#norman granz

[arterrorist]

Whole lotta Pablo Records

This last label created by Norman Granz is a goldmine for highest quality mainstream jazz ✨

[odk-2]

Harry Edison - Pussy Willow (1958) Harry Edison from: "The Swinger" (LP) "The Swinger: 1958 Archive" (2009 CD Reissue)

Jazz

JukeHostUK (left click = play) (320kbps)

Personnel: Harry 'Sweets' Edison: Trumpet Jimmy Forrest: Tenor Saxophone Jimmy Jones: Piano Freddie Green: Guitar Joe Benjamin: Bass Charlie Persip: Drums

Produced by Norman Granz

Recorded: @ The Nola Recording Studios in New York City, New York USA on September 18, 1958

Album Released: 1959

Verve Records

[strathshepard]

The Flip Phillips Quartet   (1950, Mercury 25023, 10" LP; design by David Stone Martin)

[famousdeaths]

Norman Granz was an American jazz record producer and concert promoter. He founded the record labels Clef, Norgran, Down Home, Verve, and Pablo. Granz was ackno...

Link: Norman Granz

[jazzdailyblog]

Charlie Shavers: A Trumpet Virtuoso and Jazz Pioneer

Introduction: Charlie Shavers was an extraordinary trumpeter whose remarkable skill, creativity, and versatility made him a significant figure in the history of jazz. Throughout his career, Shavers played with some of the most influential bands and musicians of his time, leaving an indelible mark on the jazz world. This blog post delves into Shavers’ life, his contributions to jazz, and his…

[missellafitz]

😒 Norman Granz.

We could've had an Ella and Frank album, but he let his ego squash it. I'm not gonna argue that Sinatra couldn't be an asshole, but Norman was one too. Looks like he met his match in Frank.

On the race thing, I will say this. Ella and Basie were born and raised in the United States and knew full well when someone was racist. They were not some children who couldn't defend themselves or who were ignorant to abuse. That Ella looked forward to working with Frank and that Basie and Frank collaborated so often shows that while Frank may have been inappropriate with his humor, he wasn't racist.

[princessnamora]

How Marilyn Monroe changed Ella Fitzgerald’s life

If asked “Who played an important role in the musical career of Ella Fitzgerald?” you might respond with names like Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Norman Granz, and Dizzy Gillespie.

The name Marilyn Monroe (who passed away 50 years ago this August), however, might not come to mind.

While touring in the ’50s under the management of Norman Granz, Ella, like many African-American musicians at the time, faced significant adversity because of her race, especially in the Jim Crow states. Granz was a huge proponent of civil rights, and insisted that all of his musicians be treated equally at hotels and venues, regardless of race.

Despite his efforts, there were many roadblocks and hurdles put in to place, especially for some of the more popular African-American artists. Here is one story of Ella’s struggles (as written in chicagojazz.com):

Once, while in Dallas touring for the Philharmonic, a police squad irritated by Norman’s principles barged backstage to hassle the performers. They came into Ella’s dressing room, where band members Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were shooting dice, and arrested everyone. “They took us down,” Ella later recalled, “and then when we got there, they had the nerve to ask for an autograph.”

Across the country, black musicians, regardless of popularity, were often limited to small nightclubs, having to enter through the back of the house. Similar treatment was common at restaurants and hotels.

Enter Marilyn Monroe

During the ’50s, one of the most popular venues was Mocambo in Hollywood. Frank Sinatra made his Los Angeles debut at Mocambo in 1943, and it was frequented by the likes of Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Lana Turner.

Ella Fitzgerald was not allowed to play at Mocambo because of her race. Then, one of Ella’s biggest fans made a telephone call that quite possibly changed the path of her career for good. Here, Ella tells the story of how Marilyn Monroe changed her life:

“I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt … she personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.”

Learning from Ella

Ella had an influence on Marilyn as well. Monroe’s singing had a tendency to be overshadowed by dress-lifting gusts of wind and the flirtatious “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” not to mentions her movies and marriage to Joe DiMaggio. But years prior to the Mocambo phone call, Monroe was studying the recordings of Ella.

In fact, it was rumored that a vocal coach of Monroe instructed her to purchase Fitzgerald’s recordings of Gershwin music, and listen to it 100 times in a row.

