Eugenie Jones

Last updated
Eugenie Jones
Eugenie Jones pic.jpg
Born
Eugenie Kay Parker

Morgantown, West Virginia
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s) Jazz singer, songwriter, producer
Website www.eugeniejones.com

Eugenie Jones is an American jazz vocalist, songwriter, and producer. [1] She has collaborated with many jazz artists, including Reggie Workman, Bernard Purdie, Julian Priester, Bobby Sanabria, Lynn Seaton, Marquis Hill, Bill Anschell, and Lonnie Plaxico. [2] She received the Jazz Hero Award by the Jazz Journalist Association in 2023. [3]

Contents

Jones writes original straight-ahead, swing, and soul-infused jazz lyrics and melodies.

Her recordings include four independently produced albums recorded on her label, Open Mic Records, including Black Lace Blue Tears (2013), [4] Come Out Swingin' (2015), [2] Players (2022), The Originals (2023), and the single One More Night to Burn. [5]

Early life and education

She was born to Eugene & Tommie Lee Parker in Morgantown, West Virginia. [2] [6] Her parents were members of the choir at Friendship Baptist Church. [7]

Eugenie was the couple's middle child, growing up with five sisters and three brothers. Early music influences came from listening to her parents' favorite Ray Charles and Nancy Wilson LPs, her older sibling's Motown records, her parents singing in church, and her mother perpetually singing around the house. [2]

After completing her MBA, [2] [8] she married and relocated to the Pacific NW, started a family and a career in marketing communications and the death of her mother, in 2010, [9] [10] Jones started singing by leading her church congregation in songs, and later met Bernie Jacobs, who invited her to Seattle vocal jams. [11] She relocated to Seattle, WA, and started a family and a career in marketing communications. [12]

Career

Jones discovered her musical abilities in 2010 after losing her mother to cancer. Jones was inspired to start singing to carry on the part of her mother, and pursuing that quest led her into the Seattle jazz scene. Jones booked her first performance in 2011 at Eagan's Ballard Jam House in Seattle, WA. [10]

In 2013, she released her debut album, Black Lace Blue Tears. [2] [4] The recording contained nine of her original songs and two jazz standards, and the release was awarded the Earshot Jazz NW Recording of the Year Golden Ear Award. Her 2015 follow-up album, Come Out Swingin', also received critical acclaim, and earned her the title of NW Vocalist of the Year from Earshot. [7] [9] DownBeat magazine music critic Kirk Silsbee stated Jones was "impressive" in her debut recording and noted the songwriter's "unforced lyricism."

In 2022, Jones released her third album, Players. [3] The two-disc, 15-track album consisting mostly of original tunes was recorded over four years in four different cities – New York, Dallas, Chicago, and Seattle – with many musicians, including Delvon Lamarr ,Reggie Workman, Julian Priester, Bobby Sanabria, and Lonnie Plaxico. [2] [7] [9] [13] [14]

Jones launched her nonprofit, Music for a Cause [8] in 2018. [15]

Under the Music for a Cause umbrella, in 2018 Jones assumed the role of executive producer of the Jackson Street Jazz Walk, [8] [16] in 2021 co-produced the Celebrating Ernestine Anderson Tribute Series with Crusaders’ Stix Hooper, and in 2022 served as the executive producer of the Dear Ernestine Tribute series. [17]

In 2023, in recognition of her jazz-intersected community service efforts, the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) awarded Jones with the JJA Jazz Hero award. [3]

Personal life

She was born to parents Eugene & Tommie Lee Parker. [6] Eugenie was the couple's middle child, growing up with five sisters and three brothers. [4]

Discography

As lead artist / producer

Compilation recordings

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norah Jones</span> American musician (born 1979)

Norah Jones is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She has won several awards for her music and, as of 2023, had sold more than 50 million records worldwide. Billboard named her the top jazz artist of the 2000s decade. She has won nine Grammy Awards and was ranked 60th on Billboard magazine's artists of the 2000s decade chart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Priester</span> American jazz trombonist

Julian Priester is an American jazz trombonist and occasional euphoniumist. He is sometimes credited "Julian Priester Pepo Mtoto". He has played with Sun Ra, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monty Alexander</span> Jamaican pianist (born 1944)

Montgomery Bernard "Monty" Alexander OJ CD is a Jamaican American jazz pianist. His playing has a Caribbean influence and bright swinging feeling, with a strong vocabulary of bebop jazz and blues rooted melodies. He was influenced by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Erroll Garner, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, Les McCann, and Frank Sinatra. Alexander also sings and plays the melodica. He is known for his surprising musical twists, bright rhythmic sense, and intense dramatic musical climaxes. His recording career has covered many of the well-known American songbook standards, jazz standards, pop hits, and Jamaican songs from his original homeland. Alexander has resided in New York City for many years and performs frequently throughout the world at jazz festivals and clubs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernestine Anderson</span> American jazz and blues singer

