Elana James (born Elana Jaime Fremerman, October 21, 1970, Kansas City, Missouri, United States) is an American songwriter, Western swing, folk and jazz violinist, vocalist, and a founding member of the band Hot Club of Cowtown.
Elana James (born Elana Jaime Fremerman, October 21, 1970, Kansas City, Missouri, United States) is an American songwriter, Western swing, folk and jazz violinist, vocalist, and a founding member of the band Hot Club of Cowtown.
James grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and began studying Suzuki violin at age four. Her mother, Susan, is a professional violinist who used to play in the Kansas City Symphony and her father, Marvin, ran a commercial recording studio and was the creative director and founder of an advertising agency in Kansas City.
James grew up riding her horse, April, and playing violin in Kansas before leaving for New York City at age 17. In 1992 she graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Comparative Religion from Barnard College, Columbia University, in New York City (with a focus on Buddhism and Hinduism) while studying violin and viola at the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Lucie Robert and Karen Ritscher. She studied improvisation and swing fiddle with Marty Laster in New York City and studied Dhrupad, an early form of North Indian Classical music, with Pandit Vidhur Malik in Vrindavan, India.
James is a former managing editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and a former editorial intern at Harper's Magazine. In the early 1990s she worked as a horse wrangler at the Home Ranch in Clark, Colorado where she also played fiddle in the ranch's cowboy band. James also worked occasionally as a packer and horse wrangler in the West Elk and La Garita Wilderness in Colorado in the mid-1990s, punctuated by brief stints in publishing in New York City. James is an alumnus of the Meadowmount School of Music, the New York Youth Symphony, the Columbia University Chamber Music Program, the New York String Orchestra Seminar with Alexander Schneider and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France.
Elana James met guitarist Whit Smith in 1994 through an ad in the Village Voice while both were living in New York City. They played together for some years, later adding Jake Erwin, a slap bass player, and forming the American swing trio Hot Club of Cowtown. The group plays original material as well as a mix of pre-WWII Western swing, a style made famous by Bob Wills and Milton Brown, combined with the Gypsy jazz of guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli. Other influences include American swing violinists Stuff Smith, Joe Venuti, and Johnny Gimble. Hot Club of Cowtown, which has been based in Austin, Texas since 1998, is not named for any specific "Cowtown," but is rather just intended as state of mind, or "The Cowtown of the Imagination."
James toured with Bob Dylan in 2004, 2005, and 2006 (James came to Dylan's attention when The Hot Club of Cowtown opened for him and Willie Nelson during a joint tour of historic baseball parks in the Summer of 2004). She briefly joined Dylan's band in 2005 on a tour with Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, and Amos Lee, as the first dedicated female instrumentalist to play in Dylan's touring band since Scarlet Rivera in the early 1970s.
The Hot Club of Cowtown briefly separated in 2005. Around this time, Fremerman changed her name to Elana James and released her debut album, Elana James, forming a trio called Elana James and the Continental Two with Beau Sample on bass and Luke Hill on guitar. She joined Dylan again in 2006 as his opening act on another historic ballparks tour also featuring Junior Brown and Jimmie Vaughan. [1]
From 2005 through 2008, James led her trio and performed in one with Cindy Cashdollar and Redd Volkaert as the High Flyers, appearing on A Prairie Home Companion [2] [3] and in clubs in Austin. [4] During this time James also performed with Heybale, a group including Redd Volkaert, Earl Poole Ball, Tom Lewis, Kevin Smith and Gary Claxton.
In 2008, The Hot Club of Cowtown, with James, guitarist Whit Smith and bassist Jake Erwin re-formed, and continued touring and recording. In 2008, the band released The Best of the Hot Club of Cowtown, followed by Wishful Thinking in 2009, and in 2011, a collection of Western swing songs made popular by legendary Texas bandleader Bob Wills, What Makes Bob Holler. The Hot Club of Cowtown's most recent albums include Rendezvous in Rhythm (Gold Strike Records, 2013), a collection of hot jazz standards and traditional Romanian-style instrumentals performed acoustically, in the style of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli; Midnight on the Trail, a compilation of early Western swing and cowboy songs; "Crossing the Great Divide," a 7-track EP of songs written by The Band on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of Music from Big Pink and The Band; and Wild Kingdom, an album of original material released on September 27, 2019. In 2022 the band released Live from Belfast, a live set recorded live at the Black Box in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and The Finest Hour, a collection of songs on the American pop chart in 1945.
