Bobbi Humphrey

Barbara Ann " Bobbi" Humphrey ( born April 25, 1950 in Marlin, Texas) is an American flutist, alto saxophonist and singer who combines funk and fusion music in their own crossover style Soul Jazz.

Humphrey is an African-American and grew up in Dallas. Still in high school, she began to play the flute, and sat in the study from 1968 to 1970 at Texas Southern University and in 1971 from Southern Methodist University continued ( one of her teachers was Hubert Laws ). Dizzy Gillespie heard there and encouraged her to go to New York, where she in 1971 in the "Amateur Night" at the Apollo Theater in Harlem occurred ( once also the springboard for Ella Fitzgerald ). With their main instrument flute she played among others with Duke Ellington ( in a gig on the third day of her arrival in New York), Lee Morgan, Cannonball Adderley, Roland Kirk, Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Mann. Their first album " Flute In " was released in 1971 on Blue Note Records, one of the first women ever to got a contract there. It was followed by other successful albums on Blue Note as " Dig this" 1972 "Satin Doll" in 1974 and " Blacks and Blues " 1973 ( with their hit Harlem River Drive ). In the same year she performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival, where it was referred to by jazz critic Leonard Feather as the surprise of the festival. 1976 and 1978 she was honored by Billboard as the best female instrumental musician. In 1976 she published " Fancy Dancer" and 1977 " Tailor Made" ( Epic ). In the same year she took Stevie Wonder for his hit album Songs in the Key of Life. In the same year she moved to Epic Records, came back to Montreux and was made an honorary citizen of New Orleans. She also founded his own music publishing " Bobbi Humphrey Music Inc. " ( with whom she works from the 1990s with Warner Brothers, for which they discovered the singer Tevin Campbell ) and an agency in which they organized their performances and business activities. For example, they composed music for Anheuser-Busch advertising and for the Bill Cosby Show. She is also socially and politically active, saying, for example, at the United Nations on the drought in Ethiopia in the 1980s. Other successful albums were " Free Style " in 1978, " The Good Life " in 1979, " City Beat " 1989, "Passion Flute " in 1994 ( on their newly founded label " Paradise Sounds Records ").

134284
de