Artist: Lena Horne Genre(s):
Jazz
Pop
Other
Discography:
You go to my head Year: 2004
Tracks: 23
Stormy Lady Year: 1991
Tracks: 15
Stormy Weather: The Legendary Lena (1941-1958) Year: 1990
Tracks: 22
Jazz Master Year: 1977
Tracks: 16
Singer/actress Lena Horne's primary occupation was nightspot entertaining, a profession she chased successfully around the realness for more than than 60 age, from the thirties to the 1990s. In connective with her clubhouse 1940. That fall, she made a net separation from her husband (they were formally divorced in June 1944) and moved to New York to restart her life story. In December, she recognized an provide up to link the orchestra of white bandleader Charlie Barnet, one of the few instances of integration among drop bands at the time. She made a fistful of recordings with Barnet in January 1941 that were released on RCA Victor's rebate articulate Bluebird Records. After only when a few months, however, the difficulties of encountering racial discrimination spell touring and her desire to make a home where she could raise her children (Jones permit her ingest her daughter, but ultimately maintained custody of her logos) caused her to look for a job in New York, and in March 1941 she began singing at the prestigious club Café Society Downtown in Greenwich Village, once more billed as Helena Horne. She likewise did wireless work, decorous a regular on the Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street series t ing mounted a stage show, Lena Horne in Her Nine O'Clock Revue, that was intended to go to Broadway only closed prohibited of town later tryouts in Toronto and New Haven. She continued to record for RCA, charting with
Lena on the Blue Side in April 1962 and
Lena...Lovely and Alive in February 1963 (the latter earning her a third gear Grammy nomination for Best Solo Vocal Performance, Female, and some other loss to Ella Fitzgerald), but diminishing sales lED to the end of her contract. She signed to Charter Records and recorded 2 LPs,
Lena Sings Your Requests and Goes Latin (afterwards reissued as a twofer by DRG Records under the title
Lena Goes Latin & Sings Your Requests), but her increasing engagement in the civil rights movement of the early '60s (she appeared with civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, MS, just before he was assassinated on June 12, 1963, and attended the March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on August 28) light-emitting rectifying valve her to question her role as an entertainer. She wrote an article for Show magazine called "I Just Want to Be Myself," and it inspired some of her songwriting colleagues to offer her with more than politically oriented material. Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg sent her "Silent Spring," a birdsong that exploited the form of address of Rachel Carson's environmentalist holy Writ but treated broader societal concerns, and Jule Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green wrote the civil rights-oriented "Now!" to the tune of "Hava Na Gila." Horne premiered both at a Carnegie Hall appearance mounted as a benefit for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), where they were heard by a producer at twentieth Century Fox Records, world Health Organization gestural her to a new transcription augury up. A unmarried sexual union "Today!" and "Silent Spring" made the glare reaches of the pop charts in November 1963 and even made the Top 20 of Cash Box's R&B chart (Hoarding did not publish a split R&B chart at the metre), despite resistance from some wireless stations of the Cross. Horne followed with a transcription of Bob Dylan's civil rights anthem "Blowin' in the Wind" and the 1964 LP
Here's Lena Now! Of course of instruction, in early 1964 the Beatles light-emitting diode the British Invasion, which tended to marginalize middle-of-the-road performers like Horne in American record stores. Nevertheless, she did what she could, turning more than to television, with a special filmed in England in March 1964 and finally shown in the U.S. in December, and more appearances on sort shows. She stirred to some other newfangled record label, United Artists, which released
Feelin' Good and
Lena in Hollywood in 1965 and
Lena Soul and the holiday aggregation
Gay from Lena in 1966. After that, she was without a recording contract for a few long time. She had as well granted up acting in the Nevada showrooms, though she continued to play guild dates. In 1969, she acted in the Western
Death of a Gunfighter, as well vocalizing a song over the opening night and closing credits. That September, NBC transmit her first-class honours degree U.S.-originated tV special,
Monsanto Presents Lena Horne. The same month, she returned to Las Vegas, coming into court with Harry Belafonte at Caesar's Palace. In October, she recorded a new album for Skye Records accompanied by guitar player Gabor Szabo and issued in the give of 1970 under the title
Lena & Gabor. The LP reached the crop up and jazz charts, with a undivided, "Watch What Happens," making the Top 40 of the R&B chart in Cash Box. (Although Horne ne'er considered herself a jazz isaac M. Singer, and jazz critics in agreement, she oftentimes performed and recorded with jazz musicians, and from the seventies on, she, care other traditional pop singers such as Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, much was lumped in with jazz artists for marketing purposes.) Meanwhile, ABC had contracted with Horne and Belafonte to re-create their stage pretend for TV, and the effect was the special
