Ella Fitzgerald has been a part of my life for the last 20 years or so. At one stage I listened to her every day, and wanted to name my third child Ella. Unfortunately my husband grew up with a neighbour of that name (‘the overbearing Dutch woman” as he called her) so Aimee got Simone as a middle name, after my other love, Nina Simone.
Nina Simone at piano http://www.ninasimone.com/
There were so many wonderful female jazz singers in the 50s, many of them black, with their singing beginning in church. I have only recently discovered Billie Holliday, who had a terrible childhood and didn’t start singing until she was a teenager. I also love Rosemary Clooney, the white 50s housewife of jazz, who had to do ‘cute’ songs as part of her contract. She may not have liked them, but my kids do – we dance around to ‘Come over to my house ’ while doing the dishes.
Jazz always seems such a male centred form of music, but there were at least 50 female jazz singers on the American scene in the fifties. Australia did not have many female jazz musicians or singers, but there were some. Georgia Lee (Aunty Dulcie Pitt), was Australia's first indigenous (her father was of Jamaican descent and her mother was Indian, Australian Aboriginal, Islander and Scottish) jazz singer and won acclaim in London in the 1950s. As a teenager, Ms Lee formed the Harmony Sisters with two sisters and brother Wally on guitar, and they performed around where they lived Cairns.
When war broke out, she packed parachutes for the US forces and performed for them around Queensland. Their enthusiasm for jazz and blues led her to take it up and after the war she moved to Sydney to perform in clubs and changed her name. As well as performing in London in the 1950s, with the Geraldo Dance Band, back home she toured with Nat King Cole and his trio in the late '50s. She also sang with the Graeme Bell Jazz Band and appeared on television's Bandstand and In Melbourne Tonight. Cairns is an eight hour drive north of where I live in Mackay, and in the 50s would have been a small isolated town. This makes her success all the more amazing to me.
Last night my husband surprised me with tickets to see Jazz Cigarette, a three piece jazz ensemble with singer Ali McGregor. They were the opening line up for Mackay’s Festival of Arts that runs for the next two weeks.
Wow! ! She sang favourites from Ella, Nina and Billie, and gave her own spin to Justin Timberlake and Brittany Spears. My two eldest daughters thought that ‘Oops, I did it again’ was just fabulous, and my husband loved ‘Sweet Dreams’, an 80s favourite of ours by Annie Lennox. My favourite was probably ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’’, which I last saw sang by Frank Sinatra in Pal Joey. See the Jazz Cigarette version here.
Of course we had to buy Ali’s CD, which she kindly signed for us. At last we have a CD that we all love to listen to! Australia’s best trumpet player, James Morrison, also features on two of the tracks on the CD. Jazz Cigarette is going back to Melbourne for next week, and then LA and then the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. See them if you can and have a fabulous 50s day!
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