Jeanne Lee, Jazz Singer Who Embraced Avant-Garde, Dies at 61
By BEN RATLIFF
Jeanne Lee, one of the great jazz singers in the avant-garde tradition and a teacher of singing, composition and movement, died on Wednesday in Tijuana, Mexico. She was 61.
The cause was cancer, said her daughter Naima Hazelton.
Because Ms. Lee performed in two radically different styles, her singing was difficult to categorize. One of her voices was dry, slow and breathy, influenced by Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington.
In 1961 she and a classmate from Bard College, the pianist Ran Blake, performed as a duo at the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night contest. They won, and the album they later recorded, "The Newest Sound Around" (later reissued on CD as "The Legendary Duets"), has remained a cult favorite.
In jazz standards and Thelonious Monk tunes on the album, Ms. Lee and Mr. Blake subtracted swing, but added intellectual coolness, abstruse piano harmonies and vocal influences from Holiday and Washington; the record is a series of minimalist dreams. (In 1989 she and Mr. Blake recorded a duet album in the same style, "You Stepped Out of a Cloud.")
In her other vocal style, Ms. Lee approached words as sounds; this voice was harsh and booming, and she used her teeth, lips and tongue to wring drama out of each syllable, presaging singers like Diamanda Galas. In the mid-1960's she was a multidisciplinary artist, writing music with members of the Fluxus school like Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins, and gradually becoming more aligned with the rest of the late-1960's avant-garde in jazz.
When she met and fell in love with the vibraphonist and composer Gunter Hampel in 1967, she began 20 years of collaborations with him in different jazz-related forms.
While at Bard, Ms. Lee had studied child psychology and in 1970 was awarded a Martin Luther King Fellowship for Urban Studies by New York University to develop a curriculum for elementary school students that combined music and dance with academic subjects.
She shuttled between New York and Europe until the late 1980's, living and working with Mr. Hampel, performing in duets, small groups and big bands, as well as conducting clinics and workshops; the couple made some 25 albums together, many of them for Mr. Hampel's own label, Birth.
Ms. Lee also recorded with Marion Brown, Andrew Cyrille, Carla Bley, Peter Kowald and Reggie Workman, among others. She was active as a composer, combining vocal jazz with music and dance, working often with the choreographer Mickey Davidson.
She lived in New York from 1994 to 1996 and for the last five years taught music and movement at conservatories in Antwerp, Belgium, and in The Hague.
In addition to Ms. Hazelton of Los Angeles, she is survived by another daughter, Cavana Lee-Hampel of Berlin; a son, Ruomi Lee-Hampel of New York; and a grandson.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Steve Allen, the droll comic who pioneered late night television with the original ``Tonight Show,'' composed more than 4,000 songs and wrote 40 books, has died at 78.
He died Monday night at the Encino home of his son, Bill Allen, the son said Tuesday.
Allen also starred as the King of Swing in the 1956 movie ``The Benny Goodman Story.'' He appeared in Broadway shows, on soap operas, wrote newspaper columns, commented on wrestling broadcasts, made 40 record albums, wrote plays and a television series that featured guest appearances by Sigmund Freud, Clarence Darrow and Aristotle.
His skill as an ad libber became apparent in his early career as a disc jockey in Phoenix. He once interrupted the playing of records to announce: ``Sports fans, I have the final score for you on the big game between Harvard and William & Mary. It is: Harvard 14, William 12, Mary 6.''
Allen's most enduring achievement came with the introduction of ``The Tonight Show'' in 1953. The show began as ``Tonight'' on the New York NBC station WNBT, then moved to the network on Sept. 27, 1954.
Amid the formality of early TV, ``Tonight'' was a breath of fresh air. The show began with Allen noodling at the piano, playing some of his compositions and commenting wittily on events of the day. He moved to a desk, chatted with guests, taking part in sketches, doing zany man-in-the street interviews.
``It was tremendous fun to sit there night after night reading questions from the audience and trying to think up funny answers to them; reading angry letters to the editor; introducing the greats of comedy, jazz, Broadway and Hollywood; welcoming new comedians like
Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, Mort Sahl and Don Adams,'' he once said.
Allen's popularity led NBC in 1956 to schedule ``The Steve Allen Show'' on Sunday evenings opposite ``The Ed Sullivan Show'' on CBS.
A variation of ``Tonight,'' the primetime show was notable for its ``Man in the Street Interview'' featuring new comics Louis Nye (``Hi-ho, Steverino''), Don Knotts, Tom Poston, Pat Harrington and Bill Dana. The show lasted through 1961, although the last year was on ABC.
Allen cut back his ``Tonight' duties to three nights a week when the primetime show started. He left even that in 1956. He was replaced for a season by Ernie Kovacs, then NBC tried a new format in 1957, ``Tonight! America after Dark.'' It failed, and ``Tonight'' resumed with Jack Paar, followed by Johnny Carson in 1962.
Over the years, Allen maintained a busy career, making appearances in movies and TV series, often with his wife Jayne., Her sister, the late Audrey Meadows, portrayed the long-suffering Alice to Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden on ``The Honeymooners.''
