Sat Aug 14, 2010 at 17:46:04 PM EDT
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(9am~ - promoted by RiaD)
One of my favorite singers of all time - Abbey Lincoln has died at the age of 80. As this excerpt from the NY Times says:
Ms. Lincoln's career encompassed outspoken civil rights advocacy in the 1960s and fearless introspection in more recent years, and for a time in the 1960s she acted in films with Sidney Poitier.
Long recognized as one of jazz's most arresting and uncompromising singers, Ms. Lincoln gained similar stature as a songwriter only over the last two decades.
 
After the jump is a profile I wrote about her some time ago. |
| Ed Tracey :: RIP - jazz singer & civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln |
| Someone bridging the game between jazz singing, social activism and acting is Abbey Lincoln who, despite open-heart surgery, was still active into her late seventies.
Born Anna Marie Woolridge in Chicago, she was given the name Abbey Lincoln by a former manager who said, "Abraham Lincoln didn't free the slaves, but maybe you can handle it". She sang in the 1957 Jayne Mansfield film "The Girl Can't Help It" and began a recording career with several star musicians including Sonny Rollins. She met the drummer Max Roach (who died in 2007) and appeared on his landmark album We Insist! - Freedom Now from 1960. She and Roach were married from 1962-1970, but she found it difficult to find work during that period due to the political nature of some of her music.
She turned to acting for several years, including a 1964 starring role alongside Ivan Dixon (who passed away in 2008) in Nothing But a Man as well as alongside Sidney Poitier and Beau Bridges in 1968's For the Love of Ivy (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination). She resumed her singing career in the 1970's and in the 1980's recorded a tribute album to Billie Holiday.
But it was her signing with Verve Records in the 1990's that truly ignited her career, under the watchful eye of the label's Paris-based producer Jean-Phillipe Allard. Playing a variety of styles (including Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man") she has thrived - accompanied at times on viola by her daughter Maxine Roach - with her 2007 album Abbey Sings Abbey in which she sings nearly all original songs. Abbey Lincoln also recently received a National Endowment of the Arts lifetime achievement award.
One of her standout Verve Records albums was 1991's You Gotta Pay the Band recorded with three standout musicians: pianist Hank Jones, bassist Charlie Haden and saxophonist Stan Getz (not long before Getz passed away). And one song, the title track to the film Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams - with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman (fair-use extract below) - is my favorite recorded song of the entire decade of the 1990's.
I can't embed it, but at this link you can listen to it.
Summer wishes, winter dreams
Drifting down forgotten streams
Songs and faces
Smiles and whispers
Come from far away
To visit me this day
Yesterday has come to tea
Sitting here across from me
Dressed in faded flowers
And rambling on for hours...
...and hours; I'd love to stay
But I must leave today |
