One Shot Wonders pt. 2

see below for intro

FLO HANDY

After we listen to Flo Handy’s recording with guitarists Carl Kress and George Barnes, who accompany her throughout as a duo on her ‘64 LP “Smoky and Intimate,” I will tell you a bit more about her background including her relationship to a another singer who was as famous as the late Flo Handy was obscure.

(No Moon at All, Fine and Dandy)

Does anyone in the audience know who Flo Handy’s sister was?

Ella Mae Morse of “Cow Cow Boogie” fame. And Flo was married to two very famous jazz musicians, first, arranger / songwriter George Handy and then, sax legend Al Cohn, who died in 1988. Flo passed on not long afterward in 1996.

The liner notes for this ultra-obscure LP were written by songwriter Gene Lees, who said "My God! She's marvelous!" Jazz critic and head of the Rutgers Jazz Institute Dan Morgenstern heard her perform just once “live” in an obscure jazz club in New York City, “some 35 years ago,” he wrote in 2000. If anything, she was even better than on ‘Smoky and Intimate‘.
To the best of my knowledge, this wonderful LP with songs by, among others, the Gershwins, Alec Wilder, and Rodgers and Hart has never been reissued anywhere. . .not even in Japan!