Jimmy Rushing

James Andrew Rushing (August 26, 1901[1] – June 8, 1972) was an American blues and jazz singer, and pianist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948.[2]

Jimmy Rushing
Rushing in 1946
Background information
Birth nameJames Andrew Rushing
Born(1901-08-26)August 26, 1901
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.
DiedJune 8, 1972(1972-06-08) (aged 70)
New York City, New York
GenresBlues, jazz
Occupation(s)Singer
InstrumentsVocals, piano
Associated actsCount Basie, Bennie Moten, Walter Page, Dave Brubeck, Humphrey Lyttelton, Buck Clayton, Coleman Hawkins, Jelly Roll Morton, Billy King

Rushing was known as "Mr. Five by Five" and was the subject of an eponymous 1942 popular song that was a hit for Harry James and others; the lyrics describe Rushing's rotund build: "he's five feet tall and he's five feet wide".[2] He joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927 and then joined Bennie Moten's band in 1929.[2] He stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935.[2]

Rushing said that his first time singing in front of an audience was in 1924. He was playing piano at a club when the featured singer, Carlyn Williams, invited him to do a vocal. "I got out there and broke it up. I was a singer from then on," he said.[3]

Rushing was a powerful singer who had a range from baritone to tenor. He has sometimes been classified as a blues shouter. He could project his voice so that it soared over the horn and reed sections in a big-band setting. Basie claimed that Rushing "never had an equal" as a blues vocalist, though Rushing "really thought of himself as a ballad singer."[4][5] George Frazier, the author of Harvard Blues, called Rushing's distinctive voice "a magnificent gargle". Dave Brubeck defined Rushing's status among blues singers as "the daddy of them all."[3] Late in his life Rushing said of his singing style, "I don't know what kind of blues singer you'd call me. I just sing 'em."[3] Among his best-known recordings are "Going to Chicago", with Basie, and "Harvard Blues", with a famous saxophone solo by Don Byas.

Life and career

Rushing was born into a family with musical talent and accomplishments. His father, Andrew Rushing, was a trumpeter, and his mother, Cora, and her brother were singers. He studied music theory with Zelia N. Breaux at Frederick A. Douglass High School in Oklahoma City and was unusual among his musical contemporaries for having attended college at Wilberforce University.[6][7]

Rushing's father encouraged him to play violin. “He had bought me a violin, and he had forbidden me to touch the piano." But when his father "left the house, he'd lock the piano and give my mother the key. We'd watch him go away, and then she'd give me the key."[8]

Rushing was inspired to pursue music and sing blues by his uncle Wesley Manning and George "Fathead" Thomas of McKinney's Cotton Pickers.[9] He toured the Midwest and California as an itinerant blues singer in the early 1920s before moving to Los Angeles, where he played piano and sang with Jelly Roll Morton. He also sang with Billy King before moving on to Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927. He and other members of the Blue Devils defected to the Bennie Moten band in 1929.

Moten died in 1935, and Rushing joined Count Basie for what would be a 13-year job. Due to his tutelage under his mentor Moten, Rushing was a proponent of the Kansas City, Missouri, jump blues tradition exemplified by his performances of "Sent for You Yesterday" and "Boogie Woogie" for the Count Basie Orchestra. After leaving Basie, his recording career soared as a solo musician and a singer with other bands.

When the Basie band broke up in 1950 he retired briefly but then formed his own group. He made a guest appearance with Duke Ellington for the 1959 album Jazz Party.[10] In 1960, he recorded an album with the Dave Brubeck Quartet.[11]

He appeared in the 1957 television special Sound of Jazz, singing one of his signature songs, "I Left My Baby", backed by many of his former Basie band members. In 1958 he was among the musicians included in an Esquire magazine photo by Art Kane that was memorialized in the documentary film A Great Day in Harlem.[12] He toured the UK with Humphrey Lyttelton and his band. A BBC broadcast with Rushing accompanied by Lyttelton's big band was released in 2009. In 1960 he appeared in a videotaped blues jam at the Newport Jazz Festival with the Muddy Waters Blues Band, singing "Mean Mistreater".[13] In 1969 Rushing appeared in The Learning Tree, the first major studio feature film directed by an African-American, Gordon Parks.

