Gloria Lynne, Dakota Staton and other female jazz vocal balladeers

I just listened to her debut this morning, great stuff, thanks!

PEGGY LEE

Capitol Record And Universal Music Enterprises
Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of

NORMA DELORIS EGSTROM FROM JAMESTOWN, NORTH DAKOTA

LONG-OUT-OF-PRINT FAN FAVORITE GETS DELUXE EDITION NOVEMBER 18
Features Seven Bonus Tracks Making Digital Debut

New Edition Of Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography Now Available

“100 Years Of Peggy Lee” GRAMMY Museum Exhibit Extended Through May 2023

With a title that pays tribute to her roots, Peggy Lee's introspective album includes such enduring classics as “A Song for You,” “Just for a Thrill,” "Superstar," “The More I See You," “I’ll Be Seeing You," and many other songs about love, loss, and longing. The 23-page booklet, annotated by Iván Santiago, features new interviews with Tom Catalano, Artie Butler, and Brian Panella and previously unseen photos from the 1972 recording session.

This spring saw the release of a new edition of Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography. First published in 1989, the 2022 version features her never-before-released book of poetry, Softly With Feeling; a new cover; an epilogue by jazz and music writer Will Friedwald; a comprehensive discography and recommended listening section compiled by archivist Iván Santiago; and a new foreword by Peggy’s granddaughter, Holly Foster Wells.

Following Lee’s 2020 centennial, the celebrations for this extraordinary jazz legend continue, including a GRAMMY® Museum exhibit, “100 Years of Peggy Lee,” which was recently extended until May 2023; a CBS Sunday Morning profile tracing “Peggy Lee and her cool power” back to her beginnings in North Dakota; and a recent Hollywood Bowl tribute to Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra with the Count Basie Orchestra, featuring special guests Billie Eilish, Debbie Harry, Dianne Reeves, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Seth MacFarlane, among others.

Norma Deloris Egstrom From Jamestown, North Dakota [CD; digital]

1. Love Song – (Lesley Duncan)
2. Razor (Love Me As I Am) – (Jack Schechtman)
3. When I Found You – (Mike Randall)
4. A Song For You – (Leon Russell)
5. It Takes Too Long To Learn To Live Alone – (Leon Carr, Robert Allen)
6. Superstar – (Leon Russell, Bonnie Bramlett)
7. Just For A Thrill – (Lil Hardin Armstrong, Don Raye)
8. Someone Who Cares – (Alex Harvey)
9. The More I See You – (Harry Warren, Mack Gordon)
10. I’ll Be Seeing You – (Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal)

Bonus Tracks:

11. It Changes – session outtake^ - (Robert Bernard Sherman, Richard Morton Sherman)
12. Pieces of Dreams – 45-single^ - (Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Michel Legrand)
13. When I Found You – alternate take^
14. A Song For You – alternate take^
15. Someone Who Cares – alternate take^
16. The More I See You – alternate take^
17. I’ll Be Seeing You – alternate take^

^making digital debut

Born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, she was christened Peggy Lee in 1937 by a local North Dakota DJ, Ken Kennedy. With her captivating voice and sultry style, Lee helped redefine what it meant to be a female singer and artist, breaking barriers, and blazing trails for generations of artists who have followed.

Coined “the female Frank Sinatra” by Tony Bennett, Lee did something few of her male counterparts attempted: she wrote songs. As one of the first contemporary singer-songwriters, Lee ranks among the most successful female singer-songwriters in the annals of American popular music. Over her remarkable seven-decade career, she wrote over 270 songs and recorded over 1,100 masters.

About Peggy Lee
One of the most important musical influences of the 20th century, Peggy Lee wrote over 270 songs, recorded over 1,100 masters, and had over 100 chart hits throughout her seven-decade career. As one of the world’s first female contemporary singer-songwriters, she co-wrote and sang many of her own hits, most notably “He’s A Tramp” for Disney’s Lady and the Tramp as well as “Mañana” and “It’s A Good Day.” She’s best known for hits “Why Don’t You Do Right?” “Fever,” “I’m A Woman,” and “Is That All There Is?” for which she won the GRAMMY® for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance. A 13-time GRAMMY® nominee, she received Lifetime Achievement Awards from NARAS, ASCAP, and Society of Singers, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Pete Kelly’s Blues. For more information about Peggy Lee, visit peggylee.com

