Friday, November 29, 2013

Marian Montgomery

Artist: Marian Montgomery
LP: Swings For Winners and Losers 
Song: "Breezin' Along With the Breeze"
[ listen ]
Song: "Confessin' the Blues"
[ listen ]

I've been weeding records out of the vocalist section of my collection over the past few days and, as usual, I've re-discovered some gems along the way. Marian Montgomery's 1963 debut LP is one of them. A few years after the release of "Swings For Winners and Losers," Marian went to England to perform. She fell in love there with pianist Laurie Holloway, they married, and she never came back. She eventually changed the spelling of her name to "Marion," and she and her ivory-tickling husband became fixtures in the London jazz scene. It was a long road from Marian's birthplace in Natchez, Mississippi to the swinging London of the '60s; you can read about Marian's journey down that road on Wikipedia here. The lovely Ms. Montgomery also talks about her early life and career on the Jazz Professional website here (I especially enjoyed reading that she always used to hang out in record stores), and there's an interview with her on the back of this album that I've included below.
 
 [ Marian Montgomery: November 17, 1934 — July22, 2002 ]

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