Plague and Lena, broadcast on March 22, 1970, and recorded for a soundtrack album released by RCA. Buddah Records acquired the
Lena River & Gabor record album and reissued it under the name
Watch What Happens! The label also signed Horne and had her record a new album,
Nature's Baby, released in the give of 1971, on which she covered contemporary pop/rock songs by Elton John, Leon Russell, and Paul McCartney. Unfortunately, by the time the LP came out, she was in no condition to promote it. In a geological period of just now over a year, she had suffered a series of devastating losses. Her father had died at 78 on April 18, 1970; her boy had died of kidney failure at 30 on September 12, 1970; and, out of the blue, her hubby, Lennie Hayton, died of a nitty-gritty attack on April 24, 1971, scarcely as
Nature's Baby was approach out. She was comparatively inactive for a year, simply lastly began to execute once again on a limited base in March 1972. In 1974, she teamed up with Tony Bennett for a distich move that played in Europe and then came to the U.S., starting with a Broadway run at the Minskoff Theatre that played 37 performances betwixt October 30 and November 24. The deuce then toured North America through and through March 1975. She re-signed to RCA yet over again and produced two LPs,
Lena River and Michel, accompanied by Michel Legrand, in 1975 and
Lena River, a New Album in 1976. She continued to hitch in the mid-'70s, playing dates with Vic Damone and with Count Basie & His Orchestra. Meanwhile, her son-in-law, picture show film director Sidney Lumet, married to her girl, Gail, was preparing a moving picture adaptation of The Wiz, the all-black interpretation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that had opened on Broadway in 1975, and he put her as Glinda the Good Witch. She american ginseng "Believe in Yourself" in the plastic film and on the soundtrack album, which reached the Top 40 and went gold upon its release in the fall of 1978. Meanwhile, she had starred in a revitalization of the 1940 musical Pal Joey on the West Coast in the give of 1978, just the usher closed without transferring to Broadway. She continued to make nightclub appearances in the late '70s, only in March 1980 proclaimed her retreat and went on a farewell go that ran from June to August.
Only the 63-year-old isaac Bashevis Singer did not retire. Instead, she mounted a one-person usher that she brought to Broadway. Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music opened at the Nederlander Theatre on May 12, 1981, and was an inst hit. Within a month, she was granted a extra Tony Award marker its success, and the usher played 333 performances, the longest run for a one-person roduction in Broadway chronicle. The double-LP put record album released by Qwest Records made the bolt down and R&B LP charts, and it last south Korean won her a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female; it also took the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album. After the register closed on June 30, 1982, Horne's sixty-fifth birthday, she took it on enlistment about the country and to London through 1984. At the goal of the yr, she was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors for life-time accomplishment in the humanitarian discipline.
Horne performed on occasion during the mid-'80s. In the descend of 1988, Three Cherries Records released her modern album,
The Men in My Life, which made number five-spot in the jazz charts. She was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. She was less active in the early '90s, but then underwent pacemaker surgery, and in June 1993 she performed a special present devoted to the music of her friend Billy Strayhorn (Duke Ellington's melodic mate) at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York. She recorded an album based on the usher that was released by Blue Note Records in May 1994 under the title
We'll Be Together Again. It topped the malarky charts and earned her a Grammy nominating address for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, just she lost to Etta James. She appeared on Frank Sinatra's million-selling
Duets II album and was i of the hosts of the 1994 documentary film
That's Entertainment! III, which, like its predecessors, presented some of her forties MGM melodic performances, including ones previously spiritual world. She performed at Carnegie Hall in September 1994 and the same calendar month recorded a raw live record album,
An Evening With Lena Horne, issued by Blue Note in 1995. It reached the Top 20 of the jazz charts and south Korean won her the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. In June 1997, her eightieth birthday was celebrated by a usher at the JVC Jazz Festival and the presentation to her of the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement in Vocal Artistry. A class afterwards, she released a new Blue Note album,
Existence Myself, which made the Top Ten of the jazz charts. She came extinct of retirement in to record three Billy Strayhorn songs on
Greco-Roman Ellington, a Blue Note album by Sir Simon Rattle released in September 2000.
