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Barbara Morrison: 1949-2022
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Barbara Morrison, a soul-jazz singer whose artful vocal control and powerful delivery stunned club audiences and should have made her a household name, died on March 16. She was 72. Born in 1949, Morrison didn't start recording until the early 1970s. By then, a career in jazz and the blues had become a struggle for singers who hadn't made a name for themselves in the 1950s. Clubs had already rolled over to rock and soul, with many converting to disco ...
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Carlos Barbosa-Lima (1944-2022)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Carlos Barbosa-Lima, a Brazilian child prodigy whose touch and counterpoint on the guitar were virtually unrivaled and who arranged Antonio Carlos Jobim's music for the guitar in the 1980s at Jobim's request, died on February 23. He was 77. Barbosa-Lima began his professional career at age 12. A master of pop interpretation as well as classical guitar, Barbosa-Lima earned his living performing around the world and recording. His arrangements of songs by Brazilian composers, including Jobim and Luiz Bonfá, were ...
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Ernie Andrews: (1927-2022)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Ernie Andrews, one of the last Black male blues and pop crooners from the 1950s who was a frequent performer at Central Avenue clubs in Los Angeles and whose dry, romantic style was a favorite of jazz fans and musicians, died on February 24. He was 94. Born in Philadelphia in 1927, Ernie's mother sent him to live with her mother in Jeanerette, La., when he was 11. His mother and father had split up and his mother couldn’t look ...
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Nils Lindberg (1933-2022)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Nils Lindberg, one of Sweden's finest jazz pianists and orchestral composer-arrangers who collaborated in Stockholm with American jazz musicians including Benny Bailey, Idrees Sulieman and Red Mitchell, died on February 20. He was 88. Among his albums that Americans jazz fans need to hear are Sax Appeal (1960) and Trisection (1962). Most recently, I posted in January about Nils and his beautiful album with Swedish singer Margareta Bengtson. Nils had an ability to weave together Swedish folk songs, a jazz ...
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Elza Soares (1930-2022)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Elza Soares, one of Brazil's most spectacular and beloved pop singers who fused samba, bossa nova and other rhythmic styles and whipped them into a seductive, breezy confection through her charismatic, joyous delivery, died on January 20. She was 91. In addition to her stunning beauty and fluid stage presence, she was able to sell everything she sang with an actor's instincts. Soares also was known for tastefully accenting her singing in select places with a Louis Armstrong-like growl. She ...
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Joe Diorio (1936-2022)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Joe Diorio, a guitarist whose soulful playing on albums by Sonny Stitt and Eddie Harris gave those recordings a special feel and whose pensive, ringing tones and polytextures on solo albums influenced fusion guitarists, died on February 2. He was 85. Diorio grew up in Westbury, Ct., and learned to play guitar at a local music school in the 1950s. Gigging in New York, he stood out with a jagged technique that focused on heart rather than perfection, traditional jazz ...
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Beegie Adair: 1937-2022
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Beegie Adair, who was one of the busiest unbusy studio and lounge pianists in Nashville who recorded more than 100 albums, died on January 23. She was 84. Unbusy, because Beegie (born Bobbe Gorin Long) played simply with a straight-ahead style, adding a dash of jazz along the way. While not widely known outside of Nashville studio circles and among those who fancy the cocktail-piano sound, Beegie preferred playing the standards people liked to hear with a modicum of flourish ...
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Terry Teachout (1956-2022)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Yesterday afternoon, my literary agent called with terrible news. Terry Teachout had died hours earlier. I had to sit down. I couldn't believe it. My agent also was Terry's agent. In fact, Terry was the one who had introduced us years earlier at a book party. Now Terry was gone at age 65. For those unfamiliar with Terry, he was the drama critic for The Wall Street Journal and a tireless essayist who cranked out gorgeous pieces on the arts—high ...
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