Francine Reed born 11 July 1947

Francine Reed (born July 11, 1947, in Pembroke Township, Illinois, United States) is an American blues singer, solo artist, and regular singing partner of Lyle Lovett since the 1980s and member of Lovett's Large Band. Reed has also recorded duets with Willie Nelson and Delbert McClinton and others. 

Reed’s career was cemented on the foundation of a musically rich family. Her father was a gospel singer and her sister Margo Reed became a noted jazz singer. As the youngest of six siblings, Reed began performing at the age of five as a member of the family’s gospel group. In her twenties she relocated to Phoenix, Arizona, and began singing at nightclubs alongside her sister Margo. 

While in Phoenix, Reed set the standard by which other local talent was judged. She often performed as the opening act for such headliners as Miles Davis, Etta James, Smokey Robinson, and the Crusaders. Widely known for her powerful voice and commanding stage presence, she sang an eclectic repertoire of jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues. 

Making the acquaintance of Texas musician Lyle Lovett, who was virtually unknown at the time, in a Phoenix nightspot proved beneficial for Reed. In 1985 she began touring as a background vocalist and occasional duettist for Lovett, whose records would soon receive Grammy Awards and enjoy gold and platinum sales. Reed’s tenure with Lovett included duet appearances on many television shows, including The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Reed and Lovett performed together for forty years. 

                                    

In addition to singing with Lovett, Reed performed on Willie Nelson’s acclaimed album Milk Cow Blues (2000), lending her soulful voice to the title track as well as to the song “Funny How Time Slips Away.” She has contributed vocals to other musicians’ recordings as well, including those of Delbert McClinton and Roy Orbison. 

Reed demonstrated her musical prowess as a solo artist with several albums of her own after arriving in Atlanta. Her first solo album, I Want You to Love Me (1995), featured a duet with Lovett. The album peaked at number seven on Billboard’s blues chart and prompted the first of several W. C. Handy Award nominations for Reed. Her second album, Can’t Make It on My Own (1996), features a duet with McClinton. In 1997 Reed was inducted into the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame, and her third record, Shades of Blue (1999), met with critical acclaim. 

Reed is perhaps best known for her performances of the classic blues song "Wild Women (Don't Get the Blues)", written in 1924 by Ida Cox. A recording of this song appears on Reed's albums, I Want You to Love Me, and Blues Collection; as well as on Ichiban Records Wild Women Do Get the Blues and Lyle Lovett's Live in Texas. 

In 2001 following the demise of Ichiban Records, which left her first two records out of print and unavailable, Reed and longtime collaborator Marvin Taylor re-recorded some of her best material live in the studio and released the results as I Got a Right!...To Some of My Best. 

In 2014 she was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. In 2016 she moved back to Phoenix and prior to her “retirement from touring in 2022”, she appeared with her bands Jazz Alive and Fever at venues such as The Boojum Tree, Chuy’s and Chuy’s Next Door/The Night Club, Churchill’s Pub and Bombay Bicycle Club, plus numerous festivals and concert halls. But never fear, Francine fans, the singer is still performing when the mood — or the right offer introduces itself and can be still be found singing at the best local clubs and resorts in Phoenix. 

(Edited from New Georgia Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Eldridge Atlanta & Joseph Berg)

 

Dave Kirby born 10 July 1938

Dave Kirby (July 10, 1938 - April 17, 2004) was an American BMI award winning singer/songwriter and session guitarist. Married to singer Leona Williams, he will be best remembered for writing one of the most popular songs in country-music history, "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone?" 

Big Bill Lister with young Dave

David Carroll Kirby was born in Brady, Texas. He was a natural musician and took up the guitar while still a young boy,  encouraged by his uncle, legendary Hank Williams’s front man Big Bill Lister. Lister took Dave under his wing and first introduced him to songwriting and guitar playing at the age of eight. Dave moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1955. He landed a job at a local radio station playing country music. He was influenced by the music of Carl Smith, Mac Wiseman, Ernest Tubb and the guitar playing of Merle Travis. 

