Anna Moffo born 27 June 1932

Anna Moffo (June 27, 1932 – March 9, 2006) was an American opera singer, television personality, and actress. One of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation, she was the possessor of a lovely, warm-toned lyric soprano voice. 

Noted for her physical beauty, she was nicknamed "La Bellissima". She was the perfect interpreter of those innumerable operatic heroines like Violetta in La Traviata and Mimi in La Bohème, two typical examples in Italian opera with Massenet's Manon and Antonia in Les Contes d'Hoffmann in French. Although the greater part of her career was spent in America - she sang for 17 seasons at the Metropolitan in New York - Moffo also appeared in many of the capitals of Europe, including London, where she sang Gilda in Rigoletto at Covent Garden, as well as several music festivals. 

Anna Moffo was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Italian parents. Her father worked as a shoemaker. She studied singing with Eufemia Giannini at the Curtis Institute and later gained a Fulbright scholarship for further study in Italy, where she worked in Rome with Luigi Ricci and Mercedes Llopart. She made her début in 1955 at the Spoleto Festival, singing Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale. Moffo's spectacular good looks ensured a great interest from film and television cameras alike, and in 1956 she sang Madama Butterfly for Italian television which made Moffo an overnight sensation throughout Italy. This was directed by Mario Lanfranchi, who later became Moffo's first husband and her manager. 

The following year Moffo sang Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff at both the Salzburg Festival and at La Scala, Milan. Seldom can Shakespeare's "sweet Anne Page" (as she is in the original play) have had a more enchanting interpeter. After these European triumphs, Moffo returned to the US to make her début in Chicago, as Mimi in La Bohème. Her Rodolfo was Jussi Björling. Though nearly twice her age and at the end of his career (he died three years later), he was vocally a perfect partner for the young soprano. Moffo had three other roles at the Lyric that season: Mignon, Le nozze di Figaro (with Tito Gobbi, Giulietta Simionato and Eleanor Steber) and Lucia di Lammermoor. On at least one occasion her performance of Lucia's Mad Scene earned Moffo a 10-minute standing ovation. 

                                   

In the late 1950s, she recorded Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, opposite Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Giuseppe Taddei, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini; and recitals of Mozart arias with EMI. She then became an exclusive RCA Victor artist. Moffo returned to Italy in 1959 to make the first of two films in which she appeared, Austerlitz, directed by Abel Gance. The multi-national cast of this epic account of the defeat of the Austro-Russian armies by Napoleon included Leslie Caron, Claudia Cardinale and Orson Welles among its guest stars. Moffo's second film appearance was for Paramount in 1970, when she played a small role in The Adventurers. Of rather more importance to her growing reputation as an opera singer was Moffo's début at the Metropolitan on 14 November 1959, as Violetta in La Traviata. 

Moffo was also invited to sing at the San Francisco Opera where she made her debut as Amina on October 1, 1960. During that period she also made several appearances on American television, while enjoying a successful international career singing at most major opera houses around the world (Stockholm, Berlin, Monte Carlo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, etc.). Moffo remained particularly popular in Italy and performed there regularly. She hosted a program on Italian television "The Anna Moffo Show" (two series: the first in 1964; the second in 1967) and was voted one of the ten most beautiful women in Italy. She appeared in film versions of La traviata (1967) and Lucia di Lammermoor (1971), as well as many non-operatic films. 

By the end of the Sixties the soprano's voice was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. This blew up into a full-scale vocal crisis in 1974, when Moffo realised, too late, that she had sung far too much, far too soon. At first it was thought she might never sing again, but she persevered, retraining her voice and in 1976 she returned, with a small new repertory. Although she continued to sing in staged opera through 1980, her appearances became more sporadic. Her last performance at the Met was during the 1983 Centennial celebrations, where she sang the Sigmund Romberg duet "Will You Remember?" with Robert Merrill. After retiring from singing Moffo remained active as a board member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and by hosting several tributes and giving occasional masterclasses. 

Anna Moffo spent the last years of her life in New York City, where she died of a stroke at the age of 73 years on 10 March 2006, following a decade-long battle with breast cancer. She is interred with Sarnoff at Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. 

(Edited from Elizabeth Forbes obit @ The Independent & Wikipedia)

 

St. Louis Jimmy Oden born 26 June 1903

St. Louis Jimmy Oden (June 26, 1903 – December 30, 1977) was an American blues musician and songwriter with a dry, laconic vocal style and is remembered now more for his songwriting talents than for his records. 

