[Dixielandjazz] Maxine Sullivan's 100th Birthday Celebration on Riverwalk Jazz This Week

[Donald Mopsick]

This week on Riverwalk Jazz, Arbors recording artists Rebecca Kilgore
and John Sheridan join The Jim Cullum Jazz Band for a program devoted
to Maxine Sullivan's 100th birthday called Flow Gently, Sweet Rhythm.

Stream the show now at http://www.riverwalkjazz.

Over a five decade career, Maxine Sullivan brought a light, subtle
approach to jazz vocals that paved the way for the “Cool School" of
singing

Sullivan first came to New York in the summer of 1937. She said, “I
auditioned every gin mill from 155th Street to the Onyx Club on 52nd
Street." One of the owners of the Onyx, guitarist Carl Kress, gave her
a job singing during intermissions.

There, she was discovered by pianist Claude Thornhill, who recorded
her with a septet singing a swinging version of the Scottish folk song
“Loch Lomond." It was a huge hit and became her signature. Maxine was
still singing “Loch Lomond" to rave reviews when she was 74 years old
in 1985.

While working at the Onyx Club, Sullivan met her husband, bassist John
Kirby, who led his sextet, The Spirits of Rhythm. Kirby and Maxine
became the first black hosts of a national radio series in 1939; Flow
Gently, Sweet Rhythm, a weekly Sunday afternoon broadcast on CBS.

Maxine followed up on her hit “Loch Lomond" with other vintage folk
tunes: “My Darling Nellie Gray," “I Dream of Jeannie," “Drink to Me
Only with Thine Eyes," and “If I Had a Ribbon Bow." She once said, “I
couldn't sing any song straight. I had no choice but to swing it."

This combination of old melodies with new rhythms became her
trademark. Maxine's interpretation, with her lilting voice and precise
enunciation, sounded very different from anyone else in jazz at the
time. Her style suited the new small ensemble “chamber jazz" sound of
the mid-1930s perfectly. In the 1940s, her sophisticated and elegant
voice found a home at the popular supper club, Le Ruban Bleu, on the
Upper East Side of Manhattan, where she sang for years.

Sullivan left the music business in the mid-'50s and became a trained
nurse, but in 1968 she made a comeback, singing at festivals and
playing valve trombone and flugelhorn. She appeared with the World's
Greatest Jazz Band with Bobby Hackett, and was a huge success at the
1972 Newport Jazz Festival. She continued her career into the 1980s,
recording swing standards for Concord Records, often with saxophonist
Scott Hamilton.