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“The only white woman who ever had soul.”
– Miles Davis
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April 28, 1926 – February 7, 2009

Blossom Dearie, jazz chanteuse

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It was Blossom Dearie’s vulnerable voice we heard singing the “the girl’s part” on “Moody’s Mood for Love,” King Pleasure’s hit single back in 1952, the same year Dearie moved from New York to Paris, where she founded the Blue Stars of France singing group. “What is all this talk / About loving me, my sweet?” she sang. “I am not afraid / Not anymore, not like before. / Don’t you understand me?” The record rose high on rhythm & blues charts, and all the jazz crazies knew the words by heart. We thought King Pleasure had written the lyric, but, as time revealed, it was Eddie Jefferson. The whole thing had started in Stockholm, when saxophonist James Moody had borrowed Swedish bopster Lars Gullin‘s alto saxophone to make a recording based on Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields‘ “I’m in the Mood for Love.” On the old 78 rpm disk, Dearie’s name shrank beneath Pleasure’s.  She seems, though, to have never looked back. Over the next 60 years she would build a sparkling international reputation for herself as a consummate jazz chanteuse, a delicate-voiced cabaret singer and pianist. Like all other lovers of jazz vocals, I followed her record and performing career. Wherever she played in San Francisco, patrons were made to understand that they weren’t to talk or clink or clatter at their tables during her sets. Blossom Dearie was a crank and an exacting, demanding artist. But she was our crank. My favorite of her many albums is Blossom Dearie (Verve Jazz Masters 51), where she sings “They Say It’s Spring,” “Rhode Island (Is Famous for You),” “Little Jazz Bird,” and “Blossom’s Blues.” In addition to tracks laid down Russ Garcia’s Orchestra, the album includes Dearie (at piano with flautist Bobby Jaspar. guitarists Herb Ellis, Mundell Lowe, bassist Ray Brown, and drummers Jo Jones, and Ed Thigpen). Who knows how many lives were patched or saved or prolonged by the sound of Blossom Dearie’s fragile, teasing and always poetic voice?

– Al Young

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Dearie’s very first recording | Dearie in Copenhagen, 1981 |  AP file photo

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Stephen Holden: “Blossom Dearie, Cult Chanteuse, Dies at 84″ (New York Times, February 6, 2009)

U.K. Telegraph obituary (February 9, 2009)

In Memoriam: Blossom Dearie on NPR’s Piano Jazz (with Marian McPartland)

Blossom Dearie Day (In separate accounts, Bill Reed and Joel E. Siegel present intimate memories of the artist they loved)

Frank Gannon: In Memoriam: Blossom Dearie, 1926-2009 (The New Nixon: News and Commentary about the President, his Times, and his Legacy, February 9, 2009)

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A BLOSSOM DEARIE DISCOGRAPHY

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Click and sample

Performing her own “I’m Shadowing You” and “Winchester in Apple Blossom Time,” plus Dave Frishberg’s “I’m Hip” (Blossom Dearie, circa 1985)

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Remembering Blossom Dearie

JACQUI NAYLOR

Yoshi’s, San Francisco
April 19
2 pm matinee
7 pm evening show

A San Francisco native, jazz/pop musician Jacqui Naylor may be sampled in recorded performance  on her recent album, Losing My Religion, right here, right now with a click.

Jacqui Naylor is available to the press for interviews.
http://www.jacquinaylor.com/

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