In time, he began composing his own songs with Buck Owens recording Dave’s first song “Down By the River”. Rose Maddox the cut the same song and shortly after Owens and Maddox recorded it as a duet. Johnny and Jonie Mosby and Porter Wagoner also added their vocals to Dave's compositions while he was living in New Mexico.“During the 1960’s, Willie Nelson used to come out to Albuquerque and he got me to go and play in the band,” Dave recalled in a 2000 interview. “Willie got to liking my songs, and I don’t remember how, but Hank Cochran got to liking them too. They both wrote me saying ‘Come to Nashville’ so in 1967, I made the big move.” 

Dave signed a writing contract with Pamper Music, which was owned in part by Ray Price. Other writers for Pamper at this time included Roger Miller, Harlan Howard, Nelson and Cochran. “I got a few things cut and then I wrote “Is Anybody Going To San Antone?” Dave said. “It has become my biggest hit, but it just lay there at the Pamper shelf for three years before it ever got cut.” Charley Pride heard the song in 1970 and it became a multi million selling single. 

                                   

In all Dave wrote in excess of 300 songs, many became hits for a host of entertainers including “Wish I Didn’t Have To Miss You” by Jack Greene and Jeannie Seely, “April’s Fool” and “You Wouldn’t Know Love” by Ray Price, “What Have You Got Planned Tonight Diana?” and “Sidewalks of Chicago” for Merle Haggard, “There Ain’t No Good Chain Gang” for Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, “Memories To Burn” for Gene Watson, “Where Are You Going Billy Boy?” for Bill Anderson and Mary Lou Turner, “Leavin’s Been Coming For A Long Long Time” for George Strait and “I’ll Go To A Stranger” for Johnny Bush.

Ray Charles, Moe Bandy, Norma Jean, Porter Wagoner, Johnny Russell, Texas Tornadoes, George Jones, Faron Young, Charley Walker, Johnny Rodriguez, Cal Smith, John Anderson, Kitty Wells, Razzy Bailey, Jo-El Sonnier, Curtis Potter, Hank Thompson and dozens more have recorded Dave's compositions. Dave began session work in Nashville during the early 1970’s. His first session was with Country Music Hall of Famer Granpa Jones. “Granpa walked in the studio and looked at me,” Dave recalled. “I had kind of long hair and the first thing he said was ‘Son, don’t play any of those hippie licks on my record’.” 

Dave & Leona Williams

Dave went on to have a very successful session career playing lead guitar for Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, Janie Fricke, Ringo Star, Emmylou Harris, Don Williams, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, Crystal Gayle, Wynn Stewart, Ray Price, Moe Bandy, Ronnie Milsap, Connie Smith and Kenny Price. Not only a successful writer and session player, Dave also contributed many vocal recordings of his own including “North Alabama” “Cantaloupe Jones” “The Rumor” “Cowboy Connection” and “Better Off When I Was Hungry.” Dave recorded for Boone, Capitol, Dimension and Monument Records.Dot Records released his album “Writer, Singer, Picker” in 1973. 

Dave married country music entertainer Leona Williams in 1985. The two entertained together throughout the country while still maintaining a heavy writing schedule and session work. “Dave Kirby never realized his importance in the country music community,” Brady, Texas, disc jockey Tracy Pitcox said. “Dave played on virtually all of the sessions leaving Nashville throughout the 1970’s and into the 1980’s. His songwriting is legendary. We were very honored to recognize Dave in his hometown for the last eight years during our ‘Dave Kirby Celebration’.” 

