Who is etta jones

Johnson immediately hired her to fill in for his vocalist sister, Ella Johnson, who was leaving the band to have a baby. Jones toured with Johnson's man band for a year, until Ella returned, thus beginning a series of stints with other medium- and big-band New York jazz groups, including the Harlemaires and the Barney Bigards Orchestra.

It was with the latter that Jones made her first recording, arranged by pianist Leonard Feather in In subsequent years she performed and recorded with such jazz personalities as Pete Johnson, J. In she started singing with Earl "Fatha" Hines, performing with his band for the next three years. Jones also attempted to launch a solo career, though she was not successful at first.

This decision limited her audience and her exposure as an artist, and for a number of years she remained an obscure singer. Throughout the s Jones faced hard times and had to take day jobs occasionally to make ends meet, working as an elevator operator, an album stuffer, and a seamstress. She continued to perform sporadically, as opportunities arose. In Jones recorded her first full-length album, The Jones Girl Sings, Sings, Sings , with King Records.

But the album debuted with little fanfare and went largely unnoticed. The tables turned for Jones in when her manager, Warren Lanier, sent a demo tape to Esmond Edwards, a producer at Prestige Records. Edwards liked the tape and decided to sign Jones immediately. On the Prestige label she recorded the album Don't Go to Strangers , released in Since Strangers was a jazz album, no one expected it to appeal to a mainstream audience.

Yet the title song was an instant hit, selling one million copies and putting Jones' name on the top 40 charts. The song even earned her a Grammy Award nomination--the first of three in her career. While Jones was not an overnight success, she was a sudden success. Riding on this triumph, Jones recorded several more albums for Prestige throughout the s.

But, jazz audiences were dwindling in the United States with the arrival of the Beatles and the growing popularity of pop and rock sounds. As if to make up for lost time, she recorded eighteen records for the company, and worked steadily both in New York and on the international jazz festival circuit, including appearances in New York with pianist Billy Taylor at Town Hall and saxophonist Illinois Jacquet at Carnegie Hall. She favored a repertoire of familiar jazz standards; the improvisatory style of her phrasing drew at least as much on the example of horn players as singers, but owed something to Billie Holiday in its sensitivity and phrasing she was said to do remarkable impersonations of Holiday in private.

She took a tougher, blues-rooted approach from Dinah Washington or the less familiar Thelma Carpenter, a singer with the Count Basie band whom Jones acknowledged as an early influence on her own style. Unfortunately, her physical health began deteriorating, yet she re-emerged in the early s with a new passion for life and a spirit for musical adventure. She took on more solo gigs and began collaborating with young musicians such as pianist Benny Green and veteran bluesman Charles Brown.

She continued to perform regularly until just before her death, and still had forthcoming engagements in her diary when she succumbed to complications from cancer.

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