Liz McComb
Encyclopedia
Liz McComb is an American gospel
and blues
singer, songwriter and pianist, who also loves jazz, spiritual and soul music.
, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and above all, Mahalia Jackson
who became Liz’s idol and her role model. The young girl learned Jackson’s entire repertory by heart. In the meantime, her only brother played jazz trumpet and introduced Liz to the great jazz musicians - Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Max Roach as well as Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan.
Liz began with violin but decided to switch to the piano, an instrument with which her "heartstrings feel perfectly in tune”, in her words. She learned to play the piano on her own and one day she decided to take the plunge and replace her pianist at a moment’s notice. Gradually, she became one of the best pianist-singers of her generation. While still young, she joined the Karamu House Theater school and then the cultural center’s theater company. She also began studying the history and culture of the African-American community. This was the era of the civil rights movement, which deeply impacted her whole life.
With the support of her cousin, Annie Moss, she toured in Europe as part of the itinerant «Roots of Rock’n’Roll» show. Thanks to this experience, Liz McComb discovered the major international theaters.
While regularly touring in Germany, Spain, France and Switzerland, she was in constant contact with the “greats”, doing the first part of their concerts, such as Bessie Griffin
, Helen Humes
, Luther Allison
, B.B. King, James Brown
, Ray Charles
, Memphis Slim
, Taj Mahal
, Randy Weston
, etc.
Liz first stayed in Switzerland, where she was a sensation at the Montreux
Festival. She then chose Paris as her main place of residence. There she met Maurice Cullaz, a famous jazz critic, who also pioneered Europe’s discovery of gospel music. Maurice Cullaz immediately saw in Liz a new potential for this music. After coming to Paris Liz McComb was part of the « Psalms » quartet, with Jerome Van Jones, Lavelle (Lavelle McKinnie Dugan) and Gregg Hunter .
The right man in the right place
One day Liz received a phone call from a French corporate events producer, Gérard Vachet. He wanted her to perform for a major event he was organizing. What he did not know was that Liz would enchant his heart, his mind, and in fact his whole life with her music and her extraordinary personality.
He decided to devote his entire career to making the world her stage, to making her the superstar of gospel that she always should have been. He dropped his corporate work and, after having been a vintage car dealer, an antique seller, manager of 120 marathons in Africa, and creator of the Quai du Blues (“the home of real American blues” in Paris), he finally became Liz’s agent, impresario and producer. He wanted to give Liz the world, and give her to the world.
had been the toast of the town in her day, and the Olympia
, where all the greats have experienced the unforgettable communion with an enthusiastic audience.
After each tour, she goes back to her home church in Cleveland and becomes again what she always has been, a church singer of gospel songs. Liz’s personality has strengthened over time as she has found a balance between the limelight and her deep, unshakable faith, never succumbing to the easy temptations of success.
at the concert for the 2000-year celebration of the birth of Christ. Other concerts, in Palestine and Lebanon, convinced her to become, above all, a “messenger of peace”. Another very personal song of hers is « The Peacemakers », which will become her theme song, sung everywhere and with many choirs.
At that point, Liz McComb’s musical career went through an amazing experience. As if driven by a premonition, Liz flew to New Orleans to cut a record that was very different from everything she had done before. Whether this was indeed a premonition, or just a coincidence, the listener must decide. But Spirit of New Orleans was recorded with some of the best local musicians in a very short period of time and is a genuine musical testament to the way the city was just before the Katrina catastrophe.
Her sources of inspiration are many. She is passionate about the traditional music and percussion of the Caribbean, particularly Guadeloupe. This was present in her concerts during 2006-2007, and also in her CD trilogy called Soul, Peace & Love.
For all these reasons, Liz McComb, in the words of American journalists, has become a beacon of ”global gospel“ - Liz McComb has become a planetary gospel singer.
Liz’s nephew, Frank McComb, is also a musician – a singer and pianist.
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
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...
singer, songwriter and pianist, who also loves jazz, spiritual and soul music.