James Burke "St. Louis Jimmy" Oden was born in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. His parents were Henry Oden, a dancer, and Leana West, although both had died before their son reached the age of eight. He sang and taught himself to play the piano in childhood. In his teens, he left home for St. Louis, where piano-based blues was prominent, to make his fortune with his fingers. 

He developed his vocal talents and began performing with the pianist Roosevelt Sykes. After more than ten years playing in and around St. Louis, in 1933 he and Sykes moved to Chicago. In the 20s, on the busy circuit of speak-easies, clubs and parties in that ‘wide-open’ city, he met another pianist Roosevelt Sykes, and Jimmy began to focus on singing and songwriting in their work together. For more than ten years, Jimmy and Roosevelt were at the centre of the scene in St.Louis where the Blues piano of Peetie Wheatstraw, Walter Davis and Speckled Red made the city almost synonymous with tinkling ivories.

                                    

In Chicago, he was nicknamed St. Louis Jimmy and had a solid performing and recording career for the next four decades. Chicago became his home, but Oden traveled with blues players throughout the United States. He recorded many records, his best-known being the 1941 Bluebird release "Goin' Down Slow". It was a great song, delivered in Jimmy’s typical downhearted style, and a regional hit, but when America joined WWII his recording career, like so many others, hit the buffers. 

After the War, Jimmy cut some tracks for the Bullet label, and in 1948 he cut ‘Florida Hurricane’ for Aristocrat Records, which was about to become Chess. His side-men on those sessions included pianist Sunnyland Slim and Muddy Waters on slide-guitar, and Muddy later recorded several of Jimmy’s compositions including ‘Soon Forgotten’ and ‘Take the Bitter with the Sweet’. In 1949 Jimmy and his partner Joe Brown set up their own JOB label, but within a year Jimmy had pulled out. His own records appeared throughout the 50s on the Savoy and Parrot labels, and with Roosevelt on Duke Records. 

Muddy Waters, Jimmy Oden, Chris Barber, Ottilee Patterson

He spent less time performing after being in a car crash in 1957. Songs written later in his career include "What a Woman!" Oden released the album Goin' Down Slow on Prestige-Bluesville in 1960. It had ten of his own compositions, including the title track. That same year he performed as a vocalist on three songs recorded for an Otis Spann session in 1960. 

Jimmy continued to record sporadically for several labels in the 60s, but failing health was catching up with him. Jimmy had retired from performing by the end of the decade, and passed away in Chicago on  December 30, 1977 from  bronchopneumonia at the age of 74. He was interred in Restvale Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois, near Chicago. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & All About Blues Music)

David T. Walker born 25 June

David T. Walker (born June 25, 1941) is an American soul/R&B, and jazz guitarist. In addition to numerous session musician duties since the early 1970s, Walker has issued fifteen albums in his own name and has performed on over 2,500 Albums, Film Soundtracks, TV, and Radio Commercials beginning in 1961. He has received numerous achievement awards including Gold & Platinum Records. 

David T. Walker was born to a Native American mother and African American father in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is the eldest child in a family of ten. His parents migrated to San Pedro, CA when He was two years old then  relocated to Central California when he was 7 years old. He attended David Starr Jordan High School in the Watts area of Los Angeles. Started playing the saxophone in the fourth grade and also had begun to hear Music from the local people and Family members. At age 14, His Family moved to Watts, part of Los Angeles. 

At age 16, he taught himself how to play guitar and began working in juke joints and Blues Clubs etc. While in High School, he joined the group called The Kinfolks, who traveled the entire USA many times, High School playing and traveling all the back roads and out of the way Chitlin Circuits and Theatre Musical Circuits for 7 years. Their road gigs included time with The Olympics, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Etta James, and Little Willie John, just to name a few. The Kinfolks joined Motown Records, and worked/traveled with Artists, such as Martha and the Vandellas etc. 

