Gloria Coleman born 24 July 1931

Gloria Coleman (July 24, 1931 - February 17, 2010) was an American organist, pianist, bassist and vocalist.  For many, the history of women on the jazz organ begins and ends with Shirley Scott. Though no other woman matched Ms. Scott’s prominence, there were others who deserved a piece of that small spotlight. One such woman was Gloria Coleman. 

Coleman was a New York native, who as a child studied the piano, violin and bass.  In fact, she began her career in 1952 as a bassist, playing with pianists in the Philadelphia and Chicago areas.  As her interest in the piano and organ grew, her work as a bassist decreased. She got tips from organ legends “Wild Bill” Davis and Jimmy Smith, which helped her develop her foot pedal technique, allowing her to work without a bassist; something Ms. Scott rarely did. She got tips from Smith while working at her organ technique at the famous Harlem nightclub Small’s.  

George Coleman

In the early 1960s, after performing for a time as a pianist and organist with Tiny Grimes in Sherry’s, an Atlantic City club, she returned to Sonny Stitt’s band as his organist, performing at such New Your venues as the Village Gate.  Like Shirley Scott, Gloria Coleman married a well-known tenor saxophonist: in Ms. Coleman’s case it was George Coleman, a strong player in his own right, who gained most fame for being the “transitional tenor” between Coltrane and Shorter in Miles Davis’ quintet. Their union was musically fruitful, as they would work together, on and off, for the rest of Ms. Coleman’s life. 

To develop her piano technique, she and her husband practiced together in their home with Booker Little.  She composed and arranged her own music, as well as music for others.  Examples of Ms. Coleman’s songs written for or recorded by various artists include "You Make Me Want to Dance" (Joe Lee Wilson, Irene Reid), "I Got A Claim on Fame"  (written as a theme song for Irene Reid); and "There’s a Way" (Hank Crawford).  Coleman has also written for Bobby Humphrey and 15 songs for Ernestine Anderson.  Many of her works are dedicated to friends and colleagues like Ike Quebec, Melba Liston, Grant Green and Shirley Scott. "Nicole’s Waltz" was written to honour Shirley and Stanley Turrentine’s youngest daughter.  

                       Here's "Fungi Mama" from above album.

                             

Gloria Coleman recorded sporadically.  Her most well-known recording is her first as a leader; Soul Sisters which she made for Impulse in 1963, with Grant Green on guitar, Leo Wright on alto sax and a female drummer named Pola Roberts, who slipped back into obscurity right after this record, in spite of her capable performance.  Critics have called Soul Sisters an “underappreciated gem”. It certainly holds its own alongside the work that Scott, Smith, McDuff and others were doing at that time in the soul jazz idiom.  Green and Wright sound inspired on their solos and Ms. Coleman’s compositions are catchy. She also recorded a gem of an album in 1971, called Sings and Swings Organ, with trumpeter Ray Copeland, guitarist Ted Dunbar and others. 

Gloria returned the favour to Wright, sitting in on his Soul Talk album and composing the minor hit, “State Trooper”.  In more recent years, she recorded some memorable sides with Bobbi Humphrey (City Beat), Nat Simpkins (Cookin’ with Some Barbeque) and Hank Crawford (Groove Master). Coleman’s book Poems and Poetry includes entries about Eddie Jefferson, Horace Silver, Elvin Jones and Gene Ammons, and others. 

Her finest album IMO, also proved to be her last. 2008’s Sweet Missy was a sort of family affair, with George Coleman featured on tenor and her son, George Jr. on drums.  “Dr.” Lonnie Smith also makes a memorable guest appearance, playing piano alongside Gloria’s organ, on “Put ‘em in a Box, Tie ‘em with a Ribbon”.  It’s a very relaxed, but joyous album. The soloists are universally terrific (especially Ms. Coleman, who had grown exponentially over the years) and the band is tight and swinging. Her vocals on the album are frayed but ingratiating with a quality reminiscent of the great Etta Jones. 

Some of her last performances  were at such venues as the Monterrey Jazz Organ Festival in tribute to Shirley Scott, the Hot House in Oslo, Norway, in Stockholm, Sweden, Sutton’s in New York, and the Billie Holiday Jazz Festival in Brooklyn, where she was featured with her son, George Coleman, Jr. and his quartet. 

