Maxine Sullivan

Maxine Sullivan ( born May 13, 1911 as Lilian Marietta Williams in Homestead, Pennsylvania, † April 7, 1987 in New York City, New York) was an American jazz musician of the Swing ( singer, trombonist and also Flügelhornistin ).

Life and work

Sullivan had little training as a singer and initially joined up with the Red Hot Peppers, the band of her uncle, as a singer and instrumentalist. Mid-1930s, she was discovered by the pianist Gladys Mosier at a performance in a literary club in Pittsburgh and recommended to Claude Thornhill, with whose band she made in 1937 first shots that were well received. Thornhill presented Sullivan's " gentle, cultured Swing" (Will Friedwald ) material from the Afro- Jewish jazz, from Tin Pan Alley and from Anglo- European folk sources told.

In December 1937 she had - accompanied by Thornhill, Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, inter alia, with the standard " Nice Work If You Can Get It," her first (of three) hits on the Billboard charts. At the same time she had an engagement in "Onyx Club" in New York, where she accompanied the bassist John Kirby and his band, whom she married soon after (divorce 1941). Among the Kirby / Thornhill recordings was also the swing adaptation of the Scottish folk song " Loch Lomond ". Was characteristic, the Sullivan interpreted this song on " black and white " type; Although they swingte, "but unobtrusive and with unusual restraint. "

This song was her second hit, but put them at the same time in the future to similar arrangements laid. With John Kirby had 1940/41 - the first jazz musician of African-American origin - his own radio series "Flow gently sweet rhythm". Accompanied by the orchestra in 1943 she could place a third hit on the charts; the rehearsed for Decca " My Ideal " rose a week on rank 11 of the American charts. Mid-1940s, she sang with the bands of Teddy Wilson, Jimmie Lunceford and Benny Carter, and regularly in clubs. With the establishment of the folk-song style she switched from Scottish songs to " Orchichonia " and "My Yiddishe Mame "; they could not start a career in such a short-lived fashions and did not have another hit more.

From the mid- 1950s, she made ​​several albums, inter alia, with Charlie Shavers, Russell Procope and Buster Bailey, attended in 1954 and 1958, England and was heard on the valve trombone and flugelhorn. In 1960 she married the Stridepianisten Cliff Jackson and worked until the mid- 1960s, mainly as a nurse, but entered into a cultural center in the Bronx to continue. In 1966 she sang again at neighborhood festivals, clubs and Traditional Jazz Festival, first with her husband. 1969 she managed a comeback; she played among others with Doc Cheatham, Bobby Hackett and the World's Greatest Jazz Band and Scott Hamilton. From the mid- 1970s, she went several times in Sweden and 1984 in France on tour. In September 1986, she performed at the " Concord Jazz Festival" in Tokyo.

Sullivan appeared in the Broadway show "Swinging the dream" (1939) and in the films " St. Louis Blues" (1939, Raoul Walsh, with Hoagy Carmichael ) and (next to Louis Armstrong ) in " Going Places " on (directed Ray Enright, 1938) a horse racing comedy starring Dick Powell. In 1998, she was inducted into the " Big Band Hall of Fame". Your life is traced in the documentary "Love to Be in Love" (1990 ) by Greta Schiller.

Disco Graphical Notes

Village Vanguard Homestead (Pennsylvania) Nice Work If You Can Get It (song) John Kirby (musician) Decca Records Trad jazz Scott Hamilton (musician) Broadway theatre Going Places (1938 film) Bill Watrous Buddy Tate Butch Miles Carnegie Hall Martha Tilton Integrated Authority File
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