Artist: Blossom Dearie
Blossom Dearie—the name has the ring of a drawled endearment
from a play by Tennessee Williams. But the name, once the facts
are known, also happens to have the ring of truth, for Blossom
Dearie is indeed the true name of a talented, attractive, young
singer with—as you will hear—extraordinary appeal. To put these
clarifying facts in order as quickly as possible, Miss Blossom Dearie
was born with the name she now bears in East Durham, N.Y., a
village nestled in the Catskill Mountains roughly 150 miles out of New
York City. Miss Dearie is the daughter of Harry A. and Margreta Dearie;
her father is of Scottish descent, her mother Norwegian. The name
Dearie itself is, according to Miss Dearie's rather extensive research
into the subject, a common enough one in Scotland but hardly so
common elsewhere. As for the name of Blossom, this was her
father's notion, Miss Dearie adds, and as you might expect, the
result of this combination of names has been almost a lifelong series
of misunderstandings and lame attempts at humor to which Miss
Dearie is by now fairly well resigned, if not numb.
But it is quite genuine, the name of Blossom Dearie, and the voice
that goes with it is also genuine. Miss Dearie doesn't have a big
voice, but it is a firm, fresh well-controlled voice with a good
deal of humor and, where she wills it, tenderness and warmth.
It is, moreover, an intimate voice, at once smoky and girl-next-
door feminine, and—the facts must be faced squarely—sexy. Once
you have heard it, Miss Dearie's voice is not one you'll confuse
with anyone else's. Apart from the voice, Miss Dearie interprets
the lyrics with a very special feeling for their—in the full sense
of the term—lyric quality. And in a number of instances, where
appropriateness is the reason, the words are sung in French—not,
one feels obliged to add, in the self-consciously mannered style
of the supper-club chanteuses, but with a direct,
compelling kind of homegrown charm.
About this business of singing French, a word of explanation: Miss
Dearie, once having ventured down from upstate Sleepy Hollow
country to New York City, sang for a time with such vocal units
as the Blue Flames with Woody Herman's band and then the
Blue Reys with Alvino Rey, also playing—in her phrase—a spot of
cocktail piano. By 1952, Miss Dearie was in Paris where she sang
in a successful nightclub act with Annie Ross, scoring triumphs in
the Mars Club and the Club de Paris along the Paris nightclub
circuit. Remaining in Paris several years, she earned praise from
Variety and, more pertinent to this album, was heard by Norman
Granz, head of Verve Records, who promptly arranged for a
recording session once Miss Dearie hit these shores. But how did
Miss Dearie learn to sing in French? She used the time-tested
system—she studied first at Berlitz and, alone, by a method known
as "French Without Toil." While she was in Paris, Miss Dearie recorded
with her own group, known as the Blue Stars, and turned out a
piano album, but with the exception of an eight-bar vocal on a King
Pleasure record and playing piano accompaniment for Annie Ross,
this is the first time she has been recorded in her home country.
Miss Dearie, since her return in the summer of 1956, has appeared
at such New York clubs as the Chantilly and the Show Spot. At
the moment, her ambitions extend understandably to television,
an intimate medium which would seem just the thing for
Miss Dearie's intimate style.
As for the songs in this album, they would seem to be a blend of
the durable standard—Rodgers and Hammerstein on one, and
Vincent Youmans, Jerome Kern and Burton Lane one apiece—and
the rarely heard, offtrail melody. The team of Haymes and Clark—
he's Bobby Haymes, who wrote "That's All" and happens also
to be Dick Haymes' brother—wrote three of the songs, Haymes
providing some new French lyrics added to "I Won't Dance" and
"It Might As Well Be Spring." Also in the French vein there's Murray
Grand's "Comment Allez Vous" (meaning "How Are You?") and Jean
Mercadier's "Tout Doucement" (or "Very Softly"). A six-voice
chorus backs Miss Dearie on these two in addition to
"It Might As Well Be Spring."
Since it is from listening to jazz artists here and abroad that Miss
Dearie acquired many of her ideas on phrasing a song, it is fitting
that she can be accompanied here by such accomplished jazzmen
as Ray Brown, bass; Herb Ellis, guitar, and Jo Jones, drums.
The piano throughout is Miss Dearie herself.