She died in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, on February 17, 2010, aged 78. Gloria. She left us a musical legacy that is definitely worth exploring. 

(Edited from Curt’s Jazz Café & Women In Jazz) 

 

Cora Vaucaire born 22 July 1918

Cora Vaucaire (July 22, 1918 – September 17, 2011) was a French singer of traditional pop (chanson) music known for her breezy style. Her husband was the famous songwriter Michel Vaucaire. She was nicknamed by journalist Maurice Ciantar the "White Lady of Saint-Germain-des-Prés", " (Juliette Gréco being " the lady in black ") she also performed in her early days under the pseudonym of Michèle Dax. 

Born Geneviève Marguerite Collin in Marseille, daughter of a long-distance captain. She was raised in a boarding school for sisters, but enrolled in the theater conservatory against the family's will and studied under the watchful eye of Fernand Ledoux and Charles Dullin. At the age of sixteen she won the first prize for comedy and tragedy in the city of Paris. During her first appearance on stage, at the Sarah-Bernhardt Theater, in a role of figuration, paralyzed by stage fright, she fainted at the feet of the star. During the War, she married the lyricist and musicologist Michel Vaucaire who, seduced by her voice, encouraged her to sing. She wins various competitions, including one chaired by Edith Piaf.. 

During 1945 after the war she started singing on the radio  was heard at such major Cabaret venues as Jacob's Ladder and The Harlequin. Her career took place mainly on stage traditionally presented herself to the public dressed in a long white dress to hide the tremors due to stage fright that she admitted to having “never been able to control ”. It was also by refusing black, the dominant colour after the war, and associated with poverty: “ I wanted to bring happiness, I played white.”  Long a regular on the Parisian nightclub circuit, she recorded her first record in 1948 and later cut several best selling records and became known for presenting musical settings of the poetry of Jacques Prevert, Louis Aragon, and other writers. 

Her uncompromising repertoire consisted of forgotten songs from the Middle Ages (" La lamente du Roy Renaud "), successes from the Belle Epoque (those of Yvette Guilbert), texts by poets (Appollinaire, Carco, Aragon), or other performers such as Maurice Fanon or Jacques Debronckart, whom she particularly appreciated.  About this time she took over the management of the La Tomate cabaret.. She notably immortalized " La Complainte de la Butte " which she performed in Renoir's film " French cancan " in 1955 and " Three little notes of music " in that of Colpi, " Long Absence " in 1960. “Trois Petites Notes de musique” , composed by Georges Delerue on a text by Colpi, will remain Cora Vaucaire's emblematic song. 

                             

With her slender figure, dazzling smile, clear voice and perfect diction, Cora Vaucaire chiselled each song into a short three or four minute piece, interpreting it with charm, emotion and sincerity. She sang for a long time in the small cabarets on the left bank, where most of the artists of the time began. 

Allergic to show business, discreet and even secretive, Cora Vaucaire preferred, once known, to offer her faithful intimate recitals, often conceived “ à la carte ” according to her mood and that of the spectators in small Italian-style theatres: l'Oeuvre (1967), Montparnasse (1975), Dejazet (1992), Bouffes du Nord (1999). She has always avoided the big music halls, performing only once for a month at Bobino (1973). She also sang at the Marais festival in 1975 and 1981. 

She did not start the international phase of her career until fairly late, first appearing in Japan in 1980. She was also the first French singer to perform in Albania, she made French song applaud all over the world and continued to please fans with her vocals well into old age. Rewarded three times by the Grand Prix du Disque, she performed on stage until an advanced age as evidenced by her singing tours at Dejazet in 1992, at the comedy des Champs-Elysées in 1997.

In 1998 she received the Legion Of Honor. Her last major recital was in 1999 at the Théâtre des bouffes du Nord. In her later years she suffered from osteoporosis. She collapsed at her home and died in  the city of Paris, Île-de-France, on the 16th  Sep 2011 (aged 93).

(Edited from Liberation & Universalis)

 

Floyd McDaniel born 21 July 1915

Floyd McDaniel (July 21, 1915 – July 22, 1995 in Chicago) was an American blues, jazz, rhythm & blues and doo-wop guitarist and singer. 

