Prompted by Charles' link to British jazz website with the blog about Sir George Shearing, I looked to see if I could find anything by the British saxophonist Betty Smith as my piano teacher played in her band at one stage. She always seems something of a "mystery woman" insofar I'd never heard her music, read a review of her performances or even knew what kind of jazz she played although I suspected it was probably mainstream / modern. There is nothing about her music but I was really staggered by what I then found on Youtube:-
The results are really strange as this was not at all what I imagined her music would be like. This next clip is even more strange as the photographs include my teacher but the music demonstrates that she also sang. This clip isn't jazz at all:-
Googling further, I was then staggered to find that she unfortunately died earlier this year after a long illness. Reading the obituary, she seems to have played with some pretty high profile names as well as including the likes of the under-appreciated Brian Lemon in her bands. (Never quite understand why he is not more widely celebrated - the first time I heard him on a record was a bootleg recording with Sandy Brown and this staggered me at the time. Brown is another musician casually thrown in to the "Trad" camp but was someone who, from from little I have heard, had an original voice and , if I recollect, there is a track called "Oxford George" which suggests that he may have been a kind of British Pee Wee Russell.) Betty Smith's passing seems to have gone unnoticed around these parts and the article makes interesting reading even if my perception that her music was in the mainstream / modern idiom seems wrong from these selections. I don't know what she sounded like in later years.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/betty-smith-saxophonist-and-singer-hailed-for-her-improvisational-panache-2196497.html
The results are really strange as this was not at all what I imagined her music would be like. This next clip is even more strange as the photographs include my teacher but the music demonstrates that she also sang. This clip isn't jazz at all:-
Googling further, I was then staggered to find that she unfortunately died earlier this year after a long illness. Reading the obituary, she seems to have played with some pretty high profile names as well as including the likes of the under-appreciated Brian Lemon in her bands. (Never quite understand why he is not more widely celebrated - the first time I heard him on a record was a bootleg recording with Sandy Brown and this staggered me at the time. Brown is another musician casually thrown in to the "Trad" camp but was someone who, from from little I have heard, had an original voice and , if I recollect, there is a track called "Oxford George" which suggests that he may have been a kind of British Pee Wee Russell.) Betty Smith's passing seems to have gone unnoticed around these parts and the article makes interesting reading even if my perception that her music was in the mainstream / modern idiom seems wrong from these selections. I don't know what she sounded like in later years.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/betty-smith-saxophonist-and-singer-hailed-for-her-improvisational-panache-2196497.html
Comment