Annie Ross

All Music Guide:

Not just the canary female whose dexterous vocals highlighted recordings by the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Annie Ross recorded more than a dozen albums of solid vocal jazz and appeared in many movies. Though she was the last member to join LH&R, she had been pursuing the same pioneering fusions of vocal music with bop delivery for several years before she joined Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks.

Born Annabelle Lynch in Surrey, England, she moved to Los Angeles at the age of three, with the musical comedienne Ella Logan (either her mother or her aunt, according to differing accounts). By the age of five, she had begun acting and landed roles in the Our Gang series. She later studied acting in New York, then moved back to England where she began singing in nightclubs. Her recording debut came in Paris, with a quartet including James Moody. By 1952, Ross was back in New York and recording with most of the Modern Jazz Quartet for her first album, Singin' and Swingin'. Later that year, she recorded an album with vocalese pioneer King Pleasure. Though she featured on only four tracks of King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings, her reprise of tenor Wardell Gray's solo on the song "Twisted" became a vocalese landmark.

During 1953, Annie Ross toured throughout Europe with one of Lionel Hampton's best bands (including Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones, and Gigi Gryce). She stayed there for several years and recorded albums for HMV and Pye before returning to America in 1957 when a New York nightclub engagement beckoned. While there, she did a vocal session with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks, who were working on an album of Basie solos transposed for vocals. Realizing they shared much in common, Ross was invited to join the group, naturally christened Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

An immediate success with their first album, 1957's Sing a Song of Basie, the trio revolutionized vocal music with a set of light-speed scats that treated words as mere tools in the construction of exciting feats of vocal musicianship. Relentless touring and rumors of a falling out with Hendricks finally led to Ross' exit from the band in 1962. (Though LH&R soon became LH&B with the addition of Yolande Bavan, it was quite clear that Ross' role had been an important one, and the group disbanded less than two years later.)

Even while involved with the group, Annie Ross had continued her solo career with few interruptions. In late 1957, she recorded Sings a Song with Mulligan for the World Pacific label, with West Coast stars Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker in support on a set of bright standards that highlighted her interpretive skills as well as a few flights of vocal fancy. Two additional LPs followed for World Pacific, A Gasser! (with Zoot Sims) and a straight rendition of the Broadway hit Gypsy. After LH&R split, she moved back to England and resumed her stage and film career, recording only three more albums during the '60s. A few years back in Los Angeles gained her parts in high-profile movies during the '80s and '90s, including Superman III, Pump Up the Volume, and Robert Altman's Short Cuts. For the latter film, she recorded several numbers for the soundtrack, and re-emerged with a new recording for 1995, Music Is Forever.

Wikipedia:

Annie Ross (born 25 July 1930) is a Scottish jazz singer, chanteuse and actress, best known as a member of the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

Early life

She was born as Annabelle Allan Short, in Mitcham, London, the daughter of Scottish vaudevillians Jack Short and May Dalziel Short (née Allan). Her brother was entertainer Jimmy Logan. At the age of four, she went to New York in an immigration ship with her family; she later recalled that they "got the cheapest ticket, which was right in the bowels of the ship". Shortly after arriving in the city, she won a token contract with MGM through a children's radio contest run by Paul Whiteman. She subsequently moved with her aunt Ella Logan to Los Angeles, and her mother, father and brother returned to Scotland to be with the rest of their family. At the age of eight, she sang "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" in Our Gang Follies of 1938, and played Judy Garland's sister in Presenting Lily Mars (1943). At the end of tenth grade, she left school, changed her name to Annie Ross, and went to Europe, where she quickly established her singing career.

Career

In 1952, Ross met Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock, who asked her to write lyrics to a jazz solo, in a similar way to King Pleasure, a practice which would later be known as vocalese. The next day, she presented him with "Twisted", a treatment of saxophonist Wardell Gray's 1949 composition of the same name, a classic example of the genre. The song, first released on the 1952 album King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings, was an underground hit, and resulted in her winning Down Beat's New Star award. Her first solo album, Singin' and Swingin' (1952,) was recorded in New York with members of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Other albums include Annie By Candlelight (1956), Sings A Song With Mulligan (1958) with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker on trumpet, A Gasser! (1959) with Zoot Sims, In Hoagland (1981) with Georgie Fame and Hoagy Carmichael, and Music Is Forever (1995) featuring Tommy Flanagan on piano.

In February 1956, the British music magazine NME reported that Ross's song "I Want You to be My Baby" was banned by the BBC, due to the lyric "Come upstairs and have some loving".

She recorded seven albums with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross between 1957 and 1962. Their first, Sing a Song of Basie (1957), was to have been performed by a group of singers hired by Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert with Ross brought in only as vocal consultant. When the first two tracks were recorded and deemed unsatisfactory, it was decided that the trio should attempt to record the material and overdub all the additional vocals themselves. The resulting album was a success, and the trio became an international hit. Over the next five years, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross toured all over the world and recorded such albums as Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross! (aka The Hottest New Group In Jazz, 1959), Sing Ellington (1960), High Flying (1962), and The Real Ambassadors (1962), written by Dave Brubeck and featuring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae.

Ross left the group in 1962 and, in 1964, opened her own nightclub in London. Annie's Room featured performances by Joe Williams, Stuff Smith, Blossom Dearie, Anita O'Day, Jon Hendricks, Erroll Garner, and Ross herself. A compilation album of Ross's 1965 performances from Annie's Room was released on CD in 2006.

Some notable film roles that she played as an adult include Vera Webster in Superman III (1983), Mrs. Hazeltine in Throw Momma from the Train (1987), Loretta Cresswood in Pump Up the Volume (1990), Lydia in Blue Sky (1994), and most notably as Tess Trainer in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993).

She provided the speaking voice for Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man (1973). On stage, Ross appeared in Cranks (1955) in both London and New York, The Threepenny Opera (1972) with Vanessa Redgrave, The Seven Deadly Sins at the Royal Opera House, Kennedy's Children (1975) at Arts Theatre, London, Side By Side By Sondheim, and in the Joe Papp production of The Pirates of Penzance (1982) with Tim Curry.

In the early 1990s, Ross starred in the horror films Basket Case 2 and Basket Case 3: The Progeny.

She has received numerous awards and honours including the ASCAP Jazz Wall Of Fame (2009), the prestigious NEA Jazz Masters' Award (2010), and the MAC Award for Lifetime Achievement (2011). She performs regularly at the Metropolitan Room (34 W. 22nd Street) in New York, with Tardo Hammer on piano, Neal Miner on bass, Tony Jefferson on drums, and Warren Vache on trumpet.

A documentary about Ross's life, entitled No One But Me, premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in 2012.

Personal life

In 1949, Ross had a brief affair with drummer Kenny Clarke. This affair produced a son, Kenny Clarke Jr, who was brought up by Clarke's family. During her time with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, she became addicted to heroin, and by 1960, Carol Sloane was regularly substituting for her on tour. After a performance by the trio in London in May 1962, she stayed there to kick the habit.

In 1963, she married the actor Sean Lynch. By 1975, she had divorced Lynch, lost her home, and declared bankruptcy.

She became a U.S. citizen in 2001.