Floyd Edward "Butter" McDaniel was born in Athens, Alabama. He moved to Chicago around age fifteen, where he attended the renowned musical wellspring, Wendell Phillips High School. 'Guitar's been around me all my life,' he recollects, with many players in the family. He and some friends started playing on Chicago street corners like Roosevelt & Kedzie and the Michigan Avenue bridge, passing the hat and playing Louis Armstrong and Mills Brothers favourites. 

That led to gigs at the 1933 World's Fair and a tour with a washboard band called the Rhythm Rascals including a month in Detroit, and local work at the Spanish Club at Roosevelt and Mannheim. Its owner Doc Stacy set the band up in New York, where they were spotted at the Apollo Theatre and settled into a long residency at the Cotton Club as the Cotton Club Tramp Band. 'We was showstoppers, man,' Floyd recalls, playing in a show called 'Harlem Goes Broadway, Broadway Goes Harlem" and doing summer tours with a package headed by Cab Calloway. Floyd acquired the nick-name 'Butter' because of his chubbiness from Ben Webster and Billie Holiday. 

During the third year of the New York residency Floyd took the bus back to Chicago to see his family. He ended up joining Lindsley ("Jelly') Holt and the Four Blazes, replacing guitarist Jimmy Bennett; William Hill was the other guitar player. Floyd's tenure with the Blazes began in 1941 and lasted into the mid-fifties in various sizes and combinations. The group played their own material plus songs by the Ink Spots, Mills Brothers, Basie and 'all the popular tunes." Floyd remembers a lot of work back east and in the gambling center of Covington, Kentucky. Also in 1941 Floyd went electric. 

He had met pioneer amplified guitarist Charlie Christian in New York when Christian joined Benny Goodman's band, and Christian 'was my idol... I thought he was the cat's pajamas, man." Floyd also acquired chord knowledge from Ray Nance's guitarist Claude Adams and single note skills from John Collins during after-hours jams in Chicago on 55th Street. After Floyd married his second wife Margaret Dixon, he found out that her sister and T-Bone had collaborated on a dance act in Texas, and that their mother 'almost raised T-Bone.' The friendship between the two guitarists deepened as a result and was reflected strongly in Floyd's music. 

                              

The Four Blazes successfully released several '78s on Aristocrat Chicago Boogie (1947) and United Records such as Night Train, Rug Cutter, Perfect Woman, Please Send Her Back to Me, Mary Jo, All Night Long and Stop Boogie Woogie (1952) and as Five Blazes respectively the single Chicago Boogie.  

In 1957 Floyd bought a tavern at 155 W. 75th Street, running it for seven years. He stayed close to home but did go to Des Moines with Jump Jackson's band to back Sam Cooke. Then he joined a rock group ('they called me Pops") called the Y Knots, doing the likes of James Brown and Otis Redding tunes in the company of drummer Vince Chappelle and bassist Larry Exum, both well known to blues lovers. From there he went on in 1971 to one of the versions of the Ink Spots, with whom he stayed into the late '80s. At the 1986 Chicago Blues Festival he was a part of a Big 3 Trio reunion with Willie Dixon and pianist Baby Don Gaston; the experience rekindled Floyd's desire to be a blues man. 

Recordings were made in 1991 for Delmark Records with the band The Blues Swingers, led by tenor saxophonist Dave Clark, in a style inspired by 1940s blues and rhythm and blues ( Let Your Hair Down!, Delmark). Floyd has also found time to tour Europe, recording there with Little Willie Littlefield for the German CMA label and guesting on some '93 session, with Austria's Mojo Blues Band. Floyd never had such fully orchestrated accompaniment in the studio or as broad a forum for his talents, and the band had a rare chance to perpetuate what is too close to becoming a lost art in Chicago. Floyd also performed in 1994 at the Breminale Blues Festival in Bremen. 