Dave just completed work on his first solo album in twenty years shortly before his death. “Is Anybody Going To San Antone?” contains ten of Kirby’s biggest writing successes and was released on Heart of Texas Records on May 15, 2004. Dave Kirby passed away at his Branson, Missouri, residence on Saturday, April 17, 2004, after a short illness. Kirby was diagnosed with multimyloma cancer in March of 2004.  (Edited from Hillbilly Hits)

Leonard Pennario born 9 July 1924

Leonard Pennario (July 9, 1924 – June 27, 2008) was an American classical pianist and composer. 

He was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Los Angeles, attending Los Angeles High School. He remained in Los Angeles his entire career. He can hardly have known when, aged seven, he was taken to hear Rachmaninov in concert that he would be the first pianist after the composer himself to record all four Rachmaninov concertos and the Paganini Variations. He was seven, too, when he gave his first public performance in a Buffalo department store. 

He first came to notice when he performed Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto at age 12, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The scheduled performer had fallen ill, and Pennario's piano playing had come to the attention of the conductor Eugene Goossens, who recommended him as the soloist after being assured by Pennario that he knew the work. In fact, he had never seen the music or even heard it, but he learned it in a week. The 2,000 strong audience at the Texas Exposition witnessed the beginning of an extraordinary career. He was  particularly proud that he hadn't had to miss school in the process. 

He studied with Guy Maier, Olga Steeb, and Isabelle Vengerova and attended the University of Southern California, where he studied composition with Ernst Toch. World War II interrupted his career, and he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in the China Burma India Theater, where his piano skills were soon realized and served well entertaining troops of the Air Transport Command operation known as "The Hump". He occasionally had to play around keys missing from the keyboards of the pianos at a couple of the more remote bases. He was discharged in 1946 as a staff sergeant and was awarded three Battle Stars. He had, however, made his debut, in uniform, with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on November 17, 1943, with Artur Rodziński, playing Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1. 

                                    

Shortly after Sergei Rachmaninoff's death, the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos invited Leonard Pennario to be the soloist at a memorial concert, playing the Second Piano Concerto with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. Pennario became the first pianist after the composer himself to record all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. His recording of the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto was used for the film September Affair (1950), in which Joan Fontaine plays a concert pianist preparing to play the concerto. 

Pennario recorded over 60 LPs, most of them of composers dating from Chopin and later. He is perhaps best known for championing certain modern composers such as George Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Rózsa, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Sergei Prokofiev. In 1958, he was tied with Walter Gieseking in terms of best-selling classical records involving the piano. In 1961 the violinist Jascha Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky invited Pennario to replace Arthur  Rubinstein in a series of concerts in New York and on the West Coast and for the next three years,  Pennario recalled, "Recording with them, getting ready with them, was the biggest thrill of my life."  They won a Grammy in 1963. 

When the classical division of Capitol went belly up in the early 1980s, it derailed Pennario's recording career, but it did not affect his standing in the concert world. In 1987 Pennario played a concert at Lincoln Center that was broadcast over PBS in observance of the 50th anniversary of Gershwin's death. Although Pennario's career was focused principally on the United States (he was the first pianist to  perform in all 50), where he appeared with every orchestra and conductor of note, he was also  heard widely abroad. In 1989 he was one of the first American pianists to play in Communist China,  and he returned two years later to play not the piano but bridge, winning an "Open Pairs" event in  Beijingin 1991. 

Bridge had been Pennario's main hobby since 1965, and he became a Life Master in 1980. When in  the late 1990s the onset of Parkinson's disease forced him to give up the piano, it became the  solace of his old age. His mentor had been Alfred Sheinwold, America's leading bridge columnist.  On Sheinwold's death in 1997, Pennario remembered his friend in a letter to the bridge press: "He had a fine tenor voice, and at our get-togethers he often sang lieder by Schubert and Brahms. I would accompany him and he in turn would partner me in tournaments. Each of us felt he had the better deal!" 

