Teri Thornton
Teri Thornton, ( born September 1, 1934 in Detroit as Shirley Enid Avery, † May 2, 2000 in Englewood, New Jersey) was an American jazz singer.
Life and work
Against initial resistance her mother, a gospel choir director and singer who in Detroit own radio show had ( and she wanted to push more towards classical music), she turned to jazz and won some local competitions. Although she was already divorced at age 19 and had two children, she continued to pursue her career and began in 1956 in a jazz club ( Ebony Club ) in Cleveland to sing professionally. In Chicago, where she moved after ( and at times played in a strip club piano ), she caught the attention of Cannonball Adderley and Johnny Griffin, the Orrin Keepnews persuaded in 1961 to bring out their first album " Devil May Care" at Riverside Records, on which Clark Terry, Freddie Green, and Wynton Kelly play. An additional career -Push was the theme song of the TV series "Naked City" ( "Somewhere in the Night " ), which she recorded in 1962; he brought her some appearances in TV shows such as The Tonight Show from Johnny Carson and the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1963 she recorded " Open Highway " on Columbia Records. In 1964 she had a grand entrance at the side of Ella Fitzgerald ( they then designated as their favorite singer in Down Beat ) and Duke Ellington in a television tribute to forty years on the stage Ellington.
After that, her career has been slow, partly due to the dominance of rock and pop music in the late 1960s, partly because of their alcohol problems and poor management. She moved to Los Angeles and wrote songs. In 1979 she began performing again in bars, where she accompanied herself on the piano, first in Los Angeles, in 1983 returned to New York. After recovering from cancer surgery in 1997, she won the prestigious Thelonious surprisingly Monk Vocal Competition in 1998 (which she denied at the urging of her manager ). That earned her a contract with Verve Records, where they again could release an album for the first time ("I 'll be easy to find " 1999). In January 2000, she had an engagement at the Village Vanguard, but then died of their cancer suffering.