                        

At age 28, He signed a recording contract and His first Solo Album “The Sidewalk” and since 1967 has released fifteen solo albums. He has also been a session rhythm and lead guitarist, appearing on numerous soul, R&B, and jazz releases. His backup work was featured on several singles and albums, including Love Unlimited Orchestra's big hit single Love's Theme.(1974), Stevie Wonder's Innervisions (1973); Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On (1973) and I Want You (1976); Carole King's Fantasy (1973); the Jackson 5's Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, ABC, and Maybe Tomorrow, single "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1971); Michael Jackson's Ben, single "Got To Be There" (1971); Nick De Caro album "Italian Graffiti", song "Under the Jamican Moon" (1974), Afrique on its 1973 Afro funk release Soul Makossa, Smokey Robinson's pop hit Cruisin' (1979) Bobby Womack's album The Poet (1981), and LeVert's R&B hit (Pop Pop Pop) Goes My Mind (1986). 

Other musicians Walker has worked with over the years include James Brown (1973), Ray Charles, LeVert, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack(1981), Smokey Robinson, Leon Ware, Barry White & Love Unlimited Orchestra, Four Tops, Wah Wah Watson, Chuck Rainey, Donald Byrd, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Billy Preston, the Sylvers, Quincy Jones, Hampton Hawes, Monk Higgins, Willie Hutch, Jeffrey Osborne, Johnny Bristol, Solomon Burke, Cannonball Adderley, B.B. King, the Friends of Distinction, the Crusaders, Joe Sample, Paul Humphrey, Bobbi Humphrey, Sérgio Mendes, Stanley Turrentine, Marlena Shaw, Blue Mitchell, Gloria Scott, and Boz Scaggs. 

His song "On Love" was sampled on the breakbeat compilation album Tribe Vibes Vol. 2 by the group A Tribe Called Quest and on the collaborative album Alfredo by Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist. His guitar riff on Joe Sample's "In All My Wildest Dreams" (from Rainbow Seeker) was sampled on Tupac Shakur's song "Dear Mama". 

Walker played in Bill Cosby's all-star band at the 2008 Playboy Jazz Festival. He has gained popularity in Japan for playing guitar and he also leads his group on tours of Japan each year. He recently toured Japan with Marlena Shaw, Larry Carlton and Brazilian artist Ed Motta. 

His Music is loved and respected by generations of music lovers and artists. He has been sampled by Hip Hop Artists such as Tupac Shakur, A Tribe Called Quest, Pete Rock , De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, and many others. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & David T. Walkers website)

Manny Albam born 24 June 1922

Manny Albam (June 24, 1922 – October 2, 2001) was an American jazz arranger, composer, record producer, saxophonist, and educator. During a career that spanned seven decades, he collaborated with a who's who of jazz greats including Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stan Getz. He also developed successive generations of new talent as co-founder and musical director of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop. 

Albam was born when his parents were en route from their native Russia to their new home in New York City, and his mother went into labor while their ship was outside of the Dominican Republic port of Samana. At the age of seven Albam discovered jazz after hearing a Bix Beiderbecke record, and soon after began playing the alto saxophone; at 16 he dropped out of school following an invitation to join Muggsy Spanier's Dixieland combo, then Don Joseph (1940) Musgy Spannier (1941), Bob Chester (1942), Georgie Auld (1942 – 5), Charlie Spivak and Boyd Raeburn (1943-5).

During his two years with Spivak, his arranging skills flourished, and he generated an average of two arrangements per week. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, (1945-6) he ubndertook similar work for Sam Donahue (1947), Charlie Barnet (1948-9), Jerry Wald (1949) and others,  and as his interest in writing and arranging grew, he effectively retired from performing in 1950, a decision that coincided with the last gasps of the big band era. 

                                    

Albam quickly emerged as a sought-after freelancer, composing and arranging material for many of the bop era's brightest talents. Within a few years, he became known for a bebop style that emphasized taut and witty writing with a flair for distinctive shadings; flute-led reed sections became something of an Albam trademark. One of his most popular works from that era was "Samana", an Afro-Latin composition he did for the Stan Kenton Innovations Orchestra, named after his birthplace Samaná in the Dominican Republic. 

Albam eventually signed to headline his own LPs for labels including Mercury, RCA Victor, and Dot, bringing together musicians including Phil Woods, Al Cohn, and Bob Brookmeyer for acclaimed easy listening efforts including The Blues Is Everybody's Business and The Drum Suite. His 1957 jazz arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's score to West Side Story so impressed Bernstein that the maestro invited Albam to write for the New York Philharmonic. 