When not performing, writing music, and touring, James continues to work in the back country as a sometimes wrangler, packer, cook, and guide for Montana outfitters in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Lee Metcalf Wilderness, as well as in and around Yellowstone National Park . In 2019 as one of two Packer Apprentices with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation for the summer season, James packed with and learned from established packers in northwest Montana, partnering with and re-supplying trail maintenance crews, US Forest Service special projects, and fire lookouts.
She has taught music privately, leads fiddle workshops, [5] and has been on the faculty of Montana Fiddle Camp summer sessions in Monarch, Montana in 2023 and 2024. She regularly posts free, short educational segments on basic improvisation and song structure to her youtube channel.
James's second solo album, Black Beauty (Snarf, 2015), is a collection of eclectic folk and pop songs and original material. In The Wall Street Journal article including Black Beauty as one of the "Six Retro Roots Albums to Jump Start Your Summer." [6] Barry Mazor wrote, "Ms. James is more a singing, swinging Grappelli- and Venuti-influenced violinist than a breakdown fiddler, which serves her well on this set. Her smooth, sweet string-vocal combination is applied—along with jazz piano here, steel guitar there—to material ranging from the Grateful Dead's 'Ripple' to Goebel Reeves's 'Hobo's Lullaby' and the Peggy Lee/Benny Goodman 'All I Need Is You.' Genre distinctions collapse. The rootsier songs all become entries in the jazzy Great American Songbook."
James has been a guest on A Prairie Home Companion, [7] [8] the Grand Ole Opry, the Women in Jazz series at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at festivals and concerts throughout the world, including the Glastonbury Festival in England, the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, Australia's East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival, the Rochester Jazz Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and the Cambridge Folk Festival.
James and her Hot Club of Cowtown band mates have appeared on "Larry's Country Diner" on RFD-TV several times. As a solo artist James has been a guest on National Public Radio's "Song of the Day," Montana Public Radio's "Musician's Spotlight," hosted by John Floridis, on RFD-TV's "Ray's Roadhouse" with Asleep at the Wheel (forthcoming 2024), with Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys under the Direction of Jason Roberts, at Art of the Cowgirl in Phoenix, Arizona, and been featured on the "Cowboy Crossroads" podcast, hosted by Andy Hedges.
James is also featured in the book "Women in Texas Music: Stories and Songs" by Kathleen Hudson (2007).
In 2013 Elana James was nominated in the Western Swing Female category for the first Ameripolitan Music Awards in Austin, Texas. In February 2015 James was named Western Swing Female 2015 at the Ameripolitan Music Awards. In 2015 the Hot Club of Cowtown also won for Best Western Swing Group at the second annual Ameripolitan Music Awards at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. On October 6, 2019, James is honored to be inducted into the Sacramento Western Swing Society's Hall of Fame.
In 2004 James was inducted, with her Hot Club of Cowtown band mates, into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame. James has recorded with a wide array of folk, country, and Americana artists including Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Slaid Cleaves, Denny Freeman, Dave Stuckey, Eliza Gilkyson, Heybale, Tom Russell, The Hoyle Brothers, Kerry Polk, Beatroot, Bruce Anfinson, and many others.
James Robert Wills was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing. He was also noted for punctuating his music with his trademark "ah-haa" calls.
A Prairie Home Companion is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed Live from Here and ran until 2020. A Prairie Home Companion aired on Saturdays from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota; it was also frequently heard on tours to New York City and other U.S. cities. The show is known for its musical guests, especially folk and traditional musicians, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Keillor's wry storytelling segment, "News from Lake Wobegon," was the show's best-known feature during his long tenure.
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era, when people were dancing the Lindy Hop. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Bunny Berigan, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, and Django Reinhardt.
Western swing is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.
