Andy Bey

Andy Bey ( born October 28, 1939 in Newark (New Jersey) as Andrew W. Bey ) is an American jazz singer and pianist.

Life and work

Andy Bey came early with the Jazz in touch; he had just eight made ​​an appearance with the Saxophonistem Hank Mobley. Bey was only thirteen years old when in 1952 his first solo album was released, Mama's Little Boy's Got the Blues; at 17 he founded with his sisters Salome and Geraldine Bey a trio named Andy and The Bey Sisters. The group undertook a 16-month tour of Europe; in Paris also made recordings with Kenny Dorham, Barney Wilen and Kenny Clarke ( " scoubidou " / " Smooth Sailing "). The trio then took the early 1960s, some records and two albums for Prestige ( NOW! Hear! , With Kenny Burrell ) and one for RCA on. In 1967, the group split up.

In the late 1960s and in the 1970s, Andy Bey is working as a singer with Max Roach, Duke Pearson ( " Sanala Delaware " ), Stanley Clarke ( Children of Forever, 1973) and Gary Bartz, for which he also lyrics to the Vietnam War and racial discrimination wrote. In 1972 he sang Stevie Wonder's "Black Maybe" in Gary Bartz ' NTU Troop ( Juju Street Songs ).

Bey took then in 1970 for the Atlantic influenced by Indian spiritualism album Experience and Judgment, and began a long collaboration with pianist Horace Silver, who in some of his albums helped him with religious themes by his Bays Music in the 1970s and 80s to label Silveto allowed to import, but without much commercial success. In 1982 he worked with Pharoah Sanders together ( "Heart Is a Meloday of Time" ).

Bey began in the 90's his collaboration with Silver continued; so he worked on his 1993 Columbia album It 's Got to Be Funky with. From then on, Bey went back to an oriented on hard bop mainstream music and had therefore more response from the audience. 1991 seemed Bey as a guest vocalist on David Murray Big Band - production David Murray Big Band Conducted by Lawrence " Butch" Morris. To hear he was also on Fred Hersch's album Plays the Music of Billy Strayhorn (1995).

1994, HIV disease was with Andy Bey, who is gay, diagnosed. Nevertheless, he continued his career. In the late 90s, followed by several albums that grossed Bey for the small label Jazzette, Zagreb and Evidence, as in 1996 Ballads, Blues and Bey, followed by Shades of Bey (1998) and Tuesdays in Chinatown in 2001, where he - outside of jazz singing - songs, among others interpreted by Nick Drake and Milton Nascimento. In early 2004 he released his album American song, with songs from the Great American Songbook, as Ellington's Caravan or Strayhorn's Lush Life.

Alex Henderson called Andy Bey in Allmusic " one of the great unsung heroes of the vocal jazz; Bey was an outstanding interpreter of lyrics with a wide range and a rich, full voice Rob Theakson compared him - also at Allmusic - with Gil Scott -Heron and. Roy Ayers.

Disco Graphical Notes

• Now! Hear! ( Prestige, 1964) with Jerome Richardson, Kenny Burrell
• Round Midnight ( Prestige, 1965) with Burrell, Milt Hinton, Osie Johnson
• Experience and Judgement (Atlantic, 1970)
• Ballads, Blues and Bey ( Evidence, 1996)
• " Chillin 'with Andy Bey " ( solo, Minor Music 2003)
• " American Song " ( 2004 12th Street )
• Is not Necessarily So (2007, 12thStreet )

Links / sources

• Downbeat Artists Profiles
• All Music