He celebrated his 80th birthday the way he lived, singing and playing the guitar at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge in Chicago. Through two raucous shows, which included the presentation of a birthday cake, McDaniel never left the stage. He spent the break there, too, signing autographs and flirting. Slung over his shoulder was his 1949 Gibson guitar, named Suzy after his long-gone basset hound. Then the evening drew to a close, the audience clamouring for a big finish. Instead, McDaniel, wearing his usual beret, gave them "One Hundred Years from Today," a quiet little tune about friends encountered in a future world. This was at 1.30 am 22 July 1995, that evening he died in Alabama of complications from a heart attack whilst driving his 1983 Oldsmobile down the Dan Ryan Expressway

(Edited from article by Dick Shurman for Bear Family, Chicago Tribune & Wikipedia)

 

Dennis Yost born 20 July 1943

Dennis Yost (July 20, 1943 – December 7, 2008) was an American singer and the front man of Classics IV. 

Dennis Yost was born in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. He and his family moved to Jacksonville at the age of 7. There, he began playing drums. While a student at Andrew Jackson High School, he joined a local band called The Echoes, in which he was also a singer. 

In 1965, after the Echoes broke up, Yost joined Leroy and the Monarchs, a copy band founded by Walter Eaton. James "J.R." Cobb also came on board on guitar along with Joe Wilson on keyboards. The band would soon change its name to The Classics. Yost took over vocals duties due to the strength and quality of his voice. When singing he would play his drums standing up. 

The group was discovered performing at the Purple Porpoise in Daytona Beach by talent manager Alan Diggs, who was affiliated with the Lowery organization in Atlanta. Songwriter Buddy Buie was brought aboard as the group's co-manager and producer. The pair encouraged the band to relocate to Atlanta, where the band landed a deal with Capitol Records with the help of producer Bill Lowery. 

The group released its debut single, "Pollyanna", written by Lowery songwriter Joe South. Despite being a regional hit, the group received complaints from a New York-based group with the same name, prompting them to add the "IV" to the name since there were four members at that time.  In 1967, The group landed a deal with Imperial Records. Throughout the next few years, the group released four albums and a slew of Top 40 hits, including "Spooky", "Stormy", and "Traces". 

                             

By 1970, as Yost was the remaining original member in the group, it changed its name again to Dennis Yost and the Classics IV. After Imperial was absorbed into United Artists Records, the group signed with MGM South. The band's subsequent releases were less successful, despite their final Top 40 hit "What Am I Crying For", which peaked at No. 39 in 1972. By this time, the partnership between Cochran and Buie ended. 

In 1975, Yost disbanded the group and returned to Florida to pursue fishing and the flooring business. A couple of years later, Yost returned to performing under the Holiday Inn circuit, this time solely under his own name or The Classic One---by this time, he had lost the rights to the Classics IV name.  In 1981, Yost released Going Through the Motions on Robox Records. Its single with the same name was a minor hit, peaking at No. 46 on the Adult Contemporary chart. In 1993, Yost moved to Nashville and ventured into songwriting and producing aside from his performing duties. In the same year, Classics IV was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. 

In 2001, Yost underwent successful throat surgery for a condition that had severely impaired his singing voice, bringing him back to touring under the Classics IV name. A few years prior, he had regained the rights to the Classics IV name with the help of former Sha Na Na vocalist Jon "Bowser" Bauman through the group Truth in Music Advertising. 

On July 11, 2006, Yost fell down a flight of stairs and suffered serious brain trauma. To assist Yost and his wife with their medical bills, a benefit concert was held on March 25, 2007, at Rhino's Live in Cincinnati, Ohio. The benefit was hosted by Jon Bauman. Many musical entertainers and some surprise guests from the 1950s through the 1970s performed some of their biggest chart-topping hits in tribute to Yost. Among the artists performing that day were Denny Laine of the Moody Blues and Wings, Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night, Ian Mitchell of Bay City Rollers, Pat Upton of Spiral Starecase, Dave Somerville, the Skyliners, Buzz Cason, Carl Dobkins Jr., Mark Volman of the Turtles, and The Robby Campbell Trio. The concert did not significantly benefit Yost or his wife financially as hoped, as expenses far exceeded the money raised, leaving the event in the red. 

After the accident, Tom Garrett was chosen by Yost to replace him as lead singer. The plan was for Yost to make a few yearly "special appearances", and gradually have Garrett take over as the leader of the band. However, Yost was able to perform with them for only one appearance in 2008 as he had been in nursing homes since the accident. 