Continued study of Ella actually turned Marilyn into a relatively solid singer for about a decade, but again became overlooked as her famous birthday tribute song to JFK in 1962 ends up being the vocal performance that is widely remembered.

Source: How Marilyn Monroe changed Ella Fitzgerald’s life – Groove Notes by KNKX

@hotvintagepoll

[kvetchlandia]

Esther Bubley Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown at a Charlie Parker/Norman Granz Jam Session, Los Angeles 1952

[casadabiqueira]

Charlie Parker, Norman Granz, Jam Session, LA

Esther Bubley, 1952

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“Tenderly”

70 years ago today, December 29th, 1953, the brilliant piano man Art Tatum had an impressive recording session.

Tatum, who was universally seen as a genius pianist, never seemed to have a successful career commercially. He always worked, and is cited by most every other piano player of the era as being a teacher and an inspiration. But he just never had a career commensurate with that stature.

Tatum also had a terribly unhealthy lifestyle, drinking vast quantities of beer while only exercising enough to get himself from one club to the next. By 1953, Tatum’s kidneys had started to fail.

But the smart impresario producer Norman Granz decided to do right by Tatum, by at least immortalizing him forever on record. He signed Tatum to one of his labels, Clef Records, and on December 29th, 1953, booked Tatum a studio, open-endedly, put a few cases of Pabst on ice, and told Tatum he wanted to record his entire repertoire… or really just whatever the heck Tatum felt like putting down. Tatum obliged with recording an astonishing sixty-nine acceptable tracks - by midday.

One of the tracks was this one, “Tenderly”, which was composed as a waltz by Walter Gross, a pianist and a conductor at CBS Radio in the 30s and 40s. Years later, the lyricist Jack Laurence added the lyrics. But Gross always said the song was meant as “pianistic” and that Tatum’s performance of it was/is the ultimate interpretation ever.

This is classic Art Tatum, who really may indeed “own” “Tenderly”…

The album Granz made out of this day of tracks recorded, was titled “Tenderly”… and the whole album is sublime, all standards… each one outdoing the last… On the other tracks, Granz added in sidefolk - some drums and bass… But “Tenderly” needed none…

[Mary Elaine LeBey]

[blackfolksintime]

Jammin' the Blues is a 1944 American short film made by Gjon Mili and Norman Granz in which a number of prominent jazz musicians re-create the jam-session atmosphere of nightclubs and after-hours spots. It features Lester Young, Red Callender, Harry Edison, Marlowe Morris, Sid Catlett, Barney Kessel, Jo Jones, John Simmons, Illinois Jacquet, Marie Bryant and Archie Savage. (part 2)

[jazzandother-blog]

ANITA O'DAY, ANITA (1956)

LIsten ´´ANITA´´ here

The Jezebel Who Inaugurated Verve

The Backstory When L.A.-born jazz impresario Norman Granz announced plans to start a new pop-oriented label named Verve on Christmas Eve of 1955, the buzz was all about the artist that Granz had signed before the announcement. She was a respected female jazz singer whom Granz had lured away from Decca Records where her career had plateaued. In February of 1956, Granz took out a full-page ad in Billboard proclaiming: 'VERVE RECORDS: WE GOT ELLA!'

Granz hired Buddy Bregman, a 24-year-old wunderkind arranger from Chicago, to oversee Verve's recording sessions. Bregman found only one problem: Other than Ella Fitzgerald, who had yet to record anything for the label, they had no other artists. Granz suggested Bregman tap the roster of artists at his two money-losing jazz labels, Clef and Norgran. "I found no one who was pure enough to do pop, so I looked for crossovers—obviously vocalists", Bregman remembered in 2011. "I went over the jazz artists on the jazz labels and I saw a lady who had gone to my high school and had an infamous reputation, Anita O'Day".

Anita O'Day was one of the least likely choices for Verve's first official LP. She was a relic of the Big Band days who had made her name singing with Gene Krupa's orchestra. But O'Day did not think of herself as a jazz singer; she thought of her voice as an instrument equal with any other, even insisting on wearing the same uniforms as the all-male bands she sang with. ("Anita O'Day is a woman", one jazz writer sniffed, "but for many years, Anita was unwilling to admit it".) She had come up hardscrabble during the Great Depression and had an attendant personality: direct, unvarnished, and often baffling. She held her own with the bands she sang with when it came to musical prowess—and wild behavior (she had been drinking in Windy City saloons since she was sixteen). Her sense of timing and phrasing was innate—she could literally replace any instrument in a brass line—and her singing soon took on the individualistic qualities of bebop while she developed a widely publicized heroin addiction. It earned her the nickname she would despise: "The Jezebel of Jazz".