The offer prompted Albam to study classical composition under Tibor Serly (1958 to 1960), later yielding such works as the luminous "Concerto for Trombone and Strings." Albam also wrote for feature films, television, and even advertising jingles, and in 1964 signed on as musical director for Sonny Lester's fledgling Solid State label, which two years later issued his jazz suite The Soul of the City. By that time Albam was increasingly channeling his energies into teaching, however. 

After stints with the Eastman School of Music, Glassboro State College, and the Manhattan School of Music, in 1988 he co-founded the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop, assuming the title of musical director from Brookmeyer three years later. 

He died of cancer at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, aged 79, in 2001. 

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

George Russell born 23 June 1923

George Allen Russell (June 23, 1923 – July 27, 2009) was an American jazz pianist and a hugely influential, innovative figure in the evolution of modern jazz, the music's only major theorist, one of its most profound composers, and a trail blazer whose ideas have transformed and inspired some of the greatest musicians of our time. 

George Allen Russell was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the adopted son of a registered nurse and a chef on the B&O Railroad. Russell's first instrument was the drums, which he played in the Boy Scout Drum and Bugle Corps and at local clubs when he was in high school. At 19, he was hospitalized with tuberculosis, but he used the enforced inactivity to learn the craft of arranging from a fellow patient. Once back on his feet, he played with Benny Carter, but after being replaced on drums by Max Roach, Russell began to zero in on composing and arranging. 

He moved to New York to join the crowd of young firebrands who gathered in Gil Evans' "salon," and he was actually invited to play drums in Charlie Parker's band. But once again, he fell ill, finding himself in a Bronx hospital for 16 months (1945-1946), where he began to formulate the ideas for the Lydian Concept. Upon his recovery, Russell leaped into the embryonic fusion of bebop and Afro-Cuban rhythms by writing "Cubana Be" and "Cubana Bop," which the Dizzy Gillespie big band recorded in 1947. He contributed arrangements to Claude Thornhill and Artie Shaw in the late '40s and wrote the first (and not the last) speculative scenario of a meeting between Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky, "A Bird in Igor's Yard," recorded by Buddy DeFranco. 

                          Here’s “Ezz-Thetic” from above album

                                   

While working on his Lydian theories, Russell dropped out of active music-making for a while, working at a sales counter in Macy's when his book was published. But when he resumed composing in 1956, he had established himself as an influential force in jazz. Russell's connection with Gunther Schuller resulted in the commission of "All About Rosie" for the 1957 Brandeis University jazz festival, and he also taught at the Lenox School of Jazz that Schuller co-founded. 

He formed a rehearsal sextet in the mid-'50s that became known as the George Russell Smalltet, with Art Farmer, Bill Evans, Hal McKusick, Barry Galbraith, and various drummers and bassists. Their 1956 recording Jazz Workshop (RCA Victor) became a landmark of its time, and Russell continued to record intriguing LPs for Decca in the late '50s and Riverside in the early '60s. Another key album from this period, Ezz-Thetics, featured two important progressive players, Eric Dolphy and Don Ellis. 

Finding the American jazz scene too confining for his music, Russell left for Europe in 1963, living in Sweden for five years. From his new base, he toured Scandinavia with a new sextet of European players and received numerous commissions -- including a ballet based on Othello, a mass, and the orchestral suite Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature: 1980. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1969, he joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music, where Schuller had started a jazz department, and this gave him a secure base from which to tour occasionally with his own groups. 

Russell stopped composing from 1972 to 1978 in order to finish a second volume on the Lydian Chromatic Concept. He led a 19-piece big band at the Village Vanguard for six weeks in 1978, played the Newport Jazz Festival when it was based in New York City, and made tours of Italy, the U.S. West Coast, and England in the '80s. 

Russell's most imposing latter-day commissions included "An American Trilogy" and the monumental three-hour work "Time Line" for symphony orchestra, jazz ensembles, rock groups, choir, and dancers. In addition to The African Game and So What on Blue Note, Russell made recordings for Soul Note in the '70s and '80s and Label Bleu in the '90s, while continuing to teach at the New England Conservatory and leading his Living Time Orchestra big band into the 21st century. 

He received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1989. In his career, Russell also received the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Master Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the British Jazz Award. He has been elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, won the Oscar du Disque de Jazz Award, the Guardian Award, the American Music Award, six NEA Music Fellowships, and numerous others. He taught worldwide and was a guest conductor for German, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish radio groups.  