* * * * * * *
Rep-Partee with Miss Dearie: She Finds The Climate Just Fine
by Maggie Hawthorn, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Thursday, August 15, 1974
Blossom Dearie peered out the hotel door at the overcast Seattle
sky and smiled. "I like northern climates," she said. "New York in the
summer is just too much to take; the pollution, the humidity, the heat
all make me feel sick. It feels so good to me here."
The singer-pianist-songwriter is in town to perform this evening at
Rep-Partee, the annual fundraising party of the Seattle Repertory
Theater. She will spend a few weeks on the West Coast at her
leisure but tending to business as she visits Portland, San Francisco
and Los Angeles. "I'd like to work a few days here, too," she smiled,
"if I could find the right place."
Blossom Dearie is the sort of entertainer who has an underground
following, a band of dedicated and sometimes vociferous supporters
who follow her career seriously, ferret out her hard-to-find
recordings, and savor her delicious, wide-eyed,
sunny approach to music.
She has no agent or manager, preferring to make her own decisions
about when and where to exercise her absolutely individual style.
A compact, calm woman of early middle age with a round, pleasant
face and a mass of blond hair falling gently to her shoulders, she is
at ease in comfortable clothes, without pretension and at
home all over the world.
Hardly the stereotype of a nightclub entertainer, she talked about
her life and her career yesterday over mid-morning coffee and melon.
"I'm not a night person, really. In fact, I don't like night clubs much
at all. In New York, I have worked out a time slot for myself that
suits me perfectly. From 6 to 8 or 9p.m., when most places aren't
very crowded, they welcome anything that will bring in new business.
So I do a little concert in those early hours. There are no drinks
served while I'm working, and I can take an intermission. It works
out so well, and I don't have to stay up late. I started that schedule
last year at a club called Three, and lately have been doing
the same thing at Reno Sweeney's."
Miss Dearie works all over the world and has a coterie of fans in
Stockholm, Paris and London. She now has her own record company,
Daffodil Records, which she runs with the aid of a
brother and sister-in-law.
They issued their first LP last fall and it has sold about 5,000 copies,
mostly by mail order. "But it's as much trouble as if it were RCA."
The songs, recorded in London and New York, are all written by
Blossom, with lyrics by various collaborators including Johnny Mercer
and Len Saltzberg. As it says on the label, "all compositions, vocals,
keyboard instruments and arrangements by Blossom Dearie."
And, they might add, bookkeeping, publicity, typing, mailing, and
coordinating pressing orders with the factory. "It doesn't leave me
enough time for composing," she says.
The record was produced by her long-time friend Bob Dorough, who
was a member of the Blue Stars of Paris, a vocal and instrumental
group Blossom formed during the early 1950s. Their French language
recording to "Lullaby of Birdland" was a hit, and the Swingle Singers
were an outgrowth of the group.
Miss Dearie (it's her real name; her father was Scotch-Irish) made
several records for Norman Granz and a couple for Fontana,
none, alas, available any longer.
Her choices of material range from the best on the older ballads
and show tunes (Noel Coward, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart)
to the utterly contemporary (Michel LeGrand, Johnny Mandel,
Leiber and Stoller), from the wistful ("When The World Was
Young") to the witty ("Peel Me A Grape").
Her next album, again on her own label, will include some of her
newer songs as well as those by other writers. She admires Stevie
Wonder's tunes as well as those of Mac Davis and lyricist Paul
Williams. "I don't think you can get away with writing about
moon and June any more.
"I listen to the radio all the time, to keep up with the latest. Mostly,
I'm not pleased with what's coming out in the new shows. I think
there's more in what's on the pop charts. Rock has introduced us
to new rhythms; it's nice to put melodies on top of them."
Blossom, who once told the New Yorker's Whitney Balliett, "I'm not
a show business person," talked some more about her family home
in upstate New York, about rising in Seattle at 6 in the morning
to take a walk, about finding more time to write music, and about
living the way she wants to live.