In October 2007 he was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame. He died of complications from Parkinson's disease on June 27, 2008 at the age of 83, in La Jolla, California. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, The Independent & AllMusic)

Bill Challis born 8 July 1904

Bill Challis (July 8, 1904 – October 4, 1994) was an American jazz arranger, best known for his association with the Paul Whiteman orchestra. 

William H. Challis was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He played piano and then took up saxophone and later led the student band at Bucknell University in the early-1920s. In 1926 he joined Jean Goldkette’s band as staff arranger, and began a close association with Bix Beiderbecke that continued when both men joined Paul Whiteman’s band in 1927. Challis wrote some of Whiteman’s most jazz-oriented arrangements, including Lonely Melody, Changes, and Dardanella, giving Beiderbecke ample solo space and sometimes scoring his cornet improvisations for the trumpet section.

He also wrote excellent scores for smaller groups formed for recording sessions from Whiteman’s band and led by Frankie Trumbauer. Challis’s best work of this period reveals a tasteful synthesis of jazz and dance-band elements, a sure grasp of the new jazz style, and an awareness of the strengths of Whiteman’s and Goldkette’s musicians. “He was a pioneer in the art of arranging,” said Warren Vache Sr., a band leader and for 20 years, editor of the music journal, Jersey Jazz. “At the beginning of orchestrating for a swing ensemble, Bill put much more life in” arrangements, said Vache. 

Jean Goldkette

Norman P. Gentieu, a jazz historian in Philadelphia, interviewed Challis many times over the years; “I won’t say Bill invented it, but Bill was very influential in establishing the format of what became the big bands.” Newell “Spiegle” Willcox, the trombonist and last surviving member of the Goldkette Orchestra, recalled the innovations Challis brought to the group. “Bill allowed the soloist to show off with certain background riffs,” said Wilcox. “He used built-up chords. He was far ahead of who was arranging in those days.”  

While writing arrangements for the popular Whiteman Orchestra, Challis highlighted the full, baritone voice of Bing Crosby, propelling the singer’s career. After leaving Whiteman in 1930 Challis became a freelance arranger for, among others, Trumbauer, Fletcher Henderson, the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra, the Casa Loma Orchestra, Lennie Hayton, Artie Shaw, and a number of radio orchestras.  He also worked for network radio shows including his own show, “Bill Challis and His Music.” 

                                   

He recorded 25 transcription tracks in 1936 for World Records, for radio broadcast only, using the best studio men, such as Artie Shaw, trumpeter Manny Klein, trombonist Jack Jenny, guitarist Dick McDonough; these were issued on two Circle LPs '83 and later nearly all on one CD as Bill Challis And His Orchestra: the sound is that of a big studio dance band with strings, without much jazz content and without the élan of the Whiteman band at its best. He carried on writing for Fletcher Henderson, Lennie Hayton, Claude Hopkins, Jerry Wald and others into the '60s turning to popular music. 

In 1974 he arranged Beiderbecke’s piano compositions for guitar quintet. In 1985, he rewrote his original Goldkette charts (which had been lost) and his protégé, Vince Giordano, led a hand-picked band on a recording that included original Goldkette trombonist Newell Spiegle Wilcox. The subsequent album was titled “Bill Challis: The Goldkette Project.” 

“We were happy to be working,” recalled Giordano, who at age 13 became Challis first student. “He was never heady about it. He never had a big ego.” Despite his achievements and his place as a seminal figure in swing jazz history, Challis was relatively unrecognized. He died in October 1994, at the age of 90, in Luzerne, Pennsylvania. 

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

Doc Severinsen born 7 July 1927

"Doc" Severinsen (born July 7, 1927) is an American retired jazz trumpeter who led the NBC Orchestra on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. 

Carl Hilding "Doc" Severinsen was born in Arlington, Oregon and was initially nicknamed "Little Doc" after his father, a dentist. Starting music lessons at age seven, Severinsen originally wanted to play the trombone, although his violin-playing father urged him to take up that instrument instead. As it turned out, the trumpet was the only brass instrument available in their small town, and Severinsen got so good so quickly that he was performing with the local high school band while still seven years old. At age 12, he won the Music Educators' National Contest, and as a high schooler, he toured with Ted Fio Rito's orchestra. 