Roots in the home of gospel
The sixth of seven children, Elizabeth McComb grew up in an African-American family that originally came from Mississippi. Her father, a factory worker, died when she was very young. Her mother was very religious, as was the whole family, and she became a preacher and the pastor of a Pentecostal church. Three of her sisters formed a vocal group called The Daughters of Zion, which was very popular in local churches. Many years later, they would sometimes accompany Liz McComb during her concerts. Liz started singing at the early age of three. At home, the children grew up listening to the great gospel singers: The Staple SingersThe Staple Singers
The Staple Singers were an American gospel, soul, and R&B singing group. Roebuck "Pops" Staples , the patriarch of the family, formed the group with his children Cleotha , Pervis , Yvonne , and Mavis...
, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and above all, Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson – January 27, 1972) was an African-American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel"...
who became Liz’s idol and her role model. The young girl learned Jackson’s entire repertory by heart. In the meantime, her only brother played jazz trumpet and introduced Liz to the great jazz musicians - Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Max Roach as well as Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan.
Liz began with violin but decided to switch to the piano, an instrument with which her "heartstrings feel perfectly in tune”, in her words. She learned to play the piano on her own and one day she decided to take the plunge and replace her pianist at a moment’s notice. Gradually, she became one of the best pianist-singers of her generation. While still young, she joined the Karamu House Theater school and then the cultural center’s theater company. She also began studying the history and culture of the African-American community. This was the era of the civil rights movement, which deeply impacted her whole life.
Beginnings as a singer
Liz had always been complimented for her voice and she started thinking of maybe becoming a Broadway star. She left for New York and started auditioning for shows and musicals.With the support of her cousin, Annie Moss, she toured in Europe as part of the itinerant «Roots of Rock’n’Roll» show. Thanks to this experience, Liz McComb discovered the major international theaters.
While regularly touring in Germany, Spain, France and Switzerland, she was in constant contact with the “greats”, doing the first part of their concerts, such as Bessie Griffin
Bessie Griffin
Bessie Griffin was an African American gospel singer.Born Arlette B. Broil in New Orleans, Louisiana, she was steeped in church music as a child...
, Helen Humes
Helen Humes
Helen Humes was an American jazz and blues singer.Humes was successively a teenaged blues singer, band vocalist with Count Basie, saucy R&B diva and a mature interpreter of the classy popular song.-Career:...
, Luther Allison
Luther Allison
Luther Allison was an American blues guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas and moved with his family, at age twelve, to Chicago in 1951. He taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he began hanging outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being...
, B.B. King, James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
, Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
, Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other...
, Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal (musician)
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks , who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music...
, Randy Weston
Randy Weston
Randy Weston , is an American jazz pianist and composer, of Jamaican parentage.-Biography:Weston studied classical piano as a child. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he ran a restaurant that was frequented by many of the leading bebop musicians...
, etc.
The European period [modifier]
From that period on, she regularly stayed in Europe, traveling back to the United States several times a year.Liz first stayed in Switzerland, where she was a sensation at the Montreux
Montreux
Montreux is a municipality in the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.It is located on Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps and has a population, , of and nearly 90,000 in the agglomeration.- History :...
Festival. She then chose Paris as her main place of residence. There she met Maurice Cullaz, a famous jazz critic, who also pioneered Europe’s discovery of gospel music. Maurice Cullaz immediately saw in Liz a new potential for this music. After coming to Paris Liz McComb was part of the « Psalms » quartet, with Jerome Van Jones, Lavelle (Lavelle McKinnie Dugan) and Gregg Hunter .
The right man in the right place
One day Liz received a phone call from a French corporate events producer, Gérard Vachet. He wanted her to perform for a major event he was organizing. What he did not know was that Liz would enchant his heart, his mind, and in fact his whole life with her music and her extraordinary personality.
He decided to devote his entire career to making the world her stage, to making her the superstar of gospel that she always should have been. He dropped his corporate work and, after having been a vintage car dealer, an antique seller, manager of 120 marathons in Africa, and creator of the Quai du Blues (“the home of real American blues” in Paris), he finally became Liz’s agent, impresario and producer. He wanted to give Liz the world, and give her to the world.
