Dolores Parker

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Dolores Parker Morgan (* around 1920 in Chicago ) was an American jazz singer and actress.

Live and act

Parker began performing as a singer after high school after winning an amateur competition at Chicago's Regal Theater in 1939 . She toured with Fletcher Henderson as a member of The Rhythm Debs trio , with whom she worked for three years. In 1945 she married the trumpeter Vernon Smith and became a band vocalist in the Earl Hines Orchestra , with whom the first recordings were made in Chicago in February 1946 ("Now That You're Mine" and " Margie "). She recorded other tracks ("Just A-Sittin 'and A-Rockin'" and "Oh My Achin 'Back") with Hines in May and June 1946. After the couple had a first child, Parker and Smith moved to Los Angeles. There she got the opportunity to apply as a band singer with Duke Ellington . At the audition, Ellington's arranger Billy Strayhorn expected the singer to perform the hitherto unknown composition " Lush Life ", which she succeeded in doing. She then went on tour with Ellington's band and from September to December 1947 to the Columbia record studio, where u. a. with her the tracks “Put Yourself in My Place, Baby”, “The Wildest Girl in Town”, “A Woman and a Man”, “It's Mad, Mad, Mad!” and “Take Love Easy” were recorded.

After leaving Ellington's band soon, Parker had several small film roles, such as the nightclub singer in Joseph L. Mankiewicz 's Blood Enmity (1949). Managed by former boxing champion Joe Louis , she appeared in nightclubs, had a role on the Broadway musical Sugar Hill in 1955 and recorded with Herbie Mann in 1960 ( The Common Ground , Atlantic). In the field of jazz she was involved in six recording sessions between 1946 and 1960.

In the 1960s she got her second marriage to the doctor Eldridge Gates Morgan (1925-1997), to whom she moved to Akron , where her husband headed the occupational health service of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company . In the following years she was active in the jazz scene in Ohio and Cleveland and taught at the Kent State University School of Music from 1985. In 1999 she worked as a soloist on the CD production Traditions of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra.

Parker was honored by the National Museum of American History in 1993 as the last active band singer of the Duke Ellington Orchestra .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jet Nov. 13, 1952, p. 62
  2. ↑ a b Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed December 16, 2016)
  3. ^ Jet, July 3, 1952
  4. ^ Jet, February 3, 1955
  5. ↑ Gates Morgan (Find a Grave)
  6. ↑ Dolores Parker Morgan at Discogs (English)
personal data
SURNAME Parker, Dolores
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Parker Morgan, Dolores (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz singer and actress
DATE OF BIRTH around 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago