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Blue Moon (Carmen McRae Album)
''Blue Moon'' is an album by jazz singer Carmen McRae, released on Decca Records in 1956. Content Allmusic critic Scott Yanow gave the album four out of five stars, stating: Track listing ;Side 1 # "Blue Moon (1934 song), Blue Moon" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) - 2:35 # "My Foolish Heart (song), My Foolish Heart" (Victor Young, Ned Washington) - 3:12 # "I Was Doing All Right" (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) - 2:49 # "Summer Is Gone" (Don Costa) - 3:27 # "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" (Irving Berlin) - 2:24 # "Nowhere" (Joe Mooney (musician), Joe Mooney) - 2:45 ;Side 2 #"Until the Real Thing Comes Along (Mann Holiner, Alberta Nichols, Saul Chaplin, Sammy Cahn, L.E. Freeman) - 3:23 #"Lush Life (jazz song), Lush Life (Billy Strayhorn) - 3:37 #"Even If It Breaks My Heart" (Dick Carter, C. Henry Woods) - 2:35 #"Laughing Boy" (Jack Segal) - 3:01 #"Lilacs in the Rain" (Peter DeRose, Mitchell Parish) - 2:52 #"All This Could Lead to Love" (Mundell Lowe, Walter Bishop, Sr.) - 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen McRae
Carmen Mercedes McRae (April 8, 1920 – November 10, 1994) was an American jazz singer. She is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century and is remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of lyrics. Early life and education McRae was born in Harlem, New York City, United States. Her father, Osmond, and mother, Evadne (Gayle) McRae, were immigrants from Jamaica. She began studying piano when she was eight, and the music of jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington filled her home. When she was 17 years old, she met singer Billie Holiday. As a teenager McRae came to the attention of Teddy Wilson and his wife, the composer Irene Kitchings. One of McRae's early songs, "Dream of Life", was, through their influence, recorded in 1939 by Wilson’s long-time collaborator Billie Holiday.Brian Berger"Carmen McRae" HiLobrow, April 8, 2015. McRae considered Holiday to be her primary influence. Early career In her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Young
Albert Victor Young (August 8, 1899– November 10, 1956)"Victor Young, Composer, Dies of Heart Attack", ''Oakland Tribune'', November 12, 1956. was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. Biography Young is commonly said to have been born in Chicago on August 8, 1900, but according to Census data and his birth certificate, his birth year is 1899. His grave marker shows his birth year as 1901. He was born into a very musical Jewish family, his father being a tenor with Joseph Sheehan's touring opera company. After his mother died, his father abandoned the family. The young Victor, who had begun playing violin at the age of six, and was sent to Poland when he was ten to stay with his grandfather and study at Warsaw Imperial Conservatory (his teacher was Polish composer Roman Statkowski), achieving the Diploma of Merit. He studied the piano with Isidor Philipp of the Paris Conservatory. While still a teenager he embarked on a career as a concert violinist with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Segal
Jack Segal (October 19, 1918 – February 10, 2005) was a pianist and composer of popular American songs, known for writing the lyrics to '' Scarlet Ribbons''. His composition '' May I Come In?'' was the title track for a Blossom Dearie album. Other songs he authored or co-authored are ''When Sunny Gets Blue'', ''That's the Kind of Girl I Dream Of'', ''I Keep Going Back to Joe's'' (with Marvin Fisher), ''A Boy from Texas, a Girl from Tennessee'' (with John Benson Brooks & Joseph Allan McCarthy), ''After Me'' (with Blossom Dearie) and ''When Joanna Loved Me'' (with Robert Wells). It has been estimated that his songs have helped sell 65 million records. Lyrics for the ballad that was perhaps Segal's greatest hit, Scarlet Ribbons (with music composed by Evelyn Danzig Levine), were written in just 15 minutes in 1949, but the song languished until Segal presented it to Harry Belafonte five years later. Belafonte's recording was responsible for making the song a hit. At least 30 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Strayhorn
William Thomas Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, who collaborated with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington for nearly three decades. His compositions include " Take the 'A' Train", " Chelsea Bridge", "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing", and " Lush Life". Early life Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio, United States. His family soon moved to the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his mother's family came from Hillsborough, North Carolina, and she sent him there to protect him from his father's drunken sprees. Strayhorn spent many months of his childhood at his grandparents' house in Hillsborough. In an interview, Strayhorn said that his grandmother was his primary influence during the first ten years of his life. He became interested in music while living with her, playing hymns on her piano, and playing records on her Victrola record player. Return to Pittsburgh and meeting Ellingto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lush Life (jazz Song)
"Lush Life" is a jazz standard that was written by Billy Strayhorn from 1933 to 1936. It was performed publicly for the first time by Strayhorn and vocalist Kay Davis with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on November 13, 1948. Background The lyric describes the author's weariness of the night life after a failed romance, wasting time with "jazz and cocktails" at "come-what-may places" and in the company of girls with "sad and sullen gray faces/with ''distingué'' traces". Strayhorn was a teenager when he wrote most of the song, which was to become his signature composition (along with "Take the 'A' Train"). The song was written in the key of D-flat major. The melody is over relatively complex chord changes, compared with many jazz standards, with chromatic movement and modulations that evoke a dreamlike state and the dissolute spirit characteristic of the "lush life." During a 1949 interview, Strayhorn spoke of the song’s genesis: “’Lush Life’ wasn’t th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sammy Cahn