He wrote great quantities of songs, and several were recorded by pop vocalists. His most popular song was ``This May Be the Start of Something Big.''
A self-styled advocate of ``radical middle-of-the-roadism,'' Allen often spoke out on political matters such as capital punishment, nuclear policy and freedom of expression. He once considered running for Congress as a Democrat, but decided against it.
Toward the end of his life, he spoke out against the increase of sexual content on television. In a speech last year, he said tabloid television talk shows such as the ``Jenny Jones'' show have ``taken television to the garbage dump.''
``There are moral failures in the marketplace,'' he said.
Allen was proudest of his ``Meeting of Minds'' series which appeared on PBS from 1976 to 1979. He moderated a panel of actors impersonating historic figures such as Galileo, Emily Dickinson, Cleopatra (played by Jayne Meadows), Charles Darwin and Attila the Hun, who explained their diverse philosophies.
When an interviewer asked Allen in 1985 how he managed to do so many creative things, he replied:
``I never asked myself that question. It would be like asking how my hair grows. The mystery of creativity is just that: it is a mystery, and particularly mysterious to me about myself.''
Steve Allen came by his humor naturally; both his parents, Billy Allen and Belle Montrose, were vaudeville comedians. Their son was born in New York City on Dec. 26, 1921, during a brief respite from their travels. Steve was 18 months old when his father died, and his mother continued touring the circuits as a single.
The boy grew up in other people's homes, mostly with his mother's family in Chicago, the Donahues. He remembered the place as ``a rooming house with the smell of cabbage cooking.''
Allen won a partial scholarship to study journalism at Drake University, but severe asthma caused him to transfer to Arizona State Teachers College in 1942. After a few months he dropped out to work as a disc jockey and entertainer at radio station KOY in Phoenix.
Drafted in 1943, he was soon released because of asthma. He returned to KOY, and married his college sweetheart, Dorothy Goodman. They had three sons, Steve Jr., David and Brian, and divorced in 1952.
Allen moved to Los Angeles and began offering his comedy and music on local radio.
A midnight show on KNX brought Allen a small but enthusiastic audience and attracted national attention in 1950 when it was carried on the CBS network as a summer replacement for ``Our Miss Brooks.'' The networks were converting to television, and he was invited to New York for ``The Steve Allen Show,'' which appeared five evenings a week on CBS.
In 1952, Allen was invited to a dinner party at which he was seated next to the beautiful actress Jayne Meadows. Uncharacteristically, he was speechless.
At the end of the evening, she turned to him and said, ``Mr. Allen, you're either the rudest man I ever met or the shyest.'' His reddened face indicated the latter. They began dating and married in 1954.
Their only child, Bill, said that on Monday, his father was visiting his home. ``He said he was a little tired after dinner. He went to relax, peacefully, and never reawakened,'' the younger Allen said.
He added that his father had a ``long, full and extraordinary life.''
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Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 21:34:12 -0500
From: alan zweig <azed@pathcom.com>
Subject: (exotica) up the down spiral of my finances
I really can't afford it and I don't like to spend more than twenty bucks
for a record - and that's twenty bucks Canadian! - but I rationalized (a
Kruder and Dorfmeister CD can cost me thirty bucks) and got caught up in
the thing and one thing led to another and I went a bit past my preferred
limit to "win" a sealed copy of Up the Down Staircase. I just hope I like
it. Forget about it being a collector's or sought after piece. If I like
it, I'll eventually be able to rationalize it. But I have to like it a lot
more than for instance, I like "The Wild Eye" or "Seven Golden Men" (which
are for sale if anyone wants to make me a reasonable offer.)
I don't blame you guys but if you had never talked about it in such glowing
terms, I would be a bit richer now.
AZ
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Date: Wed, 1 Nov 00 00:15:04 -0400
From: "Michael D. Toth" <mtoth@neo.lrun.com>
Subject: (exotica) "Perez Prado 2000 - Club Remixes" CD
In what may be the first significant shockwave of the "Mambo #5"
phenomenon, I found a listing on CDNow for a Various Artists CD which,
according to CDNow, is due for release Nov. 28. It's compellingly called
"Mambo Party: Perez Prado 2000 - Club Remixes." In the right hands, this
could be a really cool disc. (And could be really nauseating in the wrong
hands!)
CD-Now doesn't have *ANY* information -- record label, artist lineup,
anything, except someone apparently mis-keyed the retail price with an
extra "1" (either that or this is an extremely unusual release with a
$112.98 list price!).
Did this release come up in one of those Exotica digests I never got
around to reading? ;-D Does anyone know *anything* about this release?
(SIDE NOTE: I'll go on record here and state I genuinely enjoy Lou Bega.
Postmodern mambo recycling with fun, mindless bubblegum lyrical and
melody hooks. I for one wish a "Mambogum" cash-in craze would have taken
over the Top-40. While I don't care for all of his stuff and Bega can be
somewhat of a goof, when it really comes together I think it's pretty
wonderful. If somebody here hasn't investigated his stuff, the songs RCA
pushed as singles, in Europe at least, IMO are all strong dumb, snappy
pop numbers. You can check out music video excerpts for them at the link