Yost died aged 65 from respiratory failure at Fort Hamilton Hospital in Hamilton, Ohio, on December 7, 2008, the 40th anniversary of the entrance of "Stormy" into the Hot 100's top 10. The current line-up of Classics IV consists of Tom Garrett as lead vocalist, Kevin Lloyd on bass, James Yoder on keyboards, Paul Weddle on saxophone, John Kerner on guitar, and Shawn White on drums. The group regularly tours to this day. 

(Edited from Wikipedia) 

 

David Allyn born 19 July 1919

David Allyn (19th July 1919* - 22 November 2012 in West Haven , Connecticut  ) was an American pop and jazz singer who was admired by many in the business. Frank Sinatra was a friend and supporter. Sammy Davis Jr. wrote liner notes to one of his later albums. But for one reason or the other, Allyn never quite caught on with the public—sometimes it was his own fault, other times it was for reasons outside of his own control. 

David Allyn was born Albert DiLello in Hartford, Connectict. His father played French horn with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, his mother was a singer. Influenced by Bing Crosby, he began performing as a singer in high school. From 1940 to 1942 he recorded with Jack Teagarden's Big Band and in 1945 in the studio orchestra of Lyle Griffin. Allyn was rising fast in the band-singer sweepstakes, but his career was cut short by World War II. Drafted into the army, he fought in North Africa with the First Division until he was seriously wounded at El Guettar. Discharged from the army, he sang with the Van Alexander Orchestra. 

By now he had given up his Bing Crosby style, and was listening with interest to Sarah Vaughan, Dick Haymes, early Al Hibbler, Peggy Lee, and Frank Sinatra, but was developping his own style. David moved next to the early Henry Jerome band, with sidemen such as Al Cohn, Tiny Kahn, Harry Biss, Ollie Wilson, and most of all, Johnny Mandel. After the Jerome band broke up, David sang at WHN and WNEW radio and spent a short stint with the Bob Chester band, before joining Mandel in the new experimental Boyd Raeburn Band in 1945, a job that brought him considerable renown and should have catapulted him to the top. 

Boyd Raeburn Orchestra

But Allyn had developed a taste for pain-killing drugs while being treated for his war wounds, and he became a heroin addict during his Raeburn days--continuing down that dark path for the next decade until his life as an addict ended with a two-year jail term. A decade before, Allyn had been among the most celebrated pop-jazz vocalists, thanks to such Raeburn gems as ''Forgetful'' and ''I Only Have Eyes For You.'' But now, in the late-1950s, he was a forgotten man--not only because he had been off the scene for so many years but also because his nobly straightforward style of singing was being shunted aside by rock `n` roll. 

                             

But some old friends did not forget, and in 1957 one of Allyn`s former Raeburn band- mates, composer-arranger Johnny Mandel, collaborated with Allyn on an album of Jerome Kern songs titled ''A Sure Thing.'' This vocal masterpiece is an essay in romanticism so deeply felt, that it comes as no surprise to learn that tears were streaming down Allyn`s face when he recorded his trancelike version of ''Dearly Beloved.'' By this time, Allyn was a better singer than he had been during his Raeburn days, darker in tone and more emotionally mature. And his ability to sing a ballad remained unique, for Alyn favoured the slowest tempos imaginable and seemed to place no distance between himself and the song. 

Allyn with Tony Curtis

The 60’s saw Allyn with the Stan Kenton Orchestra and in 1964 with Count Basie in Lake Tahoe. He also frequently appeared in clubs such as the Playboy Club, but recording dates for jazz singers of Allyn's ilk were scarce. Then his career got into a crisis again due to drug problems. But the state of the music business was such that for the most part Allyn`s efforts fell on deaf ears--so much so that his second album with Mandel, ''In the Blue of the Evening,'' wasn`t even released at the time. Then his career got into a crisis again due to drug problems. 