Tonight at the Seattle Center Playhouse, 250 people will be
privileged to hear her light, clear voice and her delicate but
forceful jazz-tuned piano, and to share for a while the company
of the lady called Blossom Dearie.
from a play by Tennessee Williams. But the name, once the facts
are known, also happens to have the ring of truth, for Blossom
Dearie is indeed the true name of a talented, attractive, young
singer with—as you will hear—extraordinary appeal. To put these
clarifying facts in order as quickly as possible, Miss Blossom Dearie
was born with the name she now bears in East Durham, N.Y., a
village nestled in the Catskill Mountains roughly 150 miles out of New
York City. Miss Dearie is the daughter of Harry A. and Margreta Dearie;
her father is of Scottish descent, her mother Norwegian. The name
Dearie itself is, according to Miss Dearie's rather extensive research
into the subject, a common enough one in Scotland but hardly so
common elsewhere. As for the name of Blossom, this was her
father's notion, Miss Dearie adds, and as you might expect, the
result of this combination of names has been almost a lifelong series
of misunderstandings and lame attempts at humor to which Miss
Dearie is by now fairly well resigned, if not numb.
But it is quite genuine, the name of Blossom Dearie, and the voice
that goes with it is also genuine. Miss Dearie doesn't have a big
voice, but it is a firm, fresh well-controlled voice with a good
deal of humor and, where she wills it, tenderness and warmth.
It is, moreover, an intimate voice, at once smoky and girl-next-
door feminine, and—the facts must be faced squarely—sexy. Once
you have heard it, Miss Dearie's voice is not one you'll confuse
with anyone else's. Apart from the voice, Miss Dearie interprets
the lyrics with a very special feeling for their—in the full sense
of the term—lyric quality. And in a number of instances, where
appropriateness is the reason, the words are sung in French—not,
one feels obliged to add, in the self-consciously mannered style
of the supper-club chanteuses, but with a direct,
compelling kind of homegrown charm.
About this business of singing French, a word of explanation: Miss
Dearie, once having ventured down from upstate Sleepy Hollow
country to New York City, sang for a time with such vocal units
as the Blue Flames with Woody Herman's band and then the
Blue Reys with Alvino Rey, also playing—in her phrase—a spot of
cocktail piano. By 1952, Miss Dearie was in Paris where she sang
in a successful nightclub act with Annie Ross, scoring triumphs in
the Mars Club and the Club de Paris along the Paris nightclub
circuit. Remaining in Paris several years, she earned praise from
Variety and, more pertinent to this album, was heard by Norman
Granz, head of Verve Records, who promptly arranged for a
recording session once Miss Dearie hit these shores. But how did
Miss Dearie learn to sing in French? She used the time-tested
system—she studied first at Berlitz and, alone, by a method known
as "French Without Toil." While she was in Paris, Miss Dearie recorded
with her own group, known as the Blue Stars, and turned out a
piano album, but with the exception of an eight-bar vocal on a King
Pleasure record and playing piano accompaniment for Annie Ross,
this is the first time she has been recorded in her home country.
Miss Dearie, since her return in the summer of 1956, has appeared
at such New York clubs as the Chantilly and the Show Spot. At
the moment, her ambitions extend understandably to television,
an intimate medium which would seem just the thing for
Miss Dearie's intimate style.
As for the songs in this album, they would seem to be a blend of
the durable standard—Rodgers and Hammerstein on one, and
Vincent Youmans, Jerome Kern and Burton Lane one apiece—and
the rarely heard, offtrail melody. The team of Haymes and Clark—
he's Bobby Haymes, who wrote "That's All" and happens also
to be Dick Haymes' brother—wrote three of the songs, Haymes
providing some new French lyrics added to "I Won't Dance" and
"It Might As Well Be Spring." Also in the French vein there's Murray
Grand's "Comment Allez Vous" (meaning "How Are You?") and Jean
Mercadier's "Tout Doucement" (or "Very Softly"). A six-voice
chorus backs Miss Dearie on these two in addition to
"It Might As Well Be Spring."
Since it is from listening to jazz artists here and abroad that Miss
Dearie acquired many of her ideas on phrasing a song, it is fitting
that she can be accompanied here by such accomplished jazzmen
as Ray Brown, bass; Herb Ellis, guitar, and Jo Jones, drums.
The piano throughout is Miss Dearie herself.
