THE LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES: ANNIE ROSS

ANNIE ROSS

AS SEEN IN:

'The Saint'

["The Happy Suicide"]

From Wikipedia:

Annie Ross (born 25 July 1930) is a Scottish jazz singer, chanteuse and actress, best known as a member of the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

In 1952, Ross met Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock, who asked her to write lyrics to a jazz solo, in a similar way to King Pleasure, a practice which would later be known as vocalese. The next day, she presented him with "Twisted", a treatment of saxophonist Wardell Gray's 1949 composition of the same name, a classic example of the genre. The song, first released on the 1952 album King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings, was an underground hit, and resulted in her winning Down Beat's New Star award. Her first solo album, Singin' and Swingin' (1952), was recorded in New York with members of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

In February 1956, the British music magazine NME reported that Ross's song "I Want You to be My Baby" was banned by the BBC, due to the lyric "Come upstairs and have some loving".

She recorded seven albums with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross between 1957 and 1962. Their first, Sing a Song of Basie (1957), was to have been performed by a group of singers hired by Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert with Ross brought in only as vocal consultant.

The resulting album was a success, and the trio became an international hit. Over the next five years, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross toured all over the world.

Ross left the group in 1962[8] and, in 1964, opened her own nightclub in London. Annie's Room featured performances by Joe Williams, Stuff Smith, Blossom Dearie, Anita O'Day, Jon Hendricks, Erroll Garner, and Ross herself. A compilation album of Ross's 1965 performances from Annie's Room was released on CD in 2006.
 
O'BSERVATIONS: In this episode of 'The Saint', Ms. Ross was performing at the Caribbean Club in New York City.  Two of the murder suspects used her performance there as their alibi for the time of the murder, but were undone by the fact that she had to call off the show due to illness.  And as she bluntly put it, "if Annie Ross doesn't go on, there is no show."
 
BCnU!