By the early 1950s, O'Day had amassed long rap sheet and was eventually thrown into Terminal Island, where she suffered a nervous breakdown. Her career wrecked, she was playing strip dives in El Segundo and living with her drummer John Poole in Long Beach when Bregman went to see her at a club on Hollywood Boulevard. He was not impressed. "I hated her singing... but she did a whole set with her back to the audience. I thought, wow, that is so weird. I never even thought it had anything to do with drugs". Bregman, who did not smoke or drink, spent an awkward night with O'Day and Poole trying to work out a pop repertoire with such an out-of-the-box singer. "Her piano keys had no white ivory on them and when we rehearsed 'Honeysuckle Rose,' she asked if I could play more in the cracks. That stopped me. So I actually moved my fingers a little to the left and she nodded like 'That's what I meant".

Bregman was intrigued, but Granz was dubious. "She never sold over 3,000 albums in her life," he cautioned. "If you do better than that, it's a miracle". Bregman thought about it and decided, "Okay, I'll take a chance on O'Day". As O'Day herself wrote in her graphically honest 1981 autobiography High Times Hard Times, "Those seven words put me back in the business".

Why You Should Listen Anita (Verve #2000), recorded in three days in December 1955 in the old Capitol Studios building on Melrose Avenue, remains a masterpiece of self-reinvention. The cover, a murky and melancholy hand-tinted picture of O'Day perched on a rock, head resting in the crook of a tree, says it all: A matured woman had emerged from oblivion and was reintroducing herself, scars and all. From the crisp opening salvo of Bregman's horn section on Cole Porter's "You're The Top" to the near-classical leanings of the 1931 ballad "Beautiful Love", O'Day's grainy, bittersweet delivery is a perfect foil for Bregman's lush, buttery arrangements. L.A. studio vets like bassist Joe Mondragon, harpist Corky Hale and guitarist Barney Kessel round out the stellar cast of players.

The Aftermath According to Bregman, Anita sold 385,000 copies in the first six months after its release. "As news about Anita, spread, everybody started welcoming me back", O'Day remembered. "The Los Angeles disc jockeys promoted Anita as the album of the week. Variety, until then not one of my big boosters, was converted. Cash Box put my picture on the cover and Metronome welcomed me back in an editorial". The New York Daily News called her "perhaps the most high-styled jazz singer in action today". For his part, Bregman later crowed that the album "made me a star".

O'Day's Verve years, although plagued by her continuing addictions, were arguably her finest hour. She revealed a talent for finding quirky or obscure material on subsequent albums like Pick Yourself Up (also with Bregman), Travelin' Light and All the Sad Young Men. (The latter is practically a concept album of overlooked composers). In 1958, despite being "high as a kite" (her words), O'Day knocked the socks off of a sleepy afternoon crowd at the Newport Jazz Festival with her deconstruction of the standards "Tea for Two" and "Sweet Georgia Brown". Her appearance was filmed for the 1960 documentary Jazz on A Summer's Day, and the release of that film further completed her triumphant return and achievement of a new respectability as a unique jazz stylist.

Anita O'Day died in Los Angeles on November 23, 2006. Her memorial was at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery chapel, where Bregman recalled: "Her manager at the end of the service passed the CD out to all and said: This was her favorite album she ever made´´.

Source: Los Angeles magazine / writer Matthew Duersten

[palilalia]

PAL-079 Bill Orcutt LP

"How to Rescue Things"

Charlie Parker's first album with a string section landed in 1950, ten years after his debut recordings. Although the overtly lush arrangements of Charlie Parker with Strings were Parker's idea, the record must've been something of a relief to producer Norman Granz, especially when the sides went on to become Bird's best- seller, by a long shot. The record (and its follow-up) sparked something of a jazz-strings virus, infecting Nina Simone, Paul Desmond, Clifford Brown, and (later) Miles and Trane. And while the latter entries in that list were clearly bending their arrangements into space-age forms (and the arrangers -- Gil Evans, Eric Dolphy -- were becoming much hipper), these ubiquitous strings albums established a jazz cliché of sorts. They were a shot for the charts at worst, an attempted reinvigoration of tired easy- listening ear candy at best.

