Blossom Dearie

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Blossom Margrethe Dearie (born April 28, 1924 in East Durham , New York , † February 7, 2009 in Greenwich Village , New York City ) was an American jazz singer and pianist .

Live and act

As a child, she first learned to play the classical piano and only turned to jazz as a teenager. After graduating from high school , Dearie moved to New York City, where she found her musical home and which remained her preferred city despite several stays abroad.

In the 1940s she sang there in several jazz bands (for example the Blue Flames and the Blue Reys ) before starting her solo career. In 1952 she moved to Paris , where she founded the band Blue Stars , with whom she recorded tracks in English and French and which later became the Swingle Singers . In 1954 she achieved a hit in France with a French interpretation of the title Lullaby of Birdland . In 1956 she returned to the United States and received a recording contract with Verve Records . Among other things, she recorded an album with songs by Betty Comden and Adolph Green .

In the 50s and 60s she made numerous jazz albums, some together with her husband, the flautist and tenorist Bobby Jaspar (died 1963). Her high, girlish voice was typical of her music, a style that she consistently cultivated. In 1964 she recorded her best-known album May I come in . In addition to her studio productions, she performed regularly in New York nightclubs. 1966 followed appearances in the London club of Ronnie Scott and on television.

In the 1970s, Blossom Dearie's popularity declined. To counteract this, she founded her music label Daffodil in 1974 , on which she continued to produce albums and compilations until the 1980s . In addition, she continued to appear in variety theaters in New York, since 2003, for example, regularly in Danny's Skylight Room until it closed its doors in 2006.

Rolling Stone magazine selected her album Once Upon a Summer-Time… from 1959 in its list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums at number 64.

Discographic notes

  • Blossom Dearie Sings
  • From The Meticulous to the Sublime
  • My New Celebrity Is You
  • Winchester In Apple Blossom Time
  • Needlepoint Magic
  • Simply Vol. 6
  • Positively Vol. 7
  • Et Tu Bruce
  • Chez Wahlberg
  • May I Come In?
  • Songs Of Chelsea
  • Tweedledum & Tweedledee
  • Christmas Spice So Very Nice
  • Our Favorite Songs
  • Blossom's Planet
  • Sweet Blossom Dearie
  • That's Just The Way I Want To Be
  • Blossom Time At Ronnie Scott's (with Jeff Clyne and John Butts )
  • Soon It's Gonna Rain

literature

  • Ken Bloom: The American Songbook - The Singers, the Songwriters, and the Songs - 100 Years of American Popular Music - The Stories of the Creators and Performers . Black Dog & Leventhal, New York City 2005.
  • Richard Cook: Jazz Encyclopedia . Penguin, London 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Dearie, Blossom
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dearie, Marguerite Blossom (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz singer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH East Durham , New York (State)
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 2009
Place of death Greenwich Village , New York City