Adele Girard
Beatrice Adele Girard (* 25. June 1913 , after marrying Adele Girard Marsala ; † 7. September 1993 in Denver , Colorado ) was an American jazz - harpist and pianist of Swing .
Live and act
Girard, daughter of an opera singer and a violinist who worked as concertmaster for Victor Herbert , received classical harp lessons. She initially played the piano in hotels and sang in Harry Sosnik's orchestra in Chicago in 1933 . There she began to appear as a harpist in 1934. This made her one of the first in jazz - Casper Reardon anticipated her a bit around 1936 - and at that time a "Novelty" number that was supposed to help the band stand out from the crowd. For a while she also tried her hand at small roles in Hollywood as a film actress, in one of the films her "Harp Boogie" was recorded.
She played with Frankie Trumbauer and Jack Teagarden (in his "The three T's", where she replaced Reardon on the harp) for example in the club (and steak restaurant) "Hickory House" on 52nd Street in New York, where she also played from 1937 in the band of Joe Marsala , whom she married in the same year. They had a big band together until about 1948 and also performed together in clubs at the end of the 1960s, most recently in 1970 at “Donte” in Hollywood. In the 1960s she also worked as a pianist and in music theaters and was temporarily employed as an instructor in the theater faculty of the University of Southern California . Even after Marsala's death in 1978 she performed and in 1992 she recorded a CD with "Arbors" with clarinetist Bobby Gordon , a student of Marsala.
literature
- Linda Dahl, Stormy Weather. The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. Quartet Books. London 1984. ISBN 0-7043-2477-6
Web links
- Atteberry "Adele Girard and Joe Marsala- Sweethearts of Swing", Mississippi Rag 1996, interview
- Scott Yanow in the All Music Guide
- Bigband Database on Marsala and Girard
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Girard, Adele |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Girard, Beatrice Adele (maiden name); Marsala, Adele Girard (married name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American jazz harpist and swing pianist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 25, 1913 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 7th September 1993 |
| Place of death | Denver , Colorado |