Monday, April 05, 2010

Quite a character, I'd say


Plus four bonus tracks from Shannon's 10" Atlantic LP

Available for download for the next 48 hours only.

Here is most of Whitney Balliett's chapter on Hugh Shannon in the former's American Singers: 27 Portraits in Song .  The missing page contains material about Billie Holiday's appreciation of Shannon's singing ("Man, you don't sound like nobody! You gotta sing!"), and his hanging out in P'town in the mid-1940s with the likes of Marlon Brando, Imogene Coca and Julius Monk!

Recording and cover scan courtesy of J.L.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fabulous post, once again.

You must be a little sadistic tho' with the 48 hour thing...Nothing wrong with that, I guess.

Bill Reed said...

Not sadistic. I'm in the record biz and as far as I'm concerned, I'm cutting my throat by putting this stuff up at all. And I have friends in the rare record biz and I don't feel like I'm helping them much either.

Allen Bardin said...

This would be a great one for SSJ...

Jeroen said...

Ooh this guy is cool...
Didn't know him 'till now!
Love the songchoice.
But when was this recorded?
Thank you so much!

j.

jeroen said...

Now that I listened the whole album trough. Could it be that the pianist on the date is actually Blossom Dearie working under a pseudonym?!? The song and the voice is strikingly similar to a doop-doo-de-doop duet she recorded with Cy Coleman.

j.

jeroen said...

It has to be BLOSSOM DEARIE
Seems she appeared als under the name Rosebud Cherie on the King Pleasure record for contractual reasons...
Whooeeeee I like this record even better now!

j.