[Dixielandjazz] Herb Jeffries interviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

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Could the Jan Sutherland mentioned in this article be our own singer Jan Sutherland?



Jeffries, Jazz's 'Flamingo' Man, to Sit In with Orchestra
by Cam Miller
North County (California) Times, August 24, 2011
When Herb Jeffries started singing selections out of the Great American Songbook,
it was a good deal slimmer than it is today. Jeffries was 18 at the time, and now
he's fast approaching his 98th birthday.
That's not a typographical gaffe. The Detroit native will turn 98 on Sept. 24, but
don't expect the last living member of Duke Ellington's famous Blanton-Webster Band
of the 1940s to observe the age-old tradition of blowing out candles on a birthday
cake. He'll save that bit of celebratory tomfoolery until his 100th.
Jefferies, whose star is etched on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is beginning to cut
back on concert dates, but he is booked to appear Sunday with the Big Band and Jazz
Hall of Fame Orchestra in Oceanside at the Star Theatre. It will be his third concert
with the Oceanside swinging sixteen in 10 years and his second since clarinetist
Tad Calcara has been imported from Salt Lake City to direct the big band for special
concerts. Calcara, an Oceanside High School grad, is principal clarinetist in the
Utah Symphony Orchestra and leads his own band (New Deal Swing) in SLC.
Jeffries uses a motorized wheelchair as the result of debilitating illnesses that
surfaced last summer in Temecula, when he was unable to sing at the now-defunct Temecula
Valley International Jazz Festival. Nevertheless, he is planning to reprise several
songs in Oceanside that he helped popularize during his storied career, including
"Jump for Joy" and "Flamingo." The balance of the concert, titled "The Golden Age
of Swing," will be devoted to a mix of instrumentals and vocals performed by band
vocalists Barbara Roman and Jan Sutherland.
The North County date could be Jeffries' last in these parts because he is retiring,
according to his wife, Savannah, who joined a telephone conversation with her husband
and this reporter.
"Herb has a lot of writing he want to do and wants to continue working on audio tapes,"
Savannah said, speaking from their home in Kansas. "He's going to retire, at least
from his singing career."
Neither would say when Herb would make his final exit from the biz, but it won't
be soon. After his Oceanside engagement, Jeffries is scheduled to record several
tracks with Calcara's jazz band in Utah that will be part of a Duke Ellington tribute
album that will also include Ellington's son, Edward, and daughter April.
The Hot and Sweet Music Festival in Los Angeles during Labor Day weekend is also
in Jeffries' datebook, as is his appearance in Washington, D.C., at a concert of
Ellington music in memory of the bandleader, pianist, arranger and composer.
There's still another major event on the Jeffries datebook. It's at the Western Performers
Hall of Fame and the Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City -- into which Jeffries
was inducted in 2004. Jeffries gained entry on the strength of his being the first
black to star in Hollywood's "post-silents" cowboy flicks, which were shown mainly
in segregated movie houses.
Jeffries is of mixed heritage: Sicilian, Ethiopian, Italian French and Moorish roots
(his mother was Irish). However, once in Hollywood, because of his light skin, Jeffries
was tagged "the Bronze Buckaroo," an appropriately alliterative appellation for Bob
Blake, Herb's name in the cowboy film series.
"I sang, I wrote some of the songs, I rode Stardusk (his trusty steed) myself and
did anything to help keep production costs low," joked Jeffries. "You learned to
do things on the cheap."
Jeffries spent less time with Ellington (about three years) than he did in Hollywood,
but it was the Ellington work that gave him fame he never expected when he landed
a job with Duke in 1940.
"He was looking for a black vocalist, and I was looking for a job with a black band,"
recalled Jeffries. "He liked my voice and I liked his band. That's all it took."
Within a year, Jeffries' recording of "Flamingo" with Ellington had topped the charts,
and it went on to be a big, big seller. As you might expect, Jeffries has come to
regard the song as his meal ticket.
"I'd like to be able to say I had something to do with song other than recording
it, but I can't. Ted Grouya, who wrote the song, brought a copy to the Ellington
office and persuaded one of our people to pass 'the song' along to Duke, hoping he
would like it well enough to record it. Then one day, Duke called me into his office,
gave me the arrangement for 'Flamingo' and said, 'Here's your copy of Billy's chart
for this song. We're going to record it, and I want you to sing it.'"
At least that's how Jeffries remembers the sequence of events involving the composer
of "Flamingo," Ellington, arranger Billy Strayhorn and the vocalist.
"All of us got lucky with that song. When you guessed I must have sung it a thousand
times, you weren't even close. I've been singing it 70 years now, and that's a lot
of 'Flamingos.'"


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
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