Cindy Cashdollar is an American musician specializing in steel guitar and Dobro. She grew up in Woodstock, New York, where she perfected her skills by playing with bluegrass musician John Herald, blues musicians Paul Butterfield, and Levon Helm and Rick Danko of The Band. After residing in Austin, Texas, for 23 years, she has now returned to her native Woodstock, New York.
Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith, better known as Stuff Smith, was an American jazz violinist. He is well known for the song "If You're a Viper".
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player, composer, guitarist, and mandolinist whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and was a member of three influential musical ensembles: the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers.
Denys Justin Wright, known professionally as Denny Wright, was a British jazz guitarist.
Svend Asmussen was a Danish jazz violinist, known as "The Fiddling Viking". A Swing-style virtuoso, he played and recorded with many other notable jazz musicians, including Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Stephane Grappelli. He played publicly until 2010 when he had a blood clot, his career having spanned eight decades.
Sara Ullrika Watkins is an American singer-songwriter and fiddler. Watkins debuted in 1989 as the fiddler of Nickel Creek, the progressive bluegrass group she formed with her brother Sean and mandolinist Chris Thile. In addition to singing and fiddling, Watkins also plays the ukulele and the guitar, and also played percussion while touring with the Decemberists. In 2012, she and her brother played with Jackson Browne during his "I'll Do Anything" acoustic tour.
The Hot Club of Cowtown is an American Western swing trio that formed in 1997.
William Charles "Diz" Disley was an Anglo-Canadian jazz guitarist and banjoist. He is best known for his acoustic jazz guitar playing, strongly influenced by Django Reinhardt, for his contributions to the UK trad jazz, skiffle and folk scenes as a performer and humorist, and for his collaborations with the violinist Stéphane Grappelli.
Gypsy jazz is a musical idiom inspired by the Romani jazz guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt (1910–1953), in conjunction with the French jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli (1908–1997), as expressed by their group the Quintette du Hot Club de France. The style has its origins in France and the Manouche clan of Romanis, and has remained popular amongst this clan. Gypsy jazz is often called by the French name "jazz manouche", or alternatively, "manouche jazz" in English-language sources.
The Quintette du Hot Club de France, often abbreviated "QdHCdF" or "QHCF", was a jazz group founded in France in 1934 by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli and active in one form or another until 1948.
Matt Glaser is an American jazz and bluegrass violinist. He served as the chair of the string department at the Berklee College of Music for more than twenty-five years. He is now the founder and artistic director of Berklee's American Roots Music Program.
John Paul Gimble was an American country musician associated with Western swing. Gimble was considered one of the most important fiddlers in the genre. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 in the early influences category as a member of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise solo lines. Early jazz violinists included: Eddie South, who played violin with Jimmy Wade's Dixielanders in Chicago; Stuff Smith; and Claude "Fiddler" Williams. Joe Venuti was popular for his work with guitarist Eddie Lang during the 1920s. Improvising violinists include Stéphane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty. In jazz fusion, violinists may use an electric violin plugged into an instrument amplifier with electronic effects.
American fiddle-playing began with the early European settlers, who found that the small viol family of instruments were more portable and rugged than other instruments of the period. According to Ron Yule, "John Utie, a 1620 immigrant, settled in the North and is credited as being the first known fiddler on American soil". Early influences were Irish, Scottish, and English fiddle styles, as well as the more upper-class traditions of classical violin playing. Popular tunes included "Soldier's Joy", for which Robert Burns wrote lyrics, and other tunes such as "Flowers of Edinburgh" and "Tamlin," which have both been claimed by both Scottish and Irish lineages.
Randy Sabien is an American jazz violinist, composer, and music educator known for his live performances and numerous recordings, many of them on Flying Fish Records and Red House Records. At the age of 21 he founded and chaired the Jazz Strings department at Boston's Berklee College of Music and since 2009 has been the chair of the Strings department of McNally Smith College of Music.
Jon Burr is an American double bass player and author. He is a member of "Mark O'Connor's Hot Swing Trio", a swing jazz trio, along with Mark O'Connor and Frank Vignola. The trio has recorded three albums, Hot Swing! (2001), In Full Swing (2003), and Live in New York (2004).
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