So Allyn settled in Los Angeles, working in small clubs when he wasn`t serving as an addiction counsellor at a Veterans Adminstration hospital, until he finally gave up on professional singing altogether--except for a superb but long-out-print 1975 album, ''Don`t Look Back'' , that paired him with pianist Barry Harris. By the 1980s Allyn was living in Minneapolis, working as a night manager in a hardware store, when his fate began to turn around. ''No one knew I was a singer,'' Allyn says, ''but then I came home one night and heard one of my sides being played on the local jazz station. I called the disc jockey to thank him, he said `Let`s do an interview` and one thing led to another. Before I knew it, I was singing with a couple of good big bands.'' 

In the early 1990s he lived in Minneapolis, but then moved to New York, where he performed at Gregory’s. Also in the 1990s he was still active as a singer and appeared with a big band in Spain. In 2005 he published his autobiography There Is not No Search Word as Can’t, in which he also reports about his forty years of drug addiction. Allyn last lived in New Rochelle, New York. 

He retired in 2010  and struggled with his health, especially in his later years. He died November 21, 2012 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in West Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 93. 

(Edited from Wikipedia Chicago Tribune & Discogs) * (1923 is mainly given by many sources, but 1919 is stipulated from information via US Census sheets)

 

 

Wilton Crawley born 18 July 1900

Wilton Crawley ( July 18, 1900 – November, 1967) was an American jazz clarinetist, songwriter and vaudevillian. 

Wilton Crawley

Here is an early jazz artist who has largely been forgotten, yet if listeners had his clarinet blasting in their ears for a few days, that would hardly be the case. Perhaps not the most versatile musician on earth, Wilton Crawley still worked up a clarinet sound and style that utilized weird speech-like sound effects and extended use of slap tonguing, sometimes filling out whole lines of a solo with obnoxious little pops. The fact that one of his sidemen, pianist Jelly Roll Morton, went on to become an everlasting legend of early jazz has meant that many of the recordings originally done under Crowley's name have all been reissued in various Morton retrospectives. 

Jelly Roll Morton

Crawley formed his first band with fellow reed-playing brother Jimmy Crawley after his family moved from Virginia to Philadelphia. During the '20s and '30s, the clarinetist began to have success with a variety act featuring his singing and playing. In the late part of the '20s, he made many of the aforementioned recordings, most of which include Morton. Some earlier sides from 1927 and 1928 also combine Crawley with fine early jazz guitarist Eddie Lang. Highlights of his early recordings include “You Oughta See My Gal,” “Big Time Woman,” and “I’m Her Papa, She’s My Mama.” Those performances are quite humorous with Morton and the others join in on the frequently riotous fun.

                             

Between 1927 and 1930, recordings were made for OKeh and Victor Records. Much of this music reveals Crawley attempting to recreate jazz sounds from other instruments, particularly typical muted trumpet effects that might have been done by an artist such as Bubber Miley. Other influences may be more easily traceable back to Virginia and its many farms and barnyards: Crawley cackles and clucks like a chicken, oinks like a pig, and neighs like a goat. While some of this sound effect activity may predict the later work of artists such as Anthony Braxton, Crawley actually seems to have more in common with the clarinetists who worked with Spike Jones or even later rock showmen such as Arthur Brown.

Apparently, the finale of Crawley's vaudeville act consisted of him propelling himself across a stage with a lighted kerosene lamp on his head. He was also known as "the human worm," although what this has to do with a clarinet is best left to the imagination. Although some of the membership in ensembles such as Wilton Crawley & His Orchestra or the Washboard Rhythm Kings also remains unknown, the clarinetist did have many fine sidemen in his employ besides those already mentioned. Trumpeter Henry "Red" Allen, banjoist Johnny St. Cyr, and fine blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson all show up in his bands. Some critics see Crawley's clarinet style as part of the klezmer influence on jazz, although he was hardly brought up on matzoh balls. The most complete collection of his material is available on the Jazz Oracle collection entitled Showman, Composer and Clarinetist. 

Glen Burnie, Anne Arundel, Maryland

Crawley toured around Europe and New York, and in 1932 both his father and Eddie Lang passed away, which hit him on a personal level extremely hard. He found both of these losses to be very difficult to deal with and he slowly drifted out of the public eye, becoming more and more reclusive. Crawley died in November of 1967. No exact date is known, nor are any circumstances of death. His last address was listed as 21061 Glen Burnie, Anne Arundel, Maryland. 

(Edited from AllMusic, Syncopated Times & AllAboutJazz)