[Dixielandjazz] Blossom Dearie - RIP

[martin thach]

 The music of Blossom Dearie  was an absolute delight .

Martin
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stan Brager" <sbrager at verizon.net>
To: "Duke-LYM" <duke-lym at concordia.ca>; "DJML" 
<dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 11:03 AM
Subject: Blossom Dearie - RIP


> 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.
>
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