Irene Kitchings

Irene Kitchings (* 1908 in Marietta (Ohio) as Irene Armstrong ; † 1975 ) was an American jazz pianist and composer .

Live and act

Kitchings took lessons from her mother, a piano teacher. At the age of thirteen she moved to Detroit and at the age of 18 to Chicago, where she caused a sensation as a solo pianist from the mid-1920s. She founded her own jazz bands, which included musicians like Budd Johnson . Banjo player Ikey Robinson remembers her as his favorite pianist. "She had the heavy attack like a man." Al Capone was a fan of hers; she played with her band in his mafia club "The Vogue" until the police closed it. With Kathryn Perry and Eloise Bentett, she then founded a trio Three Classy Misses , with whom she played at Sunset and Café de Parisoccurred. After she was initially married to trumpeter Joe Eadey, she married in 1931 with the piano colleague Teddy Wilson . In the new Vogue she appeared again with her own band; she also played at the 1932 World's Fair. She and Wilson moved to New York shortly afterwards; for them the change of location meant leaving active musical life. "Ted's career was to my heart than mine." As a marriage on the rocks went, it was the friendship with Billie Holiday , through which they the songwriter Arthur Herzog Jr. met. With him she wrote almost a dozen songs by 1940, most of which became known through Billie Holiday, in particular the standards "Some Other Spring", "Ghost of Yesterday" and "I'm Pulling Through". She then cared for an aunt in Cleveland , where she married Elden Kitchings; their musical activities were reduced to playing the organ and singing in their community. She has suffered from an eye disease in recent years.

literature

• Sally Placksin Women in Jazz. From the turn of the century to the present Vienna: Hannibal 1989 (pp. 132–135); ISBN 3-85445-044-3

Web links

• Irene Kitchings at Allmusic (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} after S. Placksin Women in Jazz , p. 132f.