Ernestine Anderson was an American jazz and blues singer. In a career spanning more than six decades, she recorded over 30 albums. She was nominated four times for a Grammy Award. She sang at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival, as well as at jazz festivals all over the world. In the early 1990s she joined Qwest Records, the label founded by fellow Garfield High School graduate Quincy Jones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Anschell</span> American jazz pianist and composer

Bill Anschell is a jazz pianist and composer. He has recorded seven CDs as a leader, and performed or recorded with many jazz greats. His original compositions and piano work are prominently featured on Freelon's Grammy Award-nominated recording Shaking Free and her CBS recordings Heritage and Listen. His own CDs have received extensive national airplay and critical acclaim. His compositions have appeared in many films and television series, including "The West Wing," "The Wire," "Bloodline," and "NCIS: LA."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diane Schuur</span> American jazz musician (born 1953)

Diane Joan Schuur, nicknamed "Deedles", is an American jazz singer and pianist. As of 2015, Schuur had released 23 albums, and had extended her jazz repertoire to include essences of Latin, gospel, pop and country music. Her most successful album is Diane Schuur & the Count Basie Orchestra, which remained number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts for 33 weeks. She won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Sung</span> American jazz pianist

Helen Sung is an American jazz pianist.

Born In Minneapolis, Jeff Johnson left at age 20, spending time in Philadelphia and New York, and has worked with jazz musicians including Philly Joe Jones, Charlie Rouse, Barney Kessel, Chet Baker, Lew Tabackin, Eddie Daniels, Joanne Brackeen, Julian Priester, Billy Hart, George Cables, Bud Shank, Claudio Roditti, and Michael Wolfe. Vocalists who have been accompanied by Johnson include Jay Clayton, Ernestine Anderson, Karrin Allyson, Mark Murphy, Rebecca Parris, Annie Ross and Marlena Shaw.

"Cotton Tail" is a 1940 composition by Duke Ellington. It is based on the rhythm changes from George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm". The first Ellington recording is notable for the driving tenor saxophone solo by Ben Webster. Originally an instrumental, "Cotton Tail" later had lyrics written for it by Ellington. Later, more lyrics were written, based on the 1940 recording, by Jon Hendricks, and recorded by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tamara Gee</span> American pop singer

Tamara Diane Wimer, known professionally as Tamara Gee, is an American pop singer and songwriter. She grew up singing and performing from the age of 5, and was a professional vocalist by the time she was 12 years old, winning various singing competitions throughout her adolescence and adulthood, as well as a beauty pageant. Gee opened for vocalist Tony Bennett and his orchestra after being the featured vocalist on various albums throughout her teen years. She released her debut album Hidden Treasure with Universal Music in 2007, while living in Poland. Her single from the album, "For Life", was voted unanimous winner of Piosenka dla Europy, the Polish final for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest. Tamara and her song "For Life" was the first Polish entry in history to qualify out of a semifinal. A portion of Gee's Eurovision performance was shown on The Oprah Winfrey Show on "The World's Got Talent" episode with Simon Cowell where Gee sang with former participants Celine Dion and Julio Iglesias. In 2007 Gee co-wrote and performed "Fate" on DJ Schiller's album Sehnsucht. The album went triple platinum and was nominated for a Grammy. She released her solo EP Christmas Angel in 2009. On November 27, 2014, Tamara released a new highly anticipated album "Love, Tamara" of which she wrote with and was produced by Multi Grammy Award winning producer/songwriter Walter Afanasieff.

Joanie Pallatto is a singer and composer from Xenia, Ohio.

Earshot Jazz is a regional jazz non-profit organization in Seattle, Washington. It brings jazz musicians and enthusiasts from the greater Seattle area and around the Pacific Northwest to create an energetic and lively jazz community that wants to keep the legacy of the deep rooted history of jazz. They bring jazz into life by having jazz festivals, jazz education programs, publishing a magazine, and awarding exceptional jazz artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dmitri Matheny</span> Musical artist

Dmitri Matheny is an American jazz flugelhornist. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Matheny is “one of the jazz world’s most talented horn players.”

Geoffrey Keezer is an American jazz pianist. In 2023, he won the Best Instrumental Composition Grammy for Refuge

William George "Rams" Ramsay was an American jazz saxophonist and band leader based in Seattle. In 1997, he was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame, the top of eight Golden Ear Award categories presented annually since 1990 by the Earshot Jazz Society of Seattle. Ramsay performed on all the primary saxophones – soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone – as well as clarinet, and bass clarinet. Ramsay died on March 3, 2024, at the age of 95.