Faith and fame
Very soon, Liz was in all the great Parisian theaters, including the legendary Casino de Paris, where Josephine BakerJosephine Baker
Josephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....
had been the toast of the town in her day, and the Olympia
Paris Olympia
The Olympia is a music hall in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Located at No. 28, Boulevard des Capucines, its closest métro/RER stations are Madeleine, Opéra, Havre – Caumartin and Auber....
, where all the greats have experienced the unforgettable communion with an enthusiastic audience.
After each tour, she goes back to her home church in Cleveland and becomes again what she always has been, a church singer of gospel songs. Liz’s personality has strengthened over time as she has found a balance between the limelight and her deep, unshakable faith, never succumbing to the easy temptations of success.
Success in America
Liz McComb had been a European star for twenty years but was almost unknown in the United States. And yet, she represented the United States in BethlehemBethlehem
Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank of the Jordan River, near Israel and approximately south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30,000 people. It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the Palestinian National Authority and a hub of Palestinian culture and tourism...
at the concert for the 2000-year celebration of the birth of Christ. Other concerts, in Palestine and Lebanon, convinced her to become, above all, a “messenger of peace”. Another very personal song of hers is « The Peacemakers », which will become her theme song, sung everywhere and with many choirs.
At that point, Liz McComb’s musical career went through an amazing experience. As if driven by a premonition, Liz flew to New Orleans to cut a record that was very different from everything she had done before. Whether this was indeed a premonition, or just a coincidence, the listener must decide. But Spirit of New Orleans was recorded with some of the best local musicians in a very short period of time and is a genuine musical testament to the way the city was just before the Katrina catastrophe.
Liz and the arts
For Liz McComb, music is not just entertainment. Her art stems from her ancestors’ experience of slavery and this ties in with the fate of all mankind. She accepts with devotion any tie that links her to people and peoples who suffer. That is why she sang in Lebanon when the war ended. That is why she sang in Bethlehem. That is why she gave a free concert in Gaza.Her sources of inspiration are many. She is passionate about the traditional music and percussion of the Caribbean, particularly Guadeloupe. This was present in her concerts during 2006-2007, and also in her CD trilogy called Soul, Peace & Love.
For all these reasons, Liz McComb, in the words of American journalists, has become a beacon of ”global gospel“ - Liz McComb has become a planetary gospel singer.
Liz’s nephew, Frank McComb, is also a musician – a singer and pianist.
Discography
- Acoustic Woman, 1992, (Back to Blues/GVE) distribution EMI
- Rock my Soul, 1993, (Back to Blues/GVE) distribution EMI
- Live, 1994, (Back to Blues/GVE/licence Sony) distribution EMI
- Trilogy Coffret 3 CDs, (Back to Blues/GVE) épuisé
- Time is Now, 1996, (Back to Blues/GVE) distribution EMI
- Live à l'Olympia, 1998, (Back to Blues/GVE) distribution EMI
- Le Meilleur de Liz McComb, 1998, (Back to Blues/GVE/licence TF1 musique)
- The Spirit of New Orleans, 2001, (Back to Blues/GVE) distribution EMI
- L'Essentiel/FIRE, 2001, (Back to Blues/GVE) distribution EMI
- Soul, Peace & Love, 2007, (Back to Blues/GVE) distribution EMI
- The Sacred Concert, 19 Mai 2009, (GVE) distribution Naïve
Videography
- Saint-Augustin – (solo & duo) Paris
- Olympia – Paris – DVD distribution EMI
- Vienne Jazz Festival – 1999 and 2002
- Parc Floral Jazz Festival – Paris
- Eglise de La Madeleine – Paris 1995 and 1996
- Basilique Sainte-Clotilde – Paris
- Eglise des Invalides – Paris
- Eglise Saint-Sulpice 2002 – Paris
- Opéra de Lyon 1994
- Athènes (Acropole)
- Festival de Fes avec l’ARC gospel choir
- Vittoria Jazz festival
- Quai du Blues/Nouvel Obs Event – Paris
- Bethléem 24-12-99
- Music Mania with 3 pianos ensemble
- Palais des Sports de Paris, HD (feb 2007)
- Festival de Coutances, HD (May 2007)