OCTOBER 16, 2001 – Singer/songwriter ETTA JONES (b. November 25, 1928 in Aiken, South Carolina) died of cancer at age 72 in Mount Vernon, New York. She was survived by her husband, John Medlock, and a granddaughter.Jones was an American jazz singer whose best-known recordings were “Don’t Go to Strangers” and “Save Your Love for Me”. She worked with Buddy Johnson, Oliver Nelson, Earl Hines, Barney Bigard, Kenny Burrell, Milt Jackson, Cedar Walton, and Houston Person.Jones was raised in Harlem, New York. She developed her unique voice and style very early on. She used silence, her breath sounds, quick yodels, unusual lyrical syncopation, and a sliding pitch that made for a rich, bluesy tone. Her career began when she was 15, after she won one of the famous amateur contests at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem. Among her influences, she cited Thelma Carpenter, a onetime singer for Count Basie who became a torch singer. “Neither a shouter, a whisperer, nor a bebopper, Ms. Jones clung fast to a set of jazz standards from the 1940s and ’50s,” wrote critic Ben Ratliff of the New York Times. She was also a ready improviser. “I never sing a song the same way again,” the Independent (London) quoted her as saying. While still in her teens, she joined Buddy Johnson and his 19-piece band as a temporary replacement for Johnson’s sister who was having a baby, Ella Johnson for a nationwide tour, although she was not featured on record. The band was not as popular as some of the other touring bands of the era, such as those of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, and toured black-only venues across the United States. When Ella Johnson returned to the band, Jones worked with a number of different bands, both medium and large, led by artists such as Pete Johnson, J.C. Heard, Sonny Stitt, Barney Bigard, and Earl Hines.Her first recordings, “Salty Papa Blues”, “Evil Gal Blues,” “Blow Top Blues,” and “Long, Long Journey,” were produced by Leonard Feather in 1944, placing her in the company of clarinetist Bigard and tenor saxophonist Georgie Auld. In 1947, she recorded and released an early cover version of Leon Rene’s “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman” (previously released by the Basin Street Boys on Rene’s Exclusive label) while at RCA Victor Records. She performed with the Earl Hines sextet from 1949 to 1952. She then tried to make it as a solo singer but didn’t have much luck, so she worked as a seamstress, elevator operator, and at other mundane jobs during this time. . In 1956 Jones recorded her first full-length album, “The Jones Girl… Etta… Sings, Sings, Sings,” with King Records. But the album debuted with little fanfare and went largely unnoticed. The tables turned for Jones in 1960 when her manager, Warren Lanier, sent a demo tape to Esmond Edwards, a producer at Prestige Records. Edwards liked the tape and decided to sign Jones immediately. On the Prestige label she recorded the album “Don’t Go to Strangers,” released in 1960. Since it was a jazz album, no one expected it to appeal to a mainstream audience. Yet the title song was an instant hit, selling one million copies and putting Jones’ name on the top 40 charts. While Jones was not an overnight success, she was a sudden success. Her weekly income increased from $50 to $750. Riding on this triumph, Jones recorded several more albums for Prestige throughout the 1960s. But, jazz audiences were dwindling in the United States with the arrival of the Beatles and the growing popularity of pop and rock sounds.In 1968 Jones formed a musical partnership that would change her career. She met Houston Person, a highly regarded tenor saxophonist, when the two performed on the same bill at a Washington, D.C., nightclub. Jones and Person immediately hit it off, and they decided to tour together as a duo with equal billing, a partnership that would last for more than three decades. “They say … a lot of times singers and musicians don’t get along too well,” Jones told Billy Taylor of Billy Taylor’s Jazz at the Kennedy Center on National Public Radio in 1998, “but we got along famously.”Jones toured Japan with Art Blakey (1970), but was largely off record during 1966-1975. However, starting in 1976, Etta Jones (an appealing interpreter of standards, ballads, and blues) began recording regularly for Muse, often with Person. From the mid-1970s until her death in 2001, Jones and Person recorded 18 albums for the Muse label, which later became High Note Records. While these albums appealed to a relatively narrow audience of jazz aficionados, they occasionally contained minor hits attracting a wider group of listeners.Late in her career, Jones was able to relax into her role as a highly respected, traditional jazz singer. “When I first started, I had to do some songs I didn’t care for, but now I more or less sing what I want to sing,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1993, as quoted in the Washington Post. “I want a good lyric. I don’t want nonsense. I like heavy dramatic tunes, a tune that’s saying something, like Sammy Cahn’s ‘All the Way.'”She had three Grammy nominations, for the “Don’t Go To Strangers” album in 1960, the “Save Your Love For Me” album in 1981, and “My Buddy – Etta Jones Sings the Songs of Buddy Johnson” (dedicated to Johnson) in 1998. Her favorite composer was Sammy Cahn, whose songs are the subject of her 1999 album “All the Way,” and she loved sad ballads. “They’re the most pretty to me,” she once said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “When it’s sad, it’s beautiful.In 2008, the 1960 album “Don’t Go to Strangers” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Following her recordings for Prestige, on which Jones was featured with high-profile arrangers such as Oliver Nelson and jazz stars such as Frank Wess, Roy Haynes, and Gene Ammons, she had a musical partnership of more than thirty years with Person, who received equal billing with her. He also produced her albums and served as her manager, after the pair met in one of Johnny “Hammond” Smith’s bands.Although Etta Jones is likely to be remembered above all for her recordings on Prestige, her close professional relationship with Person (frequently, but mistakenly, identified as Jones’ husband) helped ensure that the last two decades of her life would be marked by uncommon productivity, as evidenced by a string of albums for Muse Records. “It’s been a wonderful relationship. He takes care of me, watches over me,” Down Beat quoted her as saying. “He’s just been my best friend, ever.” The pair always shared equal billing, which was an unusual arrangement for a jazz singer and her saxophonist.In 1996 she recorded “The Melody Lingers On,” the first of five sessions for the HighNote label, but only “Don’t Go to Strangers” enjoyed commercial success with sales of over a million copies. Her remaining seven albums for Prestige and, beginning in 1976, her twelve recordings for Muse Records, and seven recordings for HighNote Records secured her a devoted following.Jones was said to have maintained her vocal power and range even into her seventies. She could do a dead-on impersonation of Billie Holiday’s signature tone, though she rarely did this for audiences. Her last recording, a tribute to Billie Holiday titled “Etta Jones Sings Lady Day” was released on the day of her death.
READ MORE:https://www.oldies.com/artist-biography/Etta-Jones.htmlhttp://www.npr.org/programs/jazzprofiles/archive/jones_etta.htmlhttps://www.allmusic.com/artist/etta-jones-mn0000207498/biographyhttp://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608003275/Etta-Jones.htmlhttps://www.allaboutjazz.com/remembering-etta-jones-etta-jones-by-mathew-bahl.phphttp://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/music-popular-and-jazz-biographies/etta-joneshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etta_Jones