In 2005 George Russell & the Living Time Orchestra's The 80th Birthday Concert, released on the Concept label, celebrated the legendary octogenarian's contributions to the art of jazz with performances of some of his most groundbreaking extended compositions and arrangements.  George Russell died in Boston on July 27, 2009 of complications from Alzheimer's disease; he was 86 years old. 

(Edited from AllMusic & About Jazz)

 

Vince Everett born 21 June 1941

Vince Everett (born 21 June 1941) is an American rock and roll musician whose vocal style is similar to that of Elvis Presley. 

Of all the Elvis Presley soundalikes, two stand head and shoulders above the rest : Ral Donner and Vince Everett. Where Ral Donner sounds mostly like the tamed-down, post-Army Elvis, Vince Everett recreates the energetic early Elvis on his best recordings. It has often been said that Everett made the kind of records that Presley should have been making in the 1960s. 

Vince Everett's real name is Marvin Benefield. He was born and raised in the Atlanta suburb of College Park. When rock n roll broke through in 1956, young Marvin felt that this was the kind of music for him. The year 1959 saw his entry into the music business when he won a talent contest that was part of the Georgia Jubilee in East Point, which was the regional equivalent of the Big D Jamboree from Dallas. Part of the prize was making a recording and so Marvin entered Bill Lowery's NRC studio in Atlanta to cut his first record, "Love Me" (not the Presley song). Produced by Ray Stevens, it was issued in early 1960 on Jam 122 with artist credit going to Marvin Fields. The flip was a comedy act by a different artist. Though the record sold well locally, Marvin wisely held on to his fulltime job at the Square D Company, which was involved in the electrical switchgear business. He would continue to work there until 1992, apart from a spell in the US Armed Forces between 1966 and 1969 where he rose to the rank of First Lieutenant. 

                                   

At the Georgia Jubilee Marvin had met Felton Jarvis, who worked for Lowery Music. In early 1962 Jarvis asked him if he would like to record for ABC-Paramount. Marvin jumped at the chance and Jarvis rechristened him Vince Everett, after the character that Elvis played in "Jailhouse Rock". The first ABC session took place on February 21, 1962 in Nashville. Everett recorded the Drifters' "Such A Night" and his own composition "Don't Go", with Felton Jarvis producing. "Such A Night" copied the 1960 Elvis Presley arrangement note for note and employed some of the session musicians that had also played on the Presley version : Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer and the Jordanaires. 

Sales were encouraging enough to invite Vince for a second session on August 13, 1962, again in Nashville. Selected as the A-side of the second ABC single was "I Ain't Gonna Be Your Low Down Dog No More". On the B-side, Vince did a good job of the Cleveland Crochet song "Sugar Bee", with Charlie McCoy on harmonica.  A third ABC session followed on May 29, 1963, at the Sun studio in Nashville, resulting in the excellent single "Baby Let's Play House"/"Livin' High". The top deck stayed close to the Presley version of 1955, with Scotty Moore recreating his original guitar licks while Bill Black slapped an acoustic bass. 

These recordings were the last to be made in Nashville under the supervision of Felton Jarvis (who would become Elvis' producer in 1966). The final ABC session was held in Atlanta in late 1964 (the ABC files state that it was "purchased" on January 20, 1965), produced and written by Joe South. The 50s sound had been Felton Jarvis's idea. Vince now tried a more contemporary sound, with the songs "Big Brother" and "To Have, To Hold And Let Go". In 1966 there followed another Joe South production, "I'm Snowed" , coupled with the old Rosemary Clooney favourite "Come On-A My House" . This single came out on Royalty Records, under his own name, Marvin Benefield. 

After three years in the Army (1966-69) there was a long gap before Everett's final release, "Glitter And Gleam"/"To Love Is To Gamble" (1977), written and produced by Tommy Roe for Bill Lowery's 1-2-3 label and issued as by Marvin Bennefield . And that is Vince Everett's complete output, just 15 tracks. 

Some discographies mention several other recordings, but the releases on Saga, Town, Laurel and Gull are all by different artists. The Gull recordings are by a British Presley imitator who called himself Vince Everett in the 1970s, trying to pass himself off as the US artist, creating quite a bit of confusion in the process. The real Vince Everett made his European debut at the Rockabilly Rock & Roll Meeting in Munich, Germany, on July 17, 1999, and by all accounts his performance went down well. 