Upon finishing school, he joined a succession of touring big bands starting in 1945, including Tommy Dorsey (where he was a featured soloist), Charlie Barnet, Benny Goodman, and Noro Morales. In 1949, he settled in New York, where he worked as a staff musician for NBC and a recording session sideman, backing the likes of Dinah Washington and Anita O'Day. He moved over to television in 1952, and appeared on the original, Steve Allen-hosted Tonight Show as a member of Skitch Henderson's orchestra. 

Doc with Johnny Carson

In 1962, when Carson took over the show, Henderson made Severinsen his assistant orchestra leader. Around the same time, Severinsen cut the first of a series of albums for the Command label; his earlier efforts were largely standard big-band swing, but by the late '60s he had moved into groovy, swinging instrumental pop in the so-called "now sound" vein, often arranged by Dick Hyman. In 1966, Henderson abruptly departed The Tonight Show under still-mysterious circumstances. Milton DeLugg briefly took over as his replacement, but Severinsen was promoted to the post of orchestra leader and musical director in 1967. His outlandish, brightly colored wardrobe and easy comic chemistry with Carson quickly cemented him into the job, where he would stay for the next 25 years. 

                                   

In the meantime, Severinsen moved from Command over to RCA in the early '70s, and then went to Epic for 1975's Night Journey, a surprisingly credible foray into jazz-funk fusion. Even more surprisingly, Severinsen landed some disco play with the dance-club hits "I Wanna Be With You" and "Night Journey" in 1976. The follow-up LP, 1977's Brand New Thing, offered more of the same. 

In 1985, Severinsen recorded an album for Passport with a new fusion group called Xebron. The following year, he brought the Tonight Show Orchestra into the studio for their long-awaited first recording sessions, cutting a number of swing standards. The resulting album, The Tonight Show Band, was released on Amherst and sold briskly, also winning a Grammy for Best Jazz Large Ensemble Recording. A second, similar album, The Tonight Show Band, Vol. 2, was released in 1987. Facets, which found Severinsen working with crossover fusion ensembles and string orchestras, was a Top Ten jazz hit in 1988. 

Severinsen returned to the studio with the Tonight Show Orchestra in 1991 for the well-reviewed Once More...With Feeling!; they followed it in 1992 with Merry Christmas From Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Orchestra. It proved to be their last hurrah together; Carson's retirement that year ushered in major changes at The Tonight Show, and new host Jay Leno let Severinsen and the band go. Severinsen quickly gathered some of the band's most prominent members, and embarked on a sort of farewell tour of America. 

He would continue to tour with many of them during the '90s, most notably trumpeters Conte Candoli and Snooky Young, drummer Ed Shaughnessy, saxophonists Ernie Watts and/or Bill Perkins, and pianist Ross Tompkins. Additionally, Severinsen cut an album with the Cincinnati Pops (1992's Unforgettably Doc) and served as guest conductor for symphony orchestras in Minnesota, Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Phoenix; he also made numerous guest appearances as an instrumentalist, led brass workshops and clinics, and even moved into designing and manufacturing trumpets. 

After a lengthy hiatus from recording, he returned with 1999's Swingin' the Blues, which featured a generous selection of Tonight Show Orchestra alumni. He retired from conducting in 2007 and was named Pops Conductor Emeritus in Milwaukee and Pops Conductor Laureate in Minnesota. Severinsen was also named distinguished visiting professor of music and Katherine K. Herberger Heritage Chair for Visiting Artists at Arizona State University School of Music in 2001 and 2002.  In 2014, he was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame. 

