Helen Merrill
Encyclopedia
Helen Merrill is an internationally known jazz
vocalist.
Merrill's recording career has spanned six decades and she is popular with fans of jazz in Japan
and Italy
(where she lived for many years) as well as in her native United States
. She has recorded and performed with some of the most notable figures in the American jazz scene.
n immigrant parents. She began singing in jazz clubs in the Bronx
at the age of fourteen. By the time she was sixteen, Merrill had taken up music full time. In 1952, Merrill made her recording debut when she was asked to sing "A Cigarette For Company" with the Earl Hines Band
; the song was released on their Xanadu album. Etta Jones
made her debut on the same album.
At this time she was married to musician Aaron Sachs
. They divorced in 1956.
As a result of the exposure she received from "A Cigarette for Company" and two subsequent singles recorded for the Roost
record label
, Merrill was signed by Mercury Records
for their new Emarcy label.
In 1954, Merrill recorded her first (and to date most acclaimed) LP, an eponym
ous record featuring legendary jazz trumpet
player Clifford Brown
and bassist
/cellist
Oscar Pettiford
, among others. It was to be one of Brown's last recordings, as he was killed in a car accident just two years later. The album was produced and arranged
by Quincy Jones
, who was then just twenty-one years old. The success of Helen Merrill
prompted Mercury to sign her for an additional four-album contract.
Merrill's follow-up to Helen Merrill was the 1956 LP, Dream of You, which was produced and arranged by bebop
arranger and pianist
Gil Evans
. Evans' work on Dream of You was his first in many years. His arrangements on Merrill's laid the musical foundations for his work in following years with Miles Davis
.
, where she enjoyed more commercial success than she had in the United States. She settled for a time in Italy
recording an album there, and doing live concerts with jazz notables Chet Baker
, Romano Mussolini
, and Stan Getz
. Merrill returned to the U.S. in the 1960s, but moved to Japan
in 1967 after touring there. Merrill developed a following in Japan that remains strong to this day. In addition to recording while in Japan, Merrill became involved in other aspects of the music industry, producing albums for Trio Records and hosting a show on a Tokyo
radio station
.
s. She has recorded a bossa nova
album, a Christmas
album and a record's worth of Rodgers and Hammerstein
, among many others.
Two albums from Merrill's later career have been tributes to past musical partners. In 1987, Merrill and Gil Evans recorded fresh arrangements of their classic Dream of You; the new recordings were released under the title Collaboration and became the most critically acclaimed of Merrill's albums in the 1980s.
In 1987 she co-produced a CD "Billy Eckstine sing with Benny Carter" and sing in duet with Mr.B two ballads.
In 1995 she recorded Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown
as a tribute to the late trumpeter.
One of Merrill's millennium released recordings draws from her Croatian heritage as well as her American upbringing. Jelena Ana Milcetic, a.k.a. Helen Merrill (2000), combines jazz, pop
and blues
songs with several traditional Croatian songs sung in Croatian.
Helen Merrill has been married three times, first to musician Aaron Sachs, second time to UPI vice president the late Donald J Brydon, and third to arranger-conductor the late Torrie Zito
. She has one child, a son, Allan P Sachs, also a singer, who is professionally known as Alan Merrill
.
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
vocalist.
Merrill's recording career has spanned six decades and she is popular with fans of jazz in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
(where she lived for many years) as well as in her native United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. She has recorded and performed with some of the most notable figures in the American jazz scene.
Youth and early career in the United States
Merrill was born in 1930 to CroatiaCroatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n immigrant parents. She began singing in jazz clubs in the Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
at the age of fourteen. By the time she was sixteen, Merrill had taken up music full time. In 1952, Merrill made her recording debut when she was asked to sing "A Cigarette For Company" with the Earl Hines Band
Earl Hines
Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, was an American jazz pianist. Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern jazz piano and, according to one source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".-Early...
; the song was released on their Xanadu album. Etta Jones
Etta Jones
Etta Jones was an American jazz singer. She is not to be confused with the more popular singer Etta James nor her namesake, a member of the Dandridge Sisters, who recorded with Jimmy Lunceford and was Gerald Wilson's first wife. Her best known recordings were "Don't Go To Strangers" and "Save...
made her debut on the same album.
At this time she was married to musician Aaron Sachs
Aaron Sachs
Aaron Sachs , is a well known jazz saxophone and clarinet player.-Overview:Sachs started as a young swing protege of Benny Goodman, and later eased into bebop music, playing with Earl Fatha Hines. He then formed his own bands, with some success recording and touring. He married singer Helen Merrill...
. They divorced in 1956.
As a result of the exposure she received from "A Cigarette for Company" and two subsequent singles recorded for the Roost
Roost Records
Roost Records was a record label established in 1949, primarily to record jazz, taking its secondary name from the New York club with which it was associated...
record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, Merrill was signed by Mercury Records
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...
for their new Emarcy label.
In 1954, Merrill recorded her first (and to date most acclaimed) LP, an eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous record featuring legendary jazz trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
player Clifford Brown
Clifford Brown
Clifford Brown , aka "Brownie," was an influential and highly rated American jazz trumpeter. He died aged 25, leaving behind only four years' worth of recordings...
and bassist
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
/cellist
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
Oscar Pettiford
Oscar Pettiford
Oscar Pettiford was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer known particularly for his pioneering work in bebop.-Biography:...
