Janet Thurlow
Janet Thurlow | |
|---|---|
| Born | 21 May 1926 Lionel Hampton Orchestra 's septet and octet |
Janet Lorraine Thurlow (May 21, 1926 – October 4, 2022) was an American jazz singer.
Biography
Early life
Thurlow was born on May 21, 1926, in Seattle – the first of five children. She took violin, piano, and singing lessons as a teenager.
In 1949, she began as a "song stylist" with Robert "Bumps" Blackwell's Seattle-based band,[3] which at that time had a 16-year old Quincy Jones as arranger and trumpet player and Ray Charles, then known as "R.C.", playing piano and alto sax.[4]
Lionel Hampton Orchestra
In 1950, Lionel Hampton hired her to play with his band.[1] Thurlow convinced Hampton to hire her friend Quincy Jones as a trumpeter.[5] In the April 1951, Thurlow recorded the song "I Can't Believe You're in Love with Me" with Hampton's orchestra for Decca Records.[6] Mike Barnes wrote that this recording made "her perhaps the first white singer to front an all-Black big band."[1] In August 1951, Thurlow performed with Hampton's orchestra at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood.[7] At the end of that month, they performed at the Trianon Ballroom in Seattle that featured Jones and Thurlow as "Two Seattleites".[1][3]
That same year, Thurlow met trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, a fellow band member with Hampton's orchestra.[8] They married on April 2, 1953 in Chicago.[9]
After Hampton
In November 1952, Thurlow converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses.[10]
By April 1953, Thurlow had left Hampton's orchestra and was performing solo in Chicago.[11]
On October 28, 1953, she was the vocalist on "Eclipse," a song about interracial romance written by Charles Mingus, and recorded with his octet.[12]
Thurlow during this time began to volunteer as a violinist at Jehovah's Witnesses' regional conventions at New York's
Later life
Thurlow and her husband moved in 1967 from New York to Lynwood, California.[1] Thurlow began teaching vocal music[2] but did not begin to perform jazz again until 1983,[2] when she began occasional performing and recording with Cleveland[8] until her husband's death in 2008.[1][2]
Thurlow died of heart failure, aged 96, at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood in 2022.[1] She was buried beside her husband at Riverside National Cemetery.[13]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Barnes, Mike (October 24, 2022). "Janet Thurlow, Jazz Singer and Widow of Trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, Dies at 96". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e de Barros, Paul (November 8, 2022). "Janet Thurlow, who sang during Seattle's Jackson Street jazz heyday, dies at 96". The Seattle Times. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
- ^ a b Blecha, Peter (March 16, 1916). "Lionel Hampton Orchestra (with Quincy Jones) plays Seattle". HistoryLink.org. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
- OCLC 252592422– via Internet Archive.
- ^ "Quincy Jones: The Fresh Air Interview". NPR.org. May 27, 2013. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
- OCLC 28842003
- .
- ^ a b "Jimmy Cleveland, with a scant fringe of goatee nesting..." UPI. March 2, 1991. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
- ^ "Janet Thurlow in the Cook County, Illinois Marriage Index, 1930-1960". Ancestry.com. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
- ^ a b Hill, Vada (2022). "Obituary Janet (Thurlow) Cleveland". canva.com. p. 4.
- OCLC 50240528.
- )
- ^ "Janet L. Cleveland". Nationwide Grave Locator. National Cemetery Administration. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
External links
- "Thurlow, Janet". The Northwest Music Archives. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
- Eclipse on YouTube, sung with the Charles Mingus Octet
- Blue Tide on YouTube, sung with the Charles Mingus Octet
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