That Vince never had a hit is not surprising. His energetic rock n roll sound had become an anachronism in the 1960s and he hardly promoted his records on the road, preferring to maintain his full-time job as an electrical products assembler. But we should be grateful for his legacy, some first-rate old time rock n roll. 

(Edited from article by Dik deHeer @ This Is My Story)

Kid Thomas born 20 June 1934

Louis Thomas Watts, commonly known as Kid Thomas (20 June 1934 – 5 April 1970) was and is one of the great unsung heroes of the music that skirts the fine line between blues and straight-out rock & roll. Though success constantly eluded him throughout his career, it wasn't for lack of talent. 

He was born Louis Thomas Watts in Sturgis, Mississippi. About seven years later, his parents, Virgie and VT, moved the family up to Chicago. By the time young Louis reached street-wise, teenage manhood, he was taking harmonica lessons from Little Willie Smith, one of the many peripheral bluesmen on the Chicago scene, in exchange for giving Smith lessons on the drums, the Kid's original instrument. 

The late '40s and early '50s found him semi-gainfully employed blowing harp at Cadillac Babys and a dozen other clubs whose names are now lost to the mists of time. According to all accounts, he appears to have sat in with everybody at one time or another during the early to mid-'50s; Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and Bo Diddley all welcomed him on-stage on a regular basis, while Thomas found himself even deputizing for his harmonica hero Little Walter on the not-so-odd occasion when said hero was too drunk to make it up to the bandstand. 

By 1955, Kid Thomas decided he needed to make a record to help promote his club appearances. Walking by the King-Federal distributors one day, he simply poked his head and announced that he'd like to record. As luck would have it, he was immediately introduced to Ralph Bass, then working for Syd Nathan's label conglomerate as an A&R man. Bass listened to Thomas' spiel, then sent him off with instructions to put a band together and come back for a demo session. Deputizing Smith on drums, a guitarist only remembered as "James", and an unknown piano man, our hero headed back for the audition loaded down with tunes he had been working up on his gigs. 

                                    

In his only known interview, conducted in 1969 by Darryl Stolper, Thomas remembered that first session that led to his first record being issued: "The first few numbers didn't go over, so I started thinking about Howlin Wolf, and I came up with "Wolf Pack." And "The Spell" I got from Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Both of them were thought up on the spur of the moment, and Ralph Bass dug them." Rather than have Thomas come back in and do a formal session, Bass was so taken with the results of the Kid's ad-lib compositions that the results were duly pressed up as Federal single. However, it was not successful, and other recordings he made for Federal went unissued for many years. 

After a stint performing in clubs in Wichita, Kansas, where he joined up with Hound Dog Taylor, he travelled to Los Angeles with the idea of emulating the success of Little Richard. There, he met record producer George Motola, and in 1959 recorded the single "Rockin' This Joint To-Nite," which was released on Motola's Transcontinental Records label. The record has been described as "one of the wildest rock'n'roll discs of all time with Kid Thomas blowing his harmonica and shouting out the lyrics in a frantic frenzy." However, it was not a commercial success. 

He continued to perform with a band in Los Angeles clubs, often as Tommy Louis and the Rythm  Rockers or Tommy Louis and the Versatiles. In 1965, he recorded two singles for the Muriel Records label, "The Hurt Is On" and "Wail Baby Wail", another full-blooded rocker featuring guitar by Marshall Hooks, but neither were hits. His final record, as Tommy Lewis, was "(You Are An) Angel", on the Cenco Records label in 1969. In the late 60s, he worked for everything from cheap beer bars to private parties and was even hired by Dean Martin at one of them. 

Kid Thomas? from CD cover

Finding little commercial success, Kid Thomas worked as a lawn mowing man in Los Angeles in the latter half of the 1960s. On September 3, 1969, while pulling his van away from a lucrative Beverly Hills home he had just finished up, he ran over a young boy who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The boy died later that afternoon. A manslaughter indictment against Thomas was dropped because of insufficient evidence, but a few months later he was due back in court on charges of driving with a revoked license. Waiting for him outside the courthouse was the boy’s distraught father. The men spoke briefly and then Friedman pulled a 9mm automatic pistol from a briefcase and fired point-blank into the bluesman.  Thomas ran across the street toward the rear entrance of the police station with Friedman in pursuit still squeezing off rounds.  Thomas fell to the curb, but a stray shot struck Beverly Hills Police Sgt. John Carden in the leg as he was standing at the rear door of the station.  Friedman dropped his gun and was arrested without incident. 