, among others. It was to be one of Brown's last recordings, as he was killed in a car accident just two years later. The album was produced and arranged
Arrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
by Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
, who was then just twenty-one years old. The success of Helen Merrill
Helen Merrill (album)
Helen Merrill is the debut studio album by Helen Merrill, accompanied by trumpeter Clifford Brown.Merrill recorded a tribute album to Brown in 1995.-Reception:...
prompted Mercury to sign her for an additional four-album contract.
Merrill's follow-up to Helen Merrill was the 1956 LP, Dream of You, which was produced and arranged by bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
arranger and pianist
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
Gil Evans
Gil Evans
Gil Evans was a jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader, active in the United States...
. Evans' work on Dream of You was his first in many years. His arrangements on Merrill's laid the musical foundations for his work in following years with Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
.
Success abroad
After recording sporadically through the late 1950s and 1960s, Merrill spent much of her time touring EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, where she enjoyed more commercial success than she had in the United States. She settled for a time in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
recording an album there, and doing live concerts with jazz notables Chet Baker
Chet Baker
Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...
, Romano Mussolini
Romano Mussolini
Romano Mussolini was the fourth and youngest son of Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943...
, and Stan Getz
Stan Getz
Stanley Getz was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott...
. Merrill returned to the U.S. in the 1960s, but moved to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in 1967 after touring there. Merrill developed a following in Japan that remains strong to this day. In addition to recording while in Japan, Merrill became involved in other aspects of the music industry, producing albums for Trio Records and hosting a show on a Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
.
Later career
Merrill returned to the US in 1972 and has continued recording and regular touring since then. Her later career has seen her experiment in different music genreMusic genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
s. She has recorded a bossa nova
Bossa nova
Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music. Bossa nova acquired a large following in the 1960s, initially consisting of young musicians and college students...
album, a Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
album and a record's worth of Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
, among many others.
Two albums from Merrill's later career have been tributes to past musical partners. In 1987, Merrill and Gil Evans recorded fresh arrangements of their classic Dream of You; the new recordings were released under the title Collaboration and became the most critically acclaimed of Merrill's albums in the 1980s.
In 1987 she co-produced a CD "Billy Eckstine sing with Benny Carter" and sing in duet with Mr.B two ballads.
In 1995 she recorded Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown
Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown
Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown is a 1995 studio album by Helen Merrill, recorded in tribute to the trumpeter Clifford Brown.Merrill had recorded an album with Brown in 1956.-Reception:...
as a tribute to the late trumpeter.
One of Merrill's millennium released recordings draws from her Croatian heritage as well as her American upbringing. Jelena Ana Milcetic, a.k.a. Helen Merrill (2000), combines jazz, pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
songs with several traditional Croatian songs sung in Croatian.
Helen Merrill has been married three times, first to musician Aaron Sachs, second time to UPI vice president the late Donald J Brydon, and third to arranger-conductor the late Torrie Zito
Torrie Zito
Torrie Zito was an American pianist, music arranger, composer and conductor.He worked with many recording artists of note, including Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Perry Como, Billy Eckstine, Herbie Mann, Steve Lawrence, Edie Gorme, Nana Mouskouri, Bobby Short, Marvin Hamlish, Roberto Carlos, Sinead...
. She has one child, a son, Allan P Sachs, also a singer, who is professionally known as Alan Merrill
Alan Merrill
Alan Merrill is an American vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter. In the early 1970s Merrill was the first westerner to achieve pop star status in Japan...
.
Partial discography
- Helen MerrillHelen Merrill (album)Helen Merrill is the debut studio album by Helen Merrill, accompanied by trumpeter Clifford Brown.Merrill recorded a tribute album to Brown in 1995.-Reception:...
(EmArcy, 1954) - Dream of YouDream of You (Helen Merrill album)Dream of You is the second studio album by Helen Merrill, arranged by Gil Evans.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Stephen Cook awarded the album four stars and said that "On 1955's Dream of You...Merrill found reconciliation, sounding both melodramatic and swinging within Gil Evans' darkly...
(EmArcy, 1957) - Merrill at Midnight (EmArcy, 1957)
- The Nearness of YouThe Nearness of You (Helen Merrill album)-Track listing:# "Bye Bye Blackbird" - 2:57# "When the Sun Comes Out" - 4:47# "I Remember You" - 2:11...
(EmArcy, 1958) - Casa Forte (Mercury, 1980)
- Music MakersMusic Makers (album)The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album four stars and said "all of the songs sound quite fresh, partly due to the unusual instrumentation and also partly because of the players' inventiveness".-Track listing:...
(Owl, 1986) - Clear Out of This World (Antilles, 1992)
- Brownie: Homage to Clifford BrownBrownie: Homage to Clifford BrownBrownie: Homage to Clifford Brown is a 1995 studio album by Helen Merrill, recorded in tribute to the trumpeter Clifford Brown.Merrill had recorded an album with Brown in 1956.-Reception:...
(Verve, 1995) - You and the Night and the MusicYou and the Night and the Music (Helen Merrill album)The Allmusic review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine awarded the album three stars and said it was a "wonderful collection of standards, augmented by two originals from Helen Merrill and Torrie Zito...
(Verve, 1998) - Jelena Ana Milcactic a.k.a. Helen MerrillJelena Ana Milcactic a.k.a. Helen MerrillThe Allmusic review by Alex Henderson awarded the album four and a half stars and said it was a "Helen Merrill has never been afraid to take chances, but the veteran jazz singer is especially ambitious on Jelena Ana Milcetic, an autobiographical work that draws on jazz, pop, and folk as well as...
(Verve, 2000) - Lilac Wine (Verve, 2003)
External links
- Helen Merrill Official Website
- [ Helen Merrill at Allmusic]
- Helen Merrill at All About Jazz