[Dixielandjazz] Blossom Dearie - RIP

[Stan Brager]

The New York Times published an obituary of Blossom Dearie today. She was a 
wonderful jazz pianist/singer who went her own way and influenced several 
generations of singers.

Stan
.............................
February 9, 2009
Blossom Dearie, Cult Chanteuse, Dies at 82
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Blossom Dearie, the jazz pixie with a little-girl voice and pageboy haircut 
who was a fixture in New York and London nightclubs for decades, died on 
Saturday at her apartment in Greenwich Village. She was 82.

She died in her sleep of natural causes, said her manager and 
representative, Donald Schaffer. Her last public appearances, in 2006, were 
at her regular Midtown Manhattan stomping ground, the now defunct Danny's 
Skylight Room.

A singer, pianist and songwriter with an independent spirit who zealously 
guarded her privacy, Ms. Dearie pursued a singular career that blurred the 
line between jazz and cabaret. An interpretive minimalist with caviar taste 
in songs and musicians, she was a genre unto herself. Rarely raising her 
sly, kittenish voice, Ms. Dearie confided song lyrics in a playful style 
below whose surface layers of insinuation lurked. Her cheery style 
influenced many younger jazz and cabaret singers, most notably Stacey Kent 
and the singer and pianist Daryl Sherman.

But just under her fey camouflage lay a needling wit. If you listened 
closely, you could hear the scathing contempt she brought to one of her 
signature songs, "I'm Hip," the Dave Frishberg-Bob Dorough demolition of a 
namedropping bohemian poseur. Ms. Dearie was for years closely associated 
with Mr. Frishberg and Mr. Dorough. It was Mr. Frishberg who wrote another 
of her perennials, "Peel Me a Grape."

Ms. Dearie didn't suffer fools gladly and was unafraid to voice her disdain 
for music she didn't like; the songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber were a 
particular pet peeve.

The other side of her sensibility was a wistful romanticism most discernible 
in her interpretations of Brazilian bossa nova songs, material ideally 
suited to her delicate approach. Her final album, "Blossom's Planet" 
(Daffodil), released in 2000, includes what may be the definitive 
interpretation of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave" Her dreamy attenuated 
rendition finds her voice floating away as though to sea, or to heaven, on 
lapping waves of tastefully synthesized strings.

Born Marguerite Blossom Dearie in East Durham, N.Y., on April 29, 1926, she 
was a classically trained pianist who switched to jazz after joining a high 
school band. Moving to New York City in the mid-1940s, she sang with the 
Blue Flames, a vocal group attached to the Woody Herman band, and with 
Alvino Rey's band before embarking on a solo career.

Traveling to Paris in 1952, she joined the Blue Stars, a vocal octet that 
recorded a hit version of "Lullaby of Birdland." While there she shared 
quarters with the jazz singer Annie Ross and met the Belgian flutist and 
saxophonist Bobby Jaspar, to whom she was briefly married.

She also met Norman Granz, the owner of Verve Records, who signed her to a 
six-album contract. All six Verve albums - "Blossom Dearie" (1956), "Give 
Him the Ooh-La-La" (1957), "Once Upon a Summertime" (1958), "Sings Comden 
and Green" (1959), "My Gentleman Friend" (1959) and "Soubrette Sings 
Broadway Hit Songs"(1960) - are today regarded as cult classics.

In the early 1960s a radio commercial she made for Hires Root Beer became so 
popular it spawned an album, "Blossom Dearie Sings Rootin' Songs" (DIW). Her 
1964 album, "May I Come In?" (Capitol), a straightforward pop collection, 
was her first to employ a full orchestra, but on subsequent albums she 
veered back into jazz and supper-club fare, mixing standards, jazz songs and 
witty novelties.

Beginning in 1966 she traveled regularly to London to play Ronnie Scott's, a 
popular nightclub, and while in England recorded four albums for the Fontana 
label. Back in the United States she established her own label, Daffodil 
Records, in 1974. Its first album, "Blossom Dearie Sings," released at the 
height of the singer-songwriter movement, contained all original songs, 
including "Hey John," a tribute to John Lennon (with lyrics by Jim Council), 
and "I'm Shadowing You," a collaboration with Johnny Mercer.

Although Ms. Dearie never had a hit as a songwriter (she usually wrote the 
melodies, not the lyrics), a number of her songs have enjoyed fairly wide 
circulation in nightclubs, most notably "Bye-Bye Country Boy" (written with 
Jack Segal), a pop star's rueful farewell to a farm boy she meets on the 
road.

The last record Ms. Dearie recorded was a single, "It's All Right to Be 
Afraid," a comforting ballad dedicated to the victims and survivors of 9/11. 
She is survived by an older brother, Barney, and a nephew and niece.