Interesting choice of tracks

So over on the vocalese thread,RFI: Vocal jazz songform, I sidetracked into talk and links re the v. wordwise but non-vocalese Susannah McCorkle---but got back on track w recent mention of xpost McRae's vocalese Carmen Sings Monk----McC. is def worthy of this thread, and now I want to mention someone new to me, Carol Sloane, whose voice immediately grabbed via in her early 60s tracks, then gradually changed a bit with age, while continuing the same stylistic flight path, fast and slow, into a live set rec. 2019---she died this January, in her mid-80s---as heard in this doc from the ever-handy, frequently revelatory Afterglow:https://indianapublicmedia.org/afterglow/the-song-styling-of-carol-sloane.php

Oh yeah, they put the spotlight on xpost McCorkle too--some other artists eventually on here as well, but she gets a good amount of room, whole thing is 118 minutes:
https://indianapublicmedia.org/afterglow/susannah-mccorkle-haunted-heart.php

From Afterglow's wider-ranging sister show, Night Lights:

Dick and Kiz Harp were a husband-and-wife, piano-and-vocals duo who ran their own nightclub (converted from a warehouse and called "The 90th Floor," after a lesser-known Cole Porter song they performed) in Dallas, Texas at the end of the 1950s. They‘ve developed a cult following among jazz-vocal aficionados on the basis of two obscure LPs. The Harps, influenced by artists such as Sylvia Sims, Anita O‘Day, and Dick Marx‘s Chicago trio, came up with their own sound--a blend of cabaret, torch song, and Midwestern camp--riding strongly on Kiz Harp‘s magnetic stage presence and slightly hoarse, soulful voice (a listener described her as "Jeri Southern smoking two packs a day"). Their career ended suddenly and tragically in 1960. We‘ll hear music from both of their albums (available again at 90th Floor Records) and we‘ll talk with Bruce Collier, the founder and owner of 90th Floor Records, who recorded both Harp LPs.

From Night lights sister show, Afterglow:

This week, we’re highlighting some recordings that pianist Ellis Larkins had with various singers in the 1940s and 50s. Larkins would have turned 100 years old on May 15, 2023. He was the first African American to attend the prestigious music conservatory the Peabody Institute, and later went on to study at Juilliard. He became a fixture of the 1950s jazz scene in New York, and despite not recording with many singers over the course of his career, the few sessions he worked on are notable. Ahead, we’ll hear his work with Chris Connor, Mildred Bailey, Maxine Sullivan, and Ella Fitzgerald.

So it seems that John Hammond and Columbia did right by Aretha quality-wise, but inadvertently set her up to be clobbered by the resurgence and then some of kid pop-rock-r&b, in the wake of the Beatles and rise of Motown etc, with no mainstream label room for the older jazz vocal approach, until the 80s, say---reminding me of what happened to the somewhat prodgious Carol Sloane:

This week, we’re paying tribute to jazz singer and song stylist Carol Sloane, who passed away on January 23, 2023. Sloane was one of the last surviving singers from that golden age of the American Songbook in the mid 20th century. After recording a few albums for Columbia in the 1960s, Sloane remained out of the spotlight for several decades, before emerging as a mature and celebrated song interpreter in the 1980s. This hour, I’ll chronicle her career, from her early days to her late-career Renaissance, highlighting some notable recordings along the way.

https://indianapublicmedia.org/large-images/afterglow-images/carol-sloane-love-you-madly.jpg
The album "Love You Madly" was one of several albums Carol Sloane recorded for Contemporary Records in the late 1980s (Album Cover, Contemporary Records)

You think John Hammond and Columbia did right by Aretha quality-wise by limiting her to a traditional Jazz approach? I feel like she was better off quality wise when she left and joined Wexler and recorded at Muscle Shoals.

The Hammond-Columbia era Aretha tracks *that I've heard* sound good-faith to me, and rock etc was mostly trade winds in the early 60s, aside from the girl group trendette and a few others---Columbia geezers just didn't know what was around the corner, or at least that it would blow up so big, with lasting sea change impact.

Anyway, she sounds awesome on the Afterglow selection, and I must hear more.