Kid Thomas, was pronounced dead on arrival at UCLA Medical Center, Beverly Hills on April 5, 1970.  Since the man who died in that shooting incident was named Louis Thomas Watts, scarcely a word on Kid Thomas's death was heard in the blues community for quite some time.   (Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia & David K. Frasier article) 

Dave Lambert born 19 June 1917

David Alden Lambert (June 19, 1917 – October 3, 1966) was an American jazz lyricist, singer, and an originator of vocalese. He was best known as a member of the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Lambert spent a lifetime experimenting with the human voice, and expanding the possibilities of its use within jazz. 

David Alden Lambert was born in Boston, MA. His sole musical education came at age 10 when he played drums for a year. He picked up the drums again in the late 1930s when he worked summers playing with the Hugh McGuinness trio. Before joining the Army in 1940, he earned his living as a tree surgeon. Lambert was discharged from Army in 1943.   

Lambert's band debut was with Johnny Long's Orchestra in the early 1940s. Along with early partner Buddy Stewart, Lambert successfully brought singing into modern jazz (concurrently with Ella Fitzgerald). He  joined Gene Krupa's Orchestra in 1944 as a member of the G-Noters, which featured Lambert, Lillian Lane, Buddy Stewart and Jerry Duane. His first hit with Krupa was What's This? with Buddy Stewart, recorded in January 1945. Their scatting captured the essence of early bop, thanks to their close association with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and other burgeoning boppers on New York's 52nd St., and is considered the first vocal version of a bop line. 

The Pastels

In 1946, Lambert recorded with Buddy Stewart backed by Red Rodney's Beboppers, arranged by Neal Hefti. In the late 1940s, Lambert was so skilled that he often performed and recorded with top boppers like Benny Green, Al Haig, Allen Eager and Kai Winding. In 1947 Lambert put together a small short lived group he called “The Pastels” for Stan Kenton. They included Dave Lambert, Jerry Duane, Wayne Howard, Jerry Packer and Margaret Dale. 

                                    

Lambert appeared with Charlie Parker on a Royal Roost broadcast (1949) and his singers backed Bird on his 1953 recordings of "Old Folks" and "In the Still of the Night," renditions that are somewhat bizarre. Lambert recorded a few numbers with his vocal group for Capitol in 1949 and teamed up with John Hendricks (along with two other singers) for the first time in 1955 for an obscure version of "Four Brothers." The two were later joined by Annie Ross, and the lineup was a hit. 

After Lambert, Hendricks & Ross became popular in 1957, that group dominated his activities, although Lambert did record a solo album for United Artists in 1959. He stayed with the ensemble after it became Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan in 1962 (when Annie Ross was succeeded by Yolande Bavan) until its breakup in 1964.  He then formed a quintet called "Lambert & Co." which included the multiple voices of Mary Vonnie, Leslie Dorsey, David Lucas, and Sarah Boatner. 

The group auditioned for RCA in 1964, and the process was documented by filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker in a 15-minute documentary entitled Audition at RCA, It was one of the last images recorded of Lambert. The warm-voiced singer's last recording was a scat-filled version of "Donna Lee" performed at a 1965 Charlie Parker memorial concert. A year later he was killed in a highway incident. 

Accounts of Lambert's death vary slightly in details. It is established that he was on the Connecticut Turnpike and that a flat tire was involved and that he was struck by a tractor-trailer truck driven by Floyd H. Demby in the early hours of October 3, 1966. The disabled vehicle was not fully off the roadway and its lights were turned off. In addition, an account on D. A. Pennebaker's website states that the accident was on the Merritt Parkway, although that highway prohibits trucks. 

Some accounts mention that Richard Hillman was killed in the same incident. Newspaper stories differ about whose vehicle was disabled. Jet magazine's account says it was a panel truck owned by Lambert. Jon Hendricks' telling of the story says that Lambert was a compulsive do-gooder and that he had stopped to assist another motorist. The newspaper follow-up stories say that Demby was not at fault and that Lambert and Hillman were in the roadway when they were struck. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic, Jazz Wax & A.A. Registry)