Jazz Articles about Mary Stallings

Mary Stallings: Songs Were Made to Sing

by Dave Linn
June 30, 2023

One of eleven children, Mary Stallings was born in San Francisco in 1939. In her teens, she began singing in San Francisco night clubs and performed with Ben Webster, Earl Hines, Red Mitchell, Teddy Edwards, and Wes Montgomery. Before graduating from high school, she joined R&B singer Louis Jordan's Tympani Five. In the early '60s, she performed with Dizzy Gillespie at both the Black Hawk nightclub and the 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival. Her debut album was Cal Tjader ...

New Releases from Geoffrey Keezer, Billy Drummond, Sonica, Plus Birthday Celebrations For Carolyn Leigh, Iola Brubeck, Trudy Pitts, Mary Stallings & More

by Mary Foster Conklin
August 29, 2022

This broadcast presents new releases from Geoffrey Keezer, Billy Drummond & Freedom of Ideas, plus singles from Carol Albert and new group Sonica (Thana Alexa, Nicole Zuraitis & Julia Adamy), with birthday shoutouts to lyricists Carolyn Leigh, Iola Brubeck, organist Trudy Pitts, vocalist Mary Stallings and trombonist Naomi Moon Siegel among others. Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by purchasing their music during this time of pandemic so they can continue to distract, comfort, provoke and ...

Mary Stallings: Remember Love

by Andrew Rowan
November 6, 2005

Starting with Concord Jazz in the '90s and continuing with MaxJazz and now Half Note Records, Mary Stallings's talents have finally been revealed. On Remember Love, she is abetted by a stellar band, including pianist Geri Allen (who also provides arrangements and serves as producer), drummer Billy Hart, Frank Wess on tenor and flute, trumpeter Wallace Roney, and alto saxophonist Vincent Herring. Stallings sings well and stays focused, avoiding a distracting habit of singing the wrong words. ...

Mary Stallings: Live at the Village Vanguard

by Mathew Bahl
July 1, 2001

Mary Stallings belongs to that lost generation of jazz singers whose careers imploded when the rock/folk/pop explosion of the mid-1960s sucked all of the oxygen out of jazz. From the early 1970s onward, Ms. Stallings generally confined her activities to the San Francisco Bay area so that she could raise her daughter. She returned to full-time singing at the end of the 1980s and finally came to the attention of the national jazz audience with the 1994 release of the ...

Mary Stallings: Live At the Village Vanguard

by C. Michael Bailey
April 1, 2001

Veteran vocalist with Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and The Count Basie Band steps out on her own into the spotlight of Jazz's most sacred club with an interesting set of Standards.

In New York's most venerated jazz club, San Francisco native Mary Stallings fires her ten-gauge contralto at a dizzying array of the American Songbook, hitting those pages not previously dog-eared by other artists. Fronting Eric Reed's fine tenor-lead quartet, Ms. Stallings steps up and just opens her mouth, expelling ...