded 35 songs in a seven-hour period. Guitarist Norman Coles and pianist Ray Santisi also sat in on a few tunes. Fifteen cuts were chosen and put on a master "demo" tape. D'Ambrosio was invited to the WGBH-FM radio show Music America to play her tape. Singer Johnny Hartman was also in the studio being interviewed at the same time. When he heard D'Ambrosio's tape, he insisted on taking a copy to New York to play for a record producer. Wil Morton of Shiah Records bought the master and released it as Lost in His Arms in 1980, following it quickly with Another Time in 1981. Both albums warranted attention from jazz radio DJs and critics.

Not long after, she received a call from Herb Wong at Palo Alto Records. He signed her for 1982's Little Jazz Bird, placing her in front of a quintet that included Phil Woods, Hank Jones, and Manny Albam, as well as a string quartet. The offering won acclaim and airplay across the globe and provided d'Ambrosio with her first opportunity to tour domestically and overseas. She signed to Sunnyside in 1984 -- her label home ever since -- and released It's Your Dance in 1985 accompanied by guitarist Kevin Eubanks. Pianist Harold Danko helmed the keys on half the album, while d'Ambrosio played on the rest. Between 1982 and 1985, she landed inside the Top Five in the Talent Deserving Wider Recognition category in the DownBeat International Critics Jazz Poll for Female Vocalist (and won the award for five consecutive years between 1987 and 1991).

D'Ambrosio married Eddie Higgins July 28, 1988, and he became d'Ambrosio's pianist and arranger for her next three albums including South to a Warmer Place (1989), Love Is Not a Game (1991), and Shadowland (1993), and enjoyed crucial and commercial success in Europe as well as the States. In 1994, she was the featured guest on Marian McPartland's syndicated radio program Piano Jazz and recorded Sleep Warm: Lullabies for Small and Bigger Children solo. The following year, she issued Beware of Spring!, leading a trio that included bassist George Mraz and drummer Jeff Hirschfield. After a short tour she recorded 1997's Silent Passion in a duo with guitarist Gene Bertoncini. The following year she cut Echo of a Kiss, her final album of the 20th century.

D'Amrosio with Eddie Higgins

She released Out of Nowhere in 2000, resulting in a nomination for a prestigious Django award by the French Academy of Jazz for Best Female Jazz Vocalist. 2002 was a banner year for d'Ambrosio; Sunnyside re-released her back catalog and she issued the all-new studio entry, Love Is for the Birds, with a sextet. D'Ambrosio didn't record again until 2006, when she cut the all-original quintet program Wishing on the Moon. After touring, she took a long break from recording. She concentrated on her painting but did do some touring. After Higgins' death in 2009, she focused solely on her art and teaching. D'Ambrosio re-emerged in 2012 with the completely solo By Myself, a collection of 14 songs by composer Arthur Schwartz (1900-1984); it was her first album to be devoted to the work of a single composer, and at the time, she considered it to be her last. She seldom played live, preferring instead to focus on her art, which was exhibited across the United States and Europe.

D'Ambrosio did continue to play and write songs privately, often with pianist Randy Halberstadt. In October 2019 she recorded them with the pianist, bassist Daryl Johns, drummer Steve Johns, and guest trumpeter/flugelhornist Don Sickler. The set was released in 2021 as Sometime Ago in commemoration of her 80th birthday.

(Edited from AllMusic bio by Thom Jurek)