Life Is a Song for Annie Ross
Annie Ross has done just about everything that it is possible to do in show business, from plays and musical theater to cabaret and feature films. Yet many regard her as one of the great jazz singers of all-time. She has practiced her art(s) all over the world — having been born in Scotland, raised in Hollywood, and lived in virtually every city in Europe. But I prefer to think of her not merely as a perennial New Yorker, but a New York institution, one of the things that makes this city great.
New Yorkers are especially lucky that the 76-year-old legend has chosen to continually work here: After a year or so at Danny's on West 46th Street, she switched a few months ago to the city's newest all-star room for singers, the Metropolitan on West 22nd Street, where she performs Tuesday nights with her long-standing quartet.
Annabelle Short, as she was originally known, first came to Manhattan when she was 4 years old. Her parents had been in "Variety," the English equivalent of vaudeville, and her mother's sister was Ella Logan, the Scottish musical comedy star. Logan had sung with big bands in London before she arrived in New York, married an American, and sent for her sister and family. When telling this story, Ms. Ross, entertainer that she is, can't resist lapsing into a wee bit of a Scottish brogue.
"We came through Ellis Island, we were detained there for one night because of papers that Ella hadn't filed," she said. "We stayed in her building, and there was a little girl that I used to play with in the lobby. She mentioned that her father had a radio show, and I said, ‘Well, I should be on it! I do everything. I sing, I dance, I tell jokes!'"
The girl's father was a "huge man" in more ways than one: He was the bandleader Paul Whiteman, host of the most popular variety show on the air.
"About a week later, we got a phone call and they said, ‘This is the radio network, we're waiting for Annabelle.' They were having a radio talent competition for children. So I got up and I put my kilt on, and with a few words from my father, off I went! I sang a jazz version of ‘Loch Lomond,' which I had learned from my aunt and I won!" The prize was a "token contract" with MGM Pictures, which led to her first film role, a cameo appearance in a "Little Rascals" short, "Our Gang Follies of 1938."
Ms. Ross spent the next decade or so in Hollywood, where she was allegedly under the care of her aunt, Ella Logan, but was actually looked after by a nurse whom she describes as "sadistic — she was a real piece of work." She found the limelight two more times as a youngster: At 13, she played Judy Garland's kid sister in the MGM musical "Presenting Lily Mars," and the following year, when her original song "Let's Fly" won a songwriting contest.
When she returned to New York in 1947 to watch Logan open in the smash musical "Finian's Rainbow," she became hooked on the theater.
"That was wonderful. To be in that dressing room with her while she made up, to see the reaction of the people was incredible. I already knew that was what I wanted to do, but seeing her in that show confirmed it. I got to meet all the stars whom my aunt knew, went to lunch at 21, the Stork Club, Toots Shor's, and I got to meet all my showbiz heroes, who all knew her."
But the teenage Ms. Ross had more to see overseas. At 19, after a spell as a singer in English nightclubs, she was living in Paris with the pioneering bebop drummer Kenny Clarke, with whom she had a son. After making her first recording, with a French band co-starring another American expatriate, the saxophonist James Moody, she returned to New York in 1951 to record for Dee Gee Records. At the time, she was supporting herself by working as a hostess at a lunch counter in a drugstore.
"I hated what I was doing. But my musician friends would come in, they would spend five dollars and get ten dollars change. I didn't last very long doing that." Soon enough, she got a call from the producer Bob Weinstock, who had produced the early hit, "Moody's Mood for Love," and wanted her to write and record what would be a female version of that breakthrough hit.
"He played me some records and said, ‘Can you write words for this?' I said, ‘Yeah!' If he had said, ‘Can you fly?' I would have said, ‘Yeah!' I took the records home to my little one-room flat and the one that caught my ear was Wardell Gray's ‘Twisted' — that suggested a whole mess of things to me."
Her version of "Twisted" became a vocalese classic and eventually attracted the attention of fellow jazz singers Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks. The pair was impressed enough to invite Ms. Ross to work with them on the classic album "Sing a Song of Basie," which in turn led to the formation the greatest vocal group in the history of jazz — Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. After years of relentless touring, Ross left the group in 1962 and returned to a prolific acting career in England, recording only three more albums in the 1960s.
Today, Ms. Ross is busier than ever. Apart from the ongoing weekly appearances at Danny's and the Metropolitan, she has been steadily working on her autobiography (when it is finished, one suspects wives will shoot their husbands in 33 states). She is also working on a new album, her second in three years, this one recorded live at the Metro.
Appropriately, both of her recent albums are produced by Dave Usher, the gentleman who masterminded her first session for Dee Gee Records 55 years ago.
Ms. Ross is loathe to name any period in her life — even the incredibly busy, high-profile five years with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross — as her personal or professional high point. She does, however, point with pride to a story her mother told her.
"Once, back home in Scotland, when I was a tiny little girl, we were waiting at a train station, and my mother couldn't find me. She went into the lady's room and there I was, standing on the sink, singing for people! I was always happy to sing for anybody, any time, any place!"
