Michel
Legrand
Michel Legrand has made his fame
and fortune from writing for films, but he has done significant
work in jazz on an occasional basis. In 1957, he arranged a set
of Dixieland and swing standards for a French orchestra (recorded
on Philips), in 1958 he used three different all-star groups for
the classic Legrand Jazz (with such sidemen as Miles Davis, John
Coltrane, Phil Woods, Herbie Mann, Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Art
Farmer, and others), in 1968 he recorded a strictly jazz set with
a trio and Legrand has written for albums led by Stan Getz (1971),
Sarah Vaughan (1972), and on several occasions, Phil Woods. Several
of his songs (such as "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your
Life," "Watch What Happens," and "The Summer
Knows") have been recorded many times by jazz musicians.
|
|
|
Sad News
Etta James Died 20.01.12
Few female R&B stars enjoyed the
kind of consistent acclaim Etta James received throughout a career
that spanned six decades; the celebrated producer Jerry Wexler once
called her "the greatest of all modern blues singers," and
she recorded a number of enduring hits, including "At Last,"
"Tell Mama," "I'd Rather Go Blind," and "All
I Could Do Was Cry." At the same time, despite possessing one
of the most powerful voices in music, James only belatedly gained
the attention of the mainstream audience, appearing rarely on the
pop charts despite scoring 30 R&B hits, and she lived a rough-and-tumble
life that could have inspired a dozen soap operas, battling drug addiction
and bad relationships while outrunning a variety of health and legal
problems.
Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles,
California on January 25, 1938; her mother was just 14 years old
at the time, and she never knew her father, though she would later
say she had reason to believe he was the well-known pool hustler
Minnesota Fats. James was raised by friends and relatives instead
of her mother through most of her childhood, and it was while she
was living with her grandparents that she began regularly attending
a Baptist church. James' voice made her a natural for the choir,
and despite her young age she became a soloist with the group, and
appeared with them on local radio broadcasts. At the age of 12,
after the death of her foster mother, James found herself living
with her mother in San Francisco, and with little adult supervision,
she began to slide into juvenile delinquency. But James' love of
music was also growing stronger, and with a pair of friends she
formed a singing group called the Creolettes. The girls attracted
the attention of famed bandleader Johnny Otis, and when he heard
their song "Roll with Me Henry" -- a racy answer song
to Hank Ballard's infamous "Work with Me Annie" -- he
arranged for them to sign with Modern Records, and the Creolettes
cut the tune under the name the Peaches (the new handle coming from
Etta's longtime nickname). "Roll with Me Henry," renamed
"The Wallflower," became a hit in 1955, though Georgia
Gibbs would score a bigger success with her cover version, much
to Etta's dismay. After charting with a second R&B hit, "Good
Rockin' Daddy," the Peaches broke up and James stepped out
on her own.
James' solo career was a slow starter, and she spent
several years cutting low-selling singles for Modern and touring
small clubs until 1960, when Leonard Chess signed her to a new record
deal. James would record for Chess Records and its subsidiary labels
Argo and Checker into the late '70s and, working with producers
Ralph Bass and Harvey Fuqua, she embraced a style that fused the
passion of R&B with the polish of jazz, and scored a number
of hits for the label, including "All I Could Do Was Cry,"
"My Dearest Darling," and "Trust in Me." While
James was enjoying a career resurgence, her personal life was not
faring as well; she began experimenting with drugs as a teenager,
and by the time she was 21 she was a heroin addict, and as the '60s
wore on she found it increasingly difficult to balance her habit
with her career, especially as she clashed with her producers at
Chess, fought to be paid her royalties, and dealt with a number
of abusive romantic relationships. James' career went into a slump
in the mid-'60s, but in 1967 she began recording with producer Rick
Hall at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and, adopting a tougher,
grittier style, she bounced back onto the R&B charts with the
tunes "Tell Mama" and "I'd Rather Go Blind."
|
|
In the early '70s, James had fallen
off the charts again, her addiction was raging, and she turned to
petty crime to support her habit. She entered rehab on a court order
in 1973, the same year she recorded a rock-oriented album, Only
a Fool, with producer Gabriel Mekler. Through most of the '70s,
a sober James got by touring small clubs and playing occasional
blues festivals, and she recorded for Chess with limited success,
despite the high quality of her work. In 1978, longtime fans the
Rolling Stones paid homage to James by inviting her to open some
shows for them on tour, and she signed with Warner Bros., cutting
the album Deep in the Night with producer Jerry Wexler. While the
album didn't sell well, it received enthusiastic reviews and reminded
serious blues and R&B fans that James was still a force to be
reckoned with. By her own account, James fell back into drug addiction
after becoming involved with a man with a habit, and she went back
to playing club dates when and where she could until she kicked
again thanks to a stay at the Betty Ford Center in 1988. That same
year, James signed with Island Records and cut a powerful comeback
album, Seven Year Itch, produced by Barry Beckett of the Muscle
Shoals Rhythm Section. The album sold respectably and James was
determined to keep her career on track, playing frequent live shows
and recording regularly, issuing Stickin' to My Guns in 1990 and
The Right Time in 1992.
In 1994, a year after she was inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, James signed to the Private Music
label, and recorded Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday, a tribute
to the great vocalist she had long cited as a key influence; the
album earned Etta her first Grammy Award. The relationship with
Private Music proved simpatico, and between 1995 and 2003 James
cut eight albums for the label, while also maintaining a busy touring
schedule. In 2003, James published an autobiography, Rage to Survive:
The Etta James Story, and in 2008 she was played onscreen by modern
R&B diva Beyoncé Knowles in Cadillac Records, a film
loosely based on the history of Chess Records. Knowles recorded
a faithful cover of "At Last" for the film's soundtrack,
and later performed the song at Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural ball;
several days later, James made headlines when during a concert she
said "I can't stand Beyoncé, she had no business up
there singing my song that I've been singing forever." (Later
the same week, James told The New York Times that the statement
was meant to be a joke -- "I didn't really mean anything...even
as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude"
-- but she was saddened that she hadn't been invited to perform
the song.)
In 2010, James was hospitalized with MRSA-related
infections, and it was revealed that she had received treatment
for dependence on painkillers and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's
disease, which her son claimed was the likely cause of her outbursts
regarding Knowles. James released The Dreamer, for Verve Forecast
in 2011. She claimed it was her final album of new material. Etta
James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia later that year, and
died on January 20, 2012 in Riverside, California at the age of
73. |
