Billy Eckstine

   
Artist: Billy Eckstine

   Genre(s): 
Jazz
   

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Discography:


   
 Jazz Masters 22

   Year:    
Tracks: 16

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Billy Eckstine's smooth barytone and typical vibrato stony-broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original boP big band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music. An influence looming large in the cultural development of soul and R&B singers from Sam Cooke to Prince, Eckstine was able to play it straight on his pop hits "Prisoner of Love," "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." Born in Pittsburgh merely raised in Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the years of seven and entered many amateur talent shows. He had besides planned on a football game vocation, though after breaking his neckband bone he made music his focal point. After working his manner western United States to Chicago during the late '30s, Eckstine was hired by Earl Hines to join his Grand Terrace Orchestra in 1939. Though ovalbumin bands of the geological era featured males singing straightahead quixotic ballads, pitch-dark bands were forced to stick to trinket or megrims vocal numbers until the second Coming of Christ of Eckstine and Herb Jeffries (from Duke Ellington's Orchestra).


Though several of Eckstine's first hits with Hines were novelties like "Jelly, Jelly" and "The Jitney Man," he as well recorded several straightahead songs, including the reach "Stormy Monday." By 1943, he gained a trinity of starring bandmates -- Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan. After forming his own big ring that year, he chartered all 3 and bit by bit recruited still more modernist figures and future stars: Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Fats Navarro, and Art Blakey as advantageously as arrangers Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller. The Billy Eckstine Orchestra was the first boP big band, and its leader reflected bebop innovations by stretching his vocal harmonics into his normal ballads. Despite the group's modernist slant, Eckstine dispatch the charts a great deal during the mid-'40s, with Top Ten entries including "A Cottage for Sale" and "Captive of Love." On the group's haunt European and American tours, Eckstine as well played trumpet, valve trombone and guitar.


Though he was forced to give up the band in 1947 (John Birks Gillespie formed his have federal Bureau of Prisons big band that like year), Eckstine made the transition to string-filled balladry with ease. He recorded more than than a twelve hits during the late '40s, including "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." He was as well quite a popular in Britain, hit the Top Ten there twice during the '50s -- "No One But You" and "Gigi" -- as advantageously as several duet entries with Sarah Vaughan. Eckstine returned to his idle words roots at times as well, recording with Vaughan, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones for discriminate LPs, and the 1960 live LP No Cover, No Minimum featured him taking a few trumpet solos as well. He recorded several albums for Mercury and Roulette during the early '60s (his boy Ed was the chairperson of Mercury), and he appeared on Motown for a few standards albums during the mid-'60s. After recording very meagerly during the '70s, Eckstine made his last recording (Truncheon Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter) in 1986. He died of a heart attack in 1993.