Larry Fuller is a jazz pianist based in New York City, performing in the style of mainstream jazz. Fuller is a Yamaha-endorsed Artist and leader of the Larry Fuller Trio. He was also the last pianist with legendary bassist Ray Brown's Trio, member of the Jeff Hamilton Trio, and member of the John Pizzarelli Quartet. He has also performed with artists including Stanley Turrentine, Phil Woods, Clark Terry, Herb Ellis, Ernestine Anderson, John Legend, and Nicholas Payton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cécile McLorin Salvant</span> American jazz vocalist

Cécile McLorin Salvant is an American jazz vocalist. Salvant is one of the most highly regarded jazz vocalists of her generation, often winning DownBeat annual critics polls. She has released seven albums since 2010, six of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards. She is a 3-time winner of the Best Jazz Vocal Album Grammy Award for her 2013 album WomanChild, her 2017 album Dreams and Daggers, and her 2018 album The Window, each released on the Mack Avenue label. Salvant's most recent album is Mélusine released in 2023 by Nonesuch Records. Salvant primarily sings in English or French, her first language, and has also recorded songs in Occitan and Haitian Kreyòl.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josh Rawlings</span> Musical artist

Joshua Robert Rawlings is an American pianist, songwriter and record producer. His band, The Teaching, wrote and recorded the song "Bom Bom" for the Macklemore album The Heist, which became a multiple GRAMMY winning album.

Jim Wilke is a radio host and producer in Seattle, Washington. In 1988 he began hosting Jazz Northwest from the public radio station KNKX in Seattle. From 1984 to 2014, he hosted the syndicated radio program Jazz After Hours.

Carol McCartney is a singer on the Canadian jazz scene and a former Canadian beauty competition winner.

References

  1. ↑ Bell, Ian (18 May 2023). "Recommended: A jazz legend in the making performs on Vashon". Island Beachcomber .
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Eugenie Jones Musician – All About Jazz". All About Jazz .
  3. 1 2 3 4 Kuhlman, Cara (8 April 2023). "Seattle singer-songwriter Eugenie Jones named a '2023 Jazz Hero'". KNKX Public Radio. KNKX.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Jazz, All About (2015-09-08). "Eugenie Jones: Come Out Swingin' album review @ All About Jazz". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  5. 1 2 Hynes, Jim (2022-03-12). "Eugenie Jones Players". Making A Scene!. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  6. 1 2 Cliff, Richmond (4 January 2022). "Jazz Vocalist Eugenie Jones to Release New Album "Players"". TheUrbanMusicScene.com.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Jones, Stephanie (6 July 2022). "Eugenie Jones' Creative Strategy". DownBeat .
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Community Advisory Council". KNKX Public Radio. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  9. 1 2 3 De Barros, Paul. "Eugenie Jones Fields an 'A Team' on New Album Players | Earshot Jazz". Earshot Jazz .
  10. 1 2 3 Ponnekanti, Rosemary. "Tacoma Concert Band gets voice with soloist Eugenie Jones in 'And All That Jazz'". the news tribune .
  11. ↑ "Eugenie Jones: Open Your Heart to What I Mean | Earshot Jazz" . Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  12. 1 2 "Red Dress – JAZZIZ Magazine". 2022-03-24. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
  13. 1 2 "Eugenie Jones Quartet Performance". KNKX Public Radio. Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  14. ↑ Gilbert, Andrew (2022-03-14). "Eugenie Jones: Players (Openmic)". JazzTimes. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  15. ↑ Lloyd, Robin (April 4, 2023). "2023 Jazz Hero Eugenie Jones". JJA Jazz Awards. Retrieved December 26, 2023.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 "Seattle's Jackson Street Jazz Walk adds new twists for 10th anniversary". The Seattle Times. 2023-09-04. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  17. ↑ "Converse with Ernestine Anderson at Dear Ernestine | Earshot Jazz" . Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  18. ↑ "First Listen: Eugenie Jones gives us that "Sweet Summer Love"". SoulTracks – Soul Music Biographies, News and Reviews. 2015-06-12. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  19. ↑ "The Originals, by Eugenie Jones". Eugenie Jones. Retrieved 2024-01-27.
  20. ↑ "Take Five with Eugenie Jones article @ All About Jazz". All About Jazz . 12 October 2022.
  21. ↑ "The 2013 Golden Ear Awards | Earshot Jazz" . Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  22. ↑ You, Jazz Near. "Eugenie Jones Album Release Performance – Early Show at The Royal Room, March 12". Jazz Near You Seattle. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.