Annie Ross

Annie Ross (born 25 July 1930, Mitcham, London, England, UK) is an English 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' 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.

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 bankrupcy.

She became a U.S. citizen in 2001.

Discography

Solo albums

• Singin' and Swingin' (with Dorothy Dunn and Shelby Davis) (1952)
• King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings (1952)
• Tony Crombie And His Orchestra (1954) (Decca DFE6247)
• Annie By Candlelight (1956)
• Nocturne For Vocalist (EP) (1956)
• Sings A Song With Mulligan! (1958)
• A Gasser! (with Zoot Sims) (1959)
• Gypsy (1959)
• Loguerhythms (1962)
• Sings A Handful Of Songs (1963)
• Facade (1967)
• You and Me Baby (Live at Hampstead Theatre) (1970)
• In Hoagland (with Hoagy Carmichael and Georgie Fame) (1981)
• Music Is Forever (1995)
• Cool For Kids (2001)
• Let Me Sing (2005)

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross albums

• Sing a Song of Basie (1957)
• Sing Along With Basie (1958)
• The Swingers! (1958)
• Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross! (aka "The Hottest New Group In Jazz") (1959)
• Sing Ellington (1960)
• The Real Ambassadors (with Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Carmen McRae) (1962)
• High Flying (aka "The Way-Out Voices of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross") (1962)

Live albums

• Annie Ross & Pony Poindexter (1967)
• You And Me Baby (1971)
• Annie Ross In Poland,1965 (2002)
• Live In London,1965 (2006)

Soundtrack albums

• Cranks (Original London Cast Recording) (1955)
• Short Cuts (Soundtrack) (1993)

Compilation albums

• Everybody's Boppin' (1990)
• Twisted - The Best Of Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross (1992)
• Skylark (combines Annie By Candlelight and Nocturne For Vocalist) (1996)
• The Hottest New Group In Jazz (combines Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross, Sing Ellington, and High Flying) (1996)
• A Handfull [sic] Of Songs...And More (combines Sings A Handful Of Songs and four previously unreleased tracks recorded live in Tel Aviv in 1956) (2000)
• Twisted (2008)
• Improvisations For The Human Voice (2009)
• Zoot Sims Meets Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross. Los Angeles 1959 (2010)
• Four Classic Albums (combines Annie By Candlelight, Sings A Song With Mulligan, A Gasser, and Gypsy) (2011)

External links

• Official site
• Annie Ross at the Internet Movie Database
• Annie Ross at AllRovi