Severinsen performed his final concert, accompanied by his San Miguel 5 group, on September 1, 2022, in Saratoga Springs, New York.  (Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia) 

Hank Davis born 6 July 1941

Hank Davis (born July 6, 1941) is a Rockabilly and Country singer / songwriter who has recorded since the 1950’s. He is a reissue producer and compiler also a professor of psychology and author. 

As any other teenager born and brought up in New York, Henry        “ Hank”  Davis grew up listening o the standard music that was regularly played on the radio back in the mid-fifties, but he soon learned the way to escape the mainstream by listening to the Country and Rhythm & Blues stations. Discovering not long after all the music that was coming out of Memphis through the Sun label, Hank attended some of Alan Freed’s Rock’n’Roll shows in New York, and armed with a cheap guitar he had bought from Sears, started playing his favourite Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash or Billy lee Riley songs with some fellow schoolmates. 

The power of music from Memphis was contagious. "Sun Records were changing my life and, in turn, I brought that energy to the lives of my friends. I went to summer camp around 1957 and brought a bunch of my Sun 45s with me. 'Ubangi Stomp;' 'Rock & Roll Ruby;' 'Folsom Prison Blues;' 'Blue Suede Shoes;' 'Trouble Bound.' Every day after lunch I'd listen to them and before long I had my whole bunk listening with me. My parents brought up my guitar on visiting day and several bunkmates and I started singing these songs. The music moved even closer to the center of my life. I'd be swimming in the lake and 'Folsom Prison Blues' would be going through my head. I'd be standing in left field waiting to catch a fly ball and 'Rock & Roll Ruby' was with me. 

In early 1958 he and his first band Hank And The Electras recorded some raw demos that attracted the attention of Dauphin Records. The boys were taken into the studio to re-cut a couple of Davis’ originals. At the same time Hank kept sharing around his songs to other companies and Wizz records offered him a deal of his own, which resulted in a single in 1959 titled “I want You To Be My Baby”. When Dauphin released the record a few weeks later, the band was already history. 

                                   

Hank’s solo record sold moderately in the New York area and he was prompted to cut a follow up in a busy session including “One Way Track” and “Real Score”. However, Jack Waltzer, owner of Wizz Record changed his initial plan and left the masters to Stag Records. A Chicago based company. The single was released in May 1960 and didn’t sell enough to secure another release. 

Of course, this was not the end of Hank’s musical career. He kept quite active during the first half of the 60’s by way of different projects that would leave behind a vast collection of recordings, although only a few came to light through formal record releases. Without a hit record to his name, Hank has recorded throughout a six decade period. An on-line discography lists well over 200 recordings, appearing almost randomly on numerous compilation CDs, LPs and singles. Some of this music is quite collectable and all of it is interesting. It's what the critics today call 'authentic music': honest and underproduced. 

Music has always been his passion and went from playing and recording it when a teenager, to writing about it later on. He has been writing magazine articles and album liner notes for a long time. In an interview with Eden Music Hank said “Writing about ’50s music isn’t time travel to me. My musical taste, both as a performer and a journalist, is largely based in ’50s music. My record collection is strongly rooted in the ’50s. It isn’t so much about going back in time as it is digging into what I care most about and wanting to share it.” 

Man of many faces Hank also found time to complete his studies of psychology. His education includes attending Columbia University, B.A., 1963; Boston University, M.A., 1965 and University of Maryland, Ph.D., later moving to Canada in the 70’s after teaching for 3 years at California State University. Davis has remained in Canada contributing professional duties as Psychology professor and researcher with his profound love for everything of the American R&B music. It’s a tireless interest that has produced not only tons of new songs through the years but also extensive liner notes written to accompany reissues by his original hero’s music.

He now lives in rural Ontario Canada, where he is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Guelph. He has written books on animal cognition and evolutionary psychology, including his most recent, the controversial Caveman Logic. 

(Edited from Eden Music. Bear Family, Carlos A.del Bosque liner notes &Columbia College Today)