How to Rescue Things, landing 15 years into Bill Orcutt's “rediscovery” years, marks a somewhat tardy entry into the string- sweetening sweepstakes. In a post-chart, post-irony world, no one is going to mistake this as a bid for mainstream ears — nor are too many pop-gobblers going to paste this into their “Chillax” playlist. With loops of dulcet, birdsong choruses, syrupy strings, and plucked harps clipped from an RCA easy-listening disc, the zombie strings conjure not red leather couches, cotton slankets, and yuzu martinis, but rather a clockwork mortuary, an undead Who-ville and a cigarette butt drowned in bottom-shelf scotch. In contrast to Orcutt's previous reanimation of yesterday's hit parade,

How to Rescue Things instead takes as its foundation the oily underbelly of the American songbook, the relentless gears that churn melody into newly consumable and marketable forms — simultaneously ersatz, soothing, and funereal.

It's easy to use saccharine, easy-listening settings to deconstruct the romanticism of the past. Yet How to Rescue Things is not an ironic record. True to its title, the transparently corny strings serve not as a meditation on cultural vacuity, but as an attempt to rehabilitate the clichés of the past, “rescuing” them as improvisational grist for new melodic content. They serve as a harmonic substrate for some of Orcutt's most complex playing, and free him to explore the solo-as-such without the need to imply an underlying tune (unlike Orcutt's previous acoustic explorations of nostalgic song).

Orcutt's razor-sharp Fender slices through the satiny settings in angular and unexpected ways, particularly in the final tracks “Requiem in Dust” and “The Wild Psalms,” where his double picking swerves into almost Sharrock-ian territory. But ultimately, true to the Parker records that started this whole trope in the first place, Orcutt sticks to a complex yet tonal path throughout, imbuing tracks like “Not Reconciled” (with its crooned “Oh my god” and a cheeky “amen” tacked to the end) with wide-eyed romantic optimism that goes down strange in a deathbed ballad. But ultimately, it's not strange at all. Rather, this palliative track celebrates a necessary, death-defying joy in the face of darkness — whether genuine or performative is unimportant. And what's more genuinely American than whistling past the graveyard? Just ask Judy Garland. — TOM CARTER

Sanctuary 3:42

Not Reconciled 5:33

How to Rescue Things 4:56

Old Hamlet 3:24

Pylon Pylon! 3:21

Requiem in Dust 3:44

The Wild Psalms 5:15

[jazzdailyblog]

Hank Jones: A Lifetime of Jazz Excellence

Introduction: Hank Jones, born one hundred and six years ago today on July 31, 1918, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a prolific American jazz pianist and bandleader whose career spanned over seven decades. Known for his elegant playing style, impeccable technique, and versatility, Jones left an indelible mark on the world of jazz. This blog post delves into his life, career, and legacy,…

[missellafitz]

“Ella worked with Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nelson Riddle,” Morris Rosman said, but never recorded with Frank Sinatra because at the time it wasn’t approved for a black and white singer to do a duet."

First and foremost, they recorded the duet "Necessity" in 1954.

Second, did they plan to record romantic songs? I think "Going Out of My Head" is quite romantic, and we know they were planning to put that song on their album in 1967.

Either way, this statement doesn't seem right to me, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that Ella said this as some kind of diversion from the truth (my theory being that Norman hated Frank because he was in love with Ella but knew Frank and Ella had been having an affair for a long while).

*Also (based on the tag), she recorded several duets with Bing Crosby in the 40s and 50s. So, yeah, this makes no sense (and I love it!!!)

*Another also, on the 1958 episode of The Frank Sinatra Show, where Ella guest starred he literally said (which was scripted) "I sure am a big fan of yours, and I don't know, maybe, why don't we make an album together?" I will say this for Sinatra. The man would've moved heaven and earth to make the album with her if it was discouraged for racial reasons. He was a wonderful contrarian in that way. And let's not forget that his one regret of his career was not recording an album with Ella. Beyond the Norman and Frank feud, apparently, Capitol and Reprise never could come to an agreement in terms of recording times for contractual reasons.

From: https://www.circlingthenews.com/palisadian-morris-rosman-recounts-the-life-of-a-remarkable-woman-ella-fitzgerald/