Rushing died June 8, 1972 at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City, and was buried at the Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York.[14] Until weeks before his death, he was singing on weekends at the Half Note Club in Manhattan.[15] He lived in Jamaica, Queens.[16]

Rushing was married twice. He had two sons, Robert and William, with his second wife, Connie, to whom he was married from the 1940s until his death. Connie Rushing is credited with two compositions on his 1968 solo album Livin' the Blues.[17]

Rushing was one of eight jazz and blues legends honored in a set of United States Postal Service stamps issued in 1994.[18]

Critical assessment

Rushing was held in high critical esteem during his career and after his death. Whitney Balliett, jazz critic for The New Yorker, wrote of Rushing that, "His supple, rich voice and his elegant accent have the curious effect of making the typical roughhouse blues lyric seem like a song by Noël Coward".[19] The critic Nat Hentoff, who ranked Rushing as one of the "greatest blues singers," credited him as a seminal influence in the development of post–World War II popular black music. Hentoff wote that rhythm and blues "has its roots in the blues shouting of Jimmy Rushing...and in the equally stentorian delivery of Joe Turner..."[20] Scott Yanow described Rushing as the "perfect big band singer" who "was famous for his ability to sing blues, but in reality he could sing almost anything."[21] In an essay about his fellow Oklahoman, the writer Ralph Ellison wrote that it was "when Jimmy's voice began to soar with the spirit of the blues that the dancers – and the musicians – achieve that feeling of communion which was true meaning of the public jazz dance." Ellison said Rushing began as a singer of ballads, "bringing to them a sincerity and a feeling for dramatizing the lyrics in the musical phrase which charged the banal lines with the mysterious potentiality of meaning which haunts the blues." In contrast with Rushing's reputation, he "seldom comes across as a blues 'shouter,' but maintains the lyricism which has always been his way with the blues," wrote Ellison.[22] According to Gary Giddins, Rushing "brought operatic fervor to the blues,"[23] and of his time with Count Basie notes that "just about every record they made together is a classic."[24]

He was a four-time winner of Best Male Singer in the Critics' Poll of Melody Maker and a four-time winner of Best Male Singer in the International Critics' Poll in Down Beat.[25] His 1971 album The You and Me That Used to Be was named Jazz Album of the Year by Down Beat,[26] and he received the 1971 Grammy nomination Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist.[27]

Discography
  • Sings the Blues (Vanguard, 1955)
  • Goin' to Chicago (Vanguard, 1955)
  • Listen to the Blues with Jimmy Rushing (Jazztone, 1956)
  • Cat Meets Chick with Buck Clayton, Ada Moore (Columbia, 1956)
  • The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing Esq. with Buck Clayton (Columbia, 1957)
  • If This Ain't the Blues (Vanguard, 1958)
  • Little Jimmy Rushing and the Big Brass (Columbia, 1958)
  • Rushing Lullabies (Columbia, 1959)
  • Bessie - Clara - Mamie & Trixie (The Songs They Made Famous) (Columbia, 1961)
  • Five Feet of Soul (Colpix, 1963)
  • Big Boy Blues with Al Hibbler (Grand Prix Series, 1964)
  • Who Was It Sang That Song? (Master Jazz, 1967)
  • Every Day I Have the Blues with Oliver Nelson (Bluesway, 1967)
  • Livin' the Blues (Bluesway, 1968)
  • Blues and Things with Earl Hines (Master Jazz, 1968)
  • Gee Baby Ain't I Been Good to You (Master Jazz, 1971)
  • The You and Me That Used to Be (RCA, 1971)
  • Jimmy & Jimmy with Jimmy Witherspoon (Vogue, 1987)
  • The Scene: Live in New York with Al Cohn, Zoot Sims (HighNote, 2009)

