Beryl Booker

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Beryl Booker (born June 7, 1922 in Philadelphia , † September 30, 1978 in Berkeley , California ) was an American jazz pianist and composer. She was also one of the great neglected jazz pianists of her day and a real individualist, although she took influences from Erroll Garner's playing.

Booker was a self-taught pianist . She worked since 1946 for several years with Slam Stewart's Trio and then occasionally until 1951. Beryl Booker was Dinah Washington's companion in 1952 and again in 1959. In 1952 she played with her own band in Birdland . Here played Don Elliott , Chuck Wayne , Clyde Lombardi and Connie Kay with. Recordings in which Miles Davis participated have survived. In 1953, Leonard Feather helped her to form her own trio with Elaine Leighton on drums and Bonnie Wetzel on bass. They toured Europe as the widely acclaimed opening act for a show "Jazz Club USA" with Billie Holiday . On Lady Love (1954) she accompanies Billie Holiday (alternating with Sonny Clark , with Jimmy Raney and Red Norvo , live in Cologne on January 22, 1954), with whom she also toured in Europe, e.g. B. in Basel on February 4, 1954. Your piano playing contains modern bop elements and is in part very similar to Bud Powell's . Your band soon broke up. Since 1959, no one has heard from her at first. In the 1970s she played with small combos and also recorded again.

Discography

  • Girl Met a Piano (1952) (on EmArcy Records)
  • Terry Pollard / Beryl Booker: Cats vs Chicks: A Jazz Battle of the Sexes (1954) (MGM E-255) (the Pollard septet is juxtaposed with Clark Terry's septet and Lucky Thompson , organized by Leonard Feather )
  • Beryl Booker Trio (1954) (on Discovery Records)
  • Don Byas with Beryl Booker (1954) (on Discovery Records)
  • The Beryl Booker Trio (1954) (on Cadence Records)
  • The Women, Classic Female Jazz Artists 1939–1952 , Bluebird, 1990, two pieces by her in a compilation by Leonard Feather.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schenker, Anatol. Chronological Classics: 1946-1952. Liner notes; April 1952 in Birdland, New York
  2. ^ Liner Notes by Leonard Feather on The Women, Classic Female Jazz Artists 1939–1952
  3. ↑ Linda Dahl. Stormy Weather. The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. London 1984, p. 76
personal data
SURNAME Booker, Beryl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz pianist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1978
Place of death Berkeley , California