Background
James Andrew Rushing was born into a black middle-class family in Oklahoma City, Okla. , the son of Andrew Rushing, owner of a luncheonette and a part-time trumpet player, and Cora Freeman, who sang and played piano.
(2 lp's on 1 cd, 24 bit digitally remastered, stereo, orig...)
2 lp's on 1 cd, 24 bit digitally remastered, stereo, original redordings.
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(Jimmy Rushing And The Smith Girls/The Jazz Odyssey Of Jam...)
Jimmy Rushing And The Smith Girls/The Jazz Odyssey Of James Rushing Esq/Li
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James Andrew Rushing was born into a black middle-class family in Oklahoma City, Okla. , the son of Andrew Rushing, owner of a luncheonette and a part-time trumpet player, and Cora Freeman, who sang and played piano.
His parents wanted him to play the violin, which, Rushing said, "I wouldn't, couldn't. " An uncle, an itinerant musician named Wesley Manning, started Rushing on the piano. In grade school and in the church choir, Rushing frequently performed in holiday pageants as a boy soprano. In high school, he studied music theory with an eye toward a teaching career. To that end, he attended Wilberforce University for a short time in the early 1920's.
Rushing's desire was to follow the road of the jazz musician. As a teenager, Rushing went to local bars to listen, to learn, and occasionally to sit in with musicians. He ran away from home and went to Chicago, then followed local bands and performers from city to city, state to state. In 1925, Rushing went to Los Angeles, where his first significant professional job was a short stint with the band of the great Jelly Roll Morton. As a pianist, however, Rushing was not as proficient as he needed to be, especially with the more skilled Jelly Roll nearby. His youth and lack of experience were also against him. Frustrated with what he felt was a "vagabond" existence, Rushing returned in 1926 to Oklahoma City, where for a while he worked at his father's luncheonette.
His father's continued contact with itinerant musicians, such as the great blues singers, Mamie Smith and Bessie Smith (not related), reignited Rushing's desire to return to the music business. While Rushing was performing with a local group, the reigning jazz band making the Oklahoma circuit in the 1920's, the Blue Devils, led by bassist Walter Page, heard him sing and asked him to join their group. According to Rushing, "That was it!" Music would be his life's calling.
Rushing toured locally with the Blue Devils, and the group became known throughout the Southwest. In addition to Page, the band included William ("Count") Basie on piano and trumpeter Oran ("Hot Lips") Page.
It is believed that although blues were being sung by many performers, Rushing was the first to sing them with a big band. In 1929, after the Blue Devils broke up, Rushing and Basie joined a band led by Bennie Moten. They traveled widely, meeting and "battling" other bands, such as that of Chick Webb (later a mentor of Ella Fitzgerald). After Moten's death in 1935, the band drifted apart. Basie and Rushing performed together, but neither felt they were getting anywhere.
In 1936, while doing a radio spot, Rushing and Basie came to the attention of a music impresario, John Hammond. He encouraged Basie to form his own band, with Rushing as his lead singer. This partnership was one of the most famous in the history of American popular music and jazz. According to Rushing, "Most of the people had never heard anything like our band, and they didn't catch on for a while. " Once the band came to New York, Hammond, along with the Music Corporation of America management, suggested the addition of Billie Holiday and Helen Humes.
With Rushing as its lead singer, the Basie band became one of the legends of the big-band era. For fifteen years Rushing was the Basie band's lead singer. The band soon came to the attention of Hollywood producers. Rushing's and Basie's debut in movies occurred in a film starring the singer-dancer Donald O'Connor. In Crazy House, starring Olsen and Johnson (1943), Rushing jitterbugged with singer-dancer Thelma Carpenter.
When Basie's original group disbanded, Rushing retired from the uncertainty of the music business, under pressure from his wife, Connie Ingram. Unable to adjust to "ordinary life, " and needing night life, he returned to New York, where he rejoined Basie as the lead singer of a combo instead of a band. Feeling confident that he could do well on his own, Rushing left Basie in 1950 to form his own group. But the difficulties of leading a band were more than he could handle; in 1952, he disbanded the group and began life as a predominantly solo singer.
Until the 1970's, Rushing also enjoyed limited success as a singer with some of the most famous bands and musicians. But this side of the music business had its problems. For some years Rushing was unwilling to sign a long contract with one manager or booker, and had a hard time managing himself. His standards as an artist were high, and since work could be hard to come by because he would not modify his style to suit emergent trends, he sang "where he could. "
Despite the difficult years as a single performer, Rushing had some success in Europe with big bands in the 1950's, such as that of Humphrey Lyttleton in England, that found his kind of music appealing. For several years, he was the featured vocalist with Eddie Condon's and Benny Goodman's orchestras. In time, Rushing's style and kind of music moved to the periphery of the music world. At his death in New York City, Rushing's fame had diminished, yet appraisals of his work are worth recalling.
(Jimmy Rushing And The Smith Girls/The Jazz Odyssey Of Jam...)
(2 lp's on 1 cd, 24 bit digitally remastered, stereo, orig...)
(N/A)
Quotations: Rushing said of the band and this period, "We used to play battles of music against Lawrence Welk. He wasn't too well known then, except. around Minnesota and Wisconsin. "
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 her husband's 1968 solo album, Livin' the Blues.