* * * * * * *
Rep-Partee with Miss Dearie: She Finds The Climate Just Fine
by Maggie Hawthorn, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Thursday, August 15, 1974
Blossom Dearie peered out the hotel door at the overcast Seattle
sky and smiled. "I like northern climates," she said. "New York in the
summer is just too much to take; the pollution, the humidity, the heat
all make me feel sick. It feels so good to me here."
The singer-pianist-songwriter is in town to perform this evening at
Rep-Partee, the annual fundraising party of the Seattle Repertory
Theater. She will spend a few weeks on the West Coast at her
leisure but tending to business as she visits Portland, San Francisco
and Los Angeles. "I'd like to work a few days here, too," she smiled,
"if I could find the right place."
Blossom Dearie is the sort of entertainer who has an underground
following, a band of dedicated and sometimes vociferous supporters
who follow her career seriously, ferret out her hard-to-find
recordings, and savor her delicious, wide-eyed,
sunny approach to music.
She has no agent or manager, preferring to make her own decisions
about when and where to exercise her absolutely individual style.
A compact, calm woman of early middle age with a round, pleasant
face and a mass of blond hair falling gently to her shoulders, she is
at ease in comfortable clothes, without pretension and at
home all over the world.
Hardly the stereotype of a nightclub entertainer, she talked about
her life and her career yesterday over mid-morning coffee and melon.
"I'm not a night person, really. In fact, I don't like night clubs much
at all. In New York, I have worked out a time slot for myself that
suits me perfectly. From 6 to 8 or 9p.m., when most places aren't
very crowded, they welcome anything that will bring in new business.
So I do a little concert in those early hours. There are no drinks
served while I'm working, and I can take an intermission. It works
out so well, and I don't have to stay up late. I started that schedule
last year at a club called Three, and lately have been doing
the same thing at Reno Sweeney's."
Miss Dearie works all over the world and has a coterie of fans in
Stockholm, Paris and London. She now has her own record company,
Daffodil Records, which she runs with the aid of a
brother and sister-in-law.
They issued their first LP last fall and it has sold about 5,000 copies,
mostly by mail order. "But it's as much trouble as if it were RCA."
The songs, recorded in London and New York, are all written by
Blossom, with lyrics by various collaborators including Johnny Mercer
and Len Saltzberg. As it says on the label, "all compositions, vocals,
keyboard instruments and arrangements by Blossom Dearie."
And, they might add, bookkeeping, publicity, typing, mailing, and
coordinating pressing orders with the factory. "It doesn't leave me
enough time for composing," she says.
The record was produced by her long-time friend Bob Dorough, who
was a member of the Blue Stars of Paris, a vocal and instrumental
group Blossom formed during the early 1950s. Their French language
recording to "Lullaby of Birdland" was a hit, and the Swingle Singers
were an outgrowth of the group.
Miss Dearie (it's her real name; her father was Scotch-Irish) made
several records for Norman Granz and a couple for Fontana,
none, alas, available any longer.
Her choices of material range from the best on the older ballads
and show tunes (Noel Coward, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart)
to the utterly contemporary (Michel LeGrand, Johnny Mandel,
Leiber and Stoller), from the wistful ("When The World Was
Young") to the witty ("Peel Me A Grape").
Her next album, again on her own label, will include some of her
newer songs as well as those by other writers. She admires Stevie
Wonder's tunes as well as those of Mac Davis and lyricist Paul
Williams. "I don't think you can get away with writing about
moon and June any more.
"I listen to the radio all the time, to keep up with the latest. Mostly,
I'm not pleased with what's coming out in the new shows. I think
there's more in what's on the pop charts. Rock has introduced us
to new rhythms; it's nice to put melodies on top of them."
Blossom, who once told the New Yorker's Whitney Balliett, "I'm not
a show business person," talked some more about her family home
in upstate New York, about rising in Seattle at 6 in the morning
to take a walk, about finding more time to write music, and about
living the way she wants to live.
Tonight at the Seattle Center Playhouse, 250 people will be
privileged to hear her light, clear voice and her delicate but
forceful jazz-tuned piano, and to share for a while the company
of the lady called Blossom Dearie.
Blossom Dearie
[April 28, 1926 - February 7, 2009]
We will miss you, Blossom.
[April 28, 1926 - February 7, 2009]
We will miss you, Blossom.
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