As guest

With the Count Basie Orchestra

With others

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References
  1. "U.S. Social Security Act: Application for Account Number". web.archive.org. June 4, 1938. Archived from the original on May 21, 2010. Retrieved May 31, 2017.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  2. Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. Dubai: Carlton Books. p. 164. ISBN 1-85868-255-X.
  3. Rushing, Jimmy (1968). Livin' the Blues. Bluesway. Archived from the original on December 31, 2013. Retrieved December 31, 2013.
  4. Barlow, William (1989). "Looking Up at Down": The Emergence of Blues Culture, pp. 245–246. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-583-4.
  5. Basie, Count (1985). Good Morning Blues. New York: Random House. p. 182. ISBN 0-394-54864-7.
  6. Daniels, Douglas Henry (2007). One O'Clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils. Beacon Press. p. 52. ISBN 0-8070-7137-4.
  7. "Jimmy Rushing". Verve Music Group. Archived from the original on September 9, 2013. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  8. George Lang (January 29, 2012). "Remembering Jimmy Rushing, the 'Five by Five' man with the enormous voice". newsok.com. The Oklahoman. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
  9. Eagle, Bob L.; LeBlanc, Eric S. (May 1, 2013). Blues: A Regional Experience. ABC-CLIO. pp. 339–. ISBN 978-0-313-34424-4. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  10. Dance, Stanley (November 1, 1998). "Duke Ellington: Jazz Party". JazzTimes. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
  11. Yanow, Scott. "Brubeck & Rushing". AllMusic. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  12. Bach, Jean (1994). A Great Day in Harlem (Film). Flo-Bert and New York Foundation for the Arts. Retrieved December 30, 2013.
  13. "Muddy Waters Newport Jazz Festival 1960". YouTube. UMG (on behalf of Madison Bay Records); LatinAutor - PeerMusic, LatinAutor, BMG Rights Management, CMRRA, ARESA, Abramus Digital, and 4 Music Rights Societies. July 3, 1960. Retrieved December 5, 2019. 1803 Mean Mistreater - Muddy Waters: vocal, guitar; Pat Hare: guitar; Otis Spann: piano; James Cotton: harmonica; Andrew Stephenson (bass); Francis Clay (drums); Mean Mistreater Jam add Sammy Price (vocal); Betty Jeannette (vocal); Jimmy Rushing (vocal); Lafayette Thomas (guitar); Butch Cage (fiddle); Willie B Thomas (acoustic guitar); Al Minns and Leon James: hip shaking
  14. John S. Wilson (June 9, 1972). "Jimmy Rushing, Blues Singer With intense Voice, Dies at 68". nytimes.com. New York Times. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
  15. John S. Wilson (June 9, 1972). "Jimmy Rushing, Blues Singer With intense Voice, Dies at 68". nytimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
  16. Nat Hentoff (January 17, 2007). "Jazz's History Is Living in Queens . . ". wsj.com. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
  17. Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2003). All Music Guide to the Blues. Backbeat Books. pp. 486–. ISBN 978-0-87930-736-3. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  18. "American Music Series: Jazz Singers Issue". Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Retrieved December 31, 2013.
  19. Balliett, Whitney (2000). Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954–2000. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-312-20288-1.
  20. Hentoff, Nat (1959). Jazz: New Perspectives on the History of Jazz. New York: Rinehart. p. 100.
  21. Yanow, Scott (2000). Swing. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books. p. 264. ISBN 0-87930-600-9.
  22. Ellison, Ralph (2001). Living With Music. New York: Modern Library. pp. 43–49. ISBN 0-679-64034-7.
  23. Giddins, Gary (1998). Visions of Jazz: The First Century. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 201. ISBN 0-19-507675-3.
  24. Giddins, Gary (1998). Visions of Jazz: The First Century. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 184. ISBN 0-19-507675-3.
  25. "Jimmy Rushing". Verve Music Group. Archived from the original on September 9, 2013. Retrieved December 30, 2013.
  26. "1972 DownBeat Critics Poll". August 31, 1971. Archived from the original on December 30, 2013. Retrieved December 31, 2013.
  27. "GRAMMY Award Results for Jimmy Rushing". grammy.com. Retrieved July 25, 2019.

Further reading
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