| "Stormy Monday Blues" | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Single by Earl Hines | |
| B-side | "Second Balcony Jump" |
| Released | 1942 |
| Recorded | March 19, 1942 |
| Genre | Jazz |
| Length | 3:11 |
| Label | Bluebird |
| Songwriter(s) | Earl Hines, Billy Eckstine, Bob Crowder |
"Stormy Monday Blues" is a jazz song first recorded in 1942 by Earl Hines and His Orchestra with Billy Eckstine on vocals. The song was a hit, reaching number one in Billboard magazine's "Harlem Hit Parade", [1] and was Hines' only appearance in the charts.
"Stormy Monday Blues" is performed in the style of a slow blues that "starts with Hines' piano and a walking bass for the introduction". [2] Billy Eckstine then enters with the vocal:
It's gone and started rainin', I'm as lonesome as a man can be
It's gone and started rainin', I'm as lonesome as a man can be
'Cause every time it rains, I realize what you mean to me
The lyrics "stormy" or "Monday" do not appear in the song. A trumpet solo by Maurice "Shorty" McConnell [3] with big band backing is featured in the second half of the song. [2] Eckstine later recorded "Stormy Monday Blues" in 1959 with Count Basie for their Basie/Eckstine Incorporated album. [4]
The song has sometimes been confused with T-Bone Walker's 1947 song "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)", which is frequently shortened to "Stormy Monday" or "Stormy Monday Blues". [5]
William James "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, his minimalist piano style, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams. As a composer, Basie is known for writing such jazz standards as Blue and Sentimental, Jumpin' at the Woodside and One O'Clock Jump.
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer and pianist. Nicknamed "Sassy" and "The Divine One", she won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine Grammy Awards. She was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Critic Scott Yanow wrote that she had "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century".
William Clarence Eckstine was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing and bebop eras. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. In 2019, Eckstine was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award "for performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording". His recording of "I Apologize" was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. The New York Times described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone" and "full-throated, sugary approach to popular songs inspired singers like Earl Coleman, Johnny Hartman, Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock, and Lou Rawls."
David Louis Bartholomew was an American musician, bandleader, composer, arranger, and record producer. He was prominent in the music of New Orleans throughout the second half of the 20th century. Originally a trumpeter, he was active in many musical genres, including rhythm and blues, big band, swing music, rock and roll, New Orleans jazz, and Dixieland. In his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he was cited as a key figure in the transition from jump blues and swing to R&B and as "one of the Crescent City's greatest musicians and a true pioneer in the rock and roll revolution".
Albert George Hibbler was an American baritone vocalist, who sang with Duke Ellington's orchestra before having several pop hits as a solo artist. Some of Hibbler's singing is classified as rhythm and blues, but he is best seen as a bridge between R&B and traditional pop music. According to one authority, "Hibbler cannot be regarded as a jazz singer but as an exceptionally good interpreter of twentieth-century popular songs who happened to work with some of the best jazz musicians of the time."
The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16- to 18-piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie in 1935 and recording regularly from 1936. Despite a brief disbandment at the beginning of the 1950s, the band survived long past the big band era itself and the death of Basie in 1984. It continues under the direction of trumpeter Scotty Barnhart.
Arthur Prysock Jr. was an American jazz and R&B singer best known for his live shows and his deep baritone, influenced by Billy Eckstine. According to his obituary in The New York Times, "his heavy, deep voice projected a calm, reassuring virility."
"I'm Beginning to See the Light" is a popular song and jazz standard, with music written by Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, and Harry James and lyrics by Don George and published in 1944.
Albert J. "Budd" Johnson III was an American jazz saxophonist and clarinetist who worked extensively with, among others, Ben Webster, Benny Goodman, Big Joe Turner, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Count Basie, Billie Holiday and, especially, Earl Hines.
"Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)" (commonly referred to as "Stormy Monday") is a song written and recorded by American blues electric guitar pioneer T-Bone Walker. It is a slow twelve-bar blues performed in the West Coast blues-style that features Walker's smooth, plaintive vocal and distinctive guitar work. As well as becoming a record chart hit in 1948, it inspired B.B. King and others to take up the electric guitar. "Stormy Monday" became Walker's best-known and most-recorded song.
Here's the Man!!! is the second studio album by Bobby Bland, released in 1962. It was issued in standard mono, as well true stereo and was the first Duke album issued in the stereo format. Even though the previous album, Two Steps from the Blues remains available on CD, this album hasn't been available in its entirety since 1988.
"(In My) Solitude" is a 1934 composition by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Eddie DeLange and Irving Mills. It has been recorded numerous times and is considered a jazz standard.
Once More with Feeling is a 1960 studio album by the American singer Billy Eckstine. It was arranged by Billy May and produced by Teddy Reig.
Basie/Eckstine Incorporated is a 1959 studio album featuring Billy Eckstine and the Count Basie Orchestra. It was released by Roulette Records and marked Eckstine and Basie's only recorded collaboration.
"Trouble in Mind" is a vaudeville blues-style song written by jazz pianist Richard M. Jones. Singer Thelma La Vizzo with Jones on piano first recorded it in 1924 and in 1926, Bertha "Chippie" Hill popularized the tune with her recording with Jones and trumpeter Louis Armstrong. The song became an early blues standard, with numerous renditions by a variety of musicians in a variety of styles.
"Just Your Fool" is a rhythm and blues-style song written and recorded by the American jazz and jump blues bandleader/pianist Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra in 1953. Called an "R&B anthem", the song has a big-band arrangement and his sister Ella Johnson on vocals—her "delicate and deceptively sweet phrasing was ideally suited to ballads such as this". "I'm Just Your Fool" became a Billboard R&B chart record hit, reaching number six in 1954.
That's How I Love the Blues! is an album by American jazz vocalist Mark Murphy featuring tracks recorded in late 1962 for the Riverside label.
I'm Shooting High is an album by jazz pianist Gildo Mahones recorded for the Prestige label in 1963. The album was intended to be the pianist's debut album but was shelved temporarily when the Prestige subsidiary label New Jazz ceased to be used for releases and was later issued as part of the Prestige 16000 Series.
"Stormy Monday" is the common shortened form of "Call It Stormy Monday ", a blues standard by T-Bone Walker.
"We Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town" is a song originally recorded on September 3, 1936, by Piedmont blues musician Casey Bill Weldon. Weldon performed it as a solo piece, with vocals and acoustic guitar plus piano and double bass accompaniment.
 | This article about a jazz standard or composition written in the 1940s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