Samuel Cohen (June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993), known professionally as Sammy Cahn, was an American lyricist, songwriter, and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area. He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the singer's tenure at Capitol Records, but also enjoyed hits with Dean Martin, Doris Day and many others. He played the piano and violin, and won an Oscar four times for his songs, including the popular hit " Three Coins in the Fountain". Among his most enduring songs is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", cowritten with Jule Styne in 1945. Life and career Cahn was born Samuel Cohen in the Lower East Side of New York City, the only son (he had four sisters) of Abraham and Elka Reiss Cohen, who were Jewish immigrants from Galicia, then ruled by Austria-Hungary. His sisters, Sadye, Pearl, Flo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saul Chaplin
Saul Chaplin (February 19, 1912 – November 15, 1997) was an American composer and musical director. He was born Saul Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York. He had worked on stage, screen and television since the days of Tin Pan Alley. In film, he won three Oscars for collaborating on the scores and orchestrations of ''An American in Paris'' (1951), ''Seven Brides for Seven Brothers'' ( 1954) and ''West Side Story'' ( 1961). Biography Born to a Jewish family, Chaplin graduated with a B.A. in accounting from New York University's School of Commerce. After school, Chaplin joined the ASCAP and started out penning tunes for the theatre, vaudeville and for New York's famous songwriting district, Tin Pan Alley. While in New York, Chaplin teamed with Sammy Cahn to compose original songs for Vitaphone movie shorts, filmed in Brooklyn by Warner Brothers. During this period the team was sometimes billed only by surname ("Cahn and Chaplin"), in the manner of Rodgers and Hart or Gilbert and S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Until The Real Thing Comes Along
"(It Will Have to Do) Until the Real Thing Comes Along" is a popular song first published in 1936. Background In 1931, Alberta Nichols wrote the music and Mann Holiner wrote the words for a song titled "Till the Real Thing Comes Along" which was featured in a Broadway revue titled ''Rhapsody in Black''. The review, produced by Lew Leslie, was similar to the famous '' Blackbirds'' reviews of the late 1920s and 1930s, and featured Ethel Waters, who introduced "Till the Real Thing Comes Along". The song was not a hit in its original incarnation, though a sheet music edition was published by Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. in 1931. In 1936, the song was substantially rewritten by composer Saul Chaplin, lyricist Sammy Cahn, and saxophonist L.E. Freeman. A completely new verse replaced the original verse, a new melody replaced the original melody of the refrain, and a mostly new set of lyrics replaced the original lyric of the refrain. What was retained from the 1931 composition was the rec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joe Mooney (musician)
Joe Mooney (March 14, 1911 – May 12, 1975) was an American jazz and pop accordionist, organist, and vocalist. Biography Mooney was born in Paterson, New Jersey, United States. He went blind when he was around 10 years of age. Mooney's first job, at age 12, was playing the piano for requests called in to a local radio station. He and his brother, Dan, played together on radio broadcasts in the late 1920s, and recorded between 1929 and 1931 as the Sunshine Boys and the Melotone Boys; both sang while Joe accompanied on piano. They continued performing together on WLW in Cincinnati until 1936, after which time Dan Mooney left the music industry. In 1937, Mooney began working as a pianist and arranger for Frank Dailey, a role he reprised with Buddy Rogers in 1938. Through the early 1940s he arranged for Paul Whiteman, Vincent Lopez, Larry Clinton,Simon, George T. (1981).''Simon Says, 4th Edition''. Schirmer Books. p. 129 Les Brown, and The Modernaires. He put together ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; yi, ישראל ביילין; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-American composer, songwriter and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook. Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights,Starr, Larry and Waterman, Christopher, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, Oxford University Press, 2009, pg. 64 and had his first major international hit, " Alexander's Ragtime Band", in 1911. He also was an owner of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. For much of his career Berlin could not read sheet music, and was such a limited piano player that he could only play in the key of F-sharp; he used his custom piano equipped with a transposing lever when he needed to play in keys other than F-sharp. "Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Costa
Dominick P. "Don" Costa (June 10, 1925 – January 19, 1983) was an American conductor and record producer. He discovered singer Paul Anka and worked on several hit albums by Frank Sinatra, including ''Sinatra and Strings'' and '' My Way''. Career Costa was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to an Italian American family. As a child, he took a keen interest in learning the guitar, and he became a member of the CBS Radio Orchestra by the time he was in his teens. In the late 1940s, Costa moved to New York City to further his career by becoming a session musician. He played guitar with Bucky Pizzarelli on Vaughn Monroe's hit record " Ghost Riders in the Sky". It was around this time that Costa started experimenting with combinations of instruments, producing musical arrangements, and selling them to big bands. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé invited Costa to write vocal backgrounds for their recordings. He agreed and thus began an association that led to their join ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin (born Israel Gershovitz; December 6, 1896 – August 17, 1983) was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs in the English language of the 20th century. With George, he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as " I Got Rhythm", " Embraceable You", " The Man I Love" and " Someone to Watch Over Me". He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George's opera ''Porgy and Bess''. The success the Gershwin brothers had with their collaborative works has often overshadowed the creative role that Ira played. His mastery of songwriting continued after George's early death in 1937. Ira wrote additional hit songs with composers Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, Harry Warren and Harold Arlen. His critically acclaimed 1959 book ''Lyrics on Several Occasions'', an amalgam of autobiography and annotated anthology, is an important source for studyin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
