Word: jazzed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...biggest factors in keeping her name going have been the two magnificent re-issues in Decca's first Gems of Jazz album, and a fifteen minute Sunday radio program with Lou Holtz that hardly did her justice. With the last now off the air, and all but one of her Columbia records recently cut out, Mildred is represented by only eight Deccas--which the public isn't buying because of the terrible surfaces...
...anything good. For accompaniment she got the best musicians available. Some of them, like Teddy Wilson, Artic Shaw, Chu Berry are well known; others, like Hank d'Amico, Chris Griffin are not. But the most ignominious musician on her dates complemented Mildred's singing and not incidentally produced good jazz. In fact, John Kirby's band has never played quite so well as when it backed up Mildred's Vocalion, version of "Downhearted Blues...
Horrible grimaces and irrepressible feet may yet take Negro Pianist Dorothy Donegan places where her ten amazing fingers would not get her so fast. Wrote Down Beat, the blase semimonthly gospel of some 47,000 U.S. jazz fans: "She is, to us, the ideal in piano stylings. . . . We beckon to Hazel Scott to learn how the classics are swung. We invite Bob Zurke, Jess Stacy, Joe Sullivan, Billy Kyle, all of them, to see phenomenal piano work...
...about time, however, that someone came out and gave Mildred her due. Downbeat and Metronome give her a kind word now and then, taking her for granted most of the time. The more csoteric jazz magazines ignore her completely. As a result, the rising generation of jazz lovers misses out almost entirely. Peggy Lees may come and Ramonas may go, but Mildred Bailey remains the best female singer since Bessic Smith. The strange part of the public's ignoring of Mildred is that she resembles in many respects the greatest living male singer, Bing Crosby...
Besides having grown up together, Bing and Mildred worked for Paul Whiteman when Whiteman's band included the greatest living white jazz men. Mildred may have stuck closer to the righteous music and Bing may have headed for greener commercial pastures, but their essential tastes and styles are the same...