[Dixielandjazz] Jimmy Rushing -- KUNC (Colorado), January 25, 2014

[Robert Ringwald]

Mr. Five by Five Was a Five-Star Artist
by Marc Applegate
KUNC (Colorado), January 25, 2014
Was blues and swing jazz singer Jimmy Rushing fat? Well, it might be impolite to
say so, but Harry James did have a hit with his song about Rushing titled "Mr. Five
by Five."
James Andrew Rushing was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1901. Before he died
in 1972 he made a real impact on both the blues and jazz. The main reason for that
is the influence he had on the great Count Basie, in whose band Rushing played from
1935 to 1948.
Rushing's parents and brother were his early musical influences, with his father
playing trumpet and mother and brother both being singers. Rushing wandered the western
and midwestern U.S. as a street blues singer in 1923 and 1924. It was when he moved
to Los Angeles in 1925 that he got perhaps his greatest mentoring from none other
than Jelly Roll Morton, whose business card carried the modest claim "Inventor of
Jazz."
Among the bands Rushing sang and played sax with before he moved up to Basie were
Billy King and Bennie Moten. Then after the death of Moten in 1935 Jimmy Rushing
began his 13-year stay with Count Basie.
It was the influence of Moten that made Jimmy a proponent of the Kansas City jump
blues style and his subsequent influence on Count Basie could be heard in the Basie
bands from the late 1930s on. Rushing's work with the Count Basie Orchestra is best
represented by their recordings of "Sent for You Yesterday" and "Boogie Woogie":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKIVmWIKHOI
After leaving Basie in 1948, Rushing worked with a who's who of both jazz and blues
and wherever Jimmy went he left a blues tinge the same way Jelly Roll touched much
of his work with what he called "the Spanish tinge." That sound left a mark on most
all he worked with.
Duke Ellington got his dose of Rushing's Kansas City and Jelly Roll Morton influences
when he and Rushing recorded the 1959 album Jazz Party:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUgqh0duwOk
Given their divergent sounds it seems odd that Rushing would have recorded a 1960
album with those paragons of cool jazz, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, but jazz critic
Scott Yanow called Brubeck and Rushing -- The Dave Brubeck Quartet featuring Jimmy
Rushing "a surprising success." Although I only heard it once about 40 years ago,
I regretted not picking it up until I Googled this past week and found out it is
available again. I'll be correcting my past mistake soon.
While he may have been obese, Jimmy Rushing's career extended from the early 1920s
until his passing from leukemia in 1972. Now his music lives on and we'll enjoy the
title track from his 1958 album If This Ain't the Blues this week on the Nine O'Clock
Blues.
http://kunc.org/post/mr-five-five-was-five-star-artist


-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.” -George Burns