⬇️ BARBARA DANE ⬇️
(Barbara Jean Spillman)
(Barbara Jean Spillman)
DISCOGRAPHY 1957-2020 (24LP/CD/DVD)
Barbara Dane (born May 12, 1927) is an American folk, blues, and jazz
singer. Barbara Dane's parents arrived in Detroit from Arkansas in the
1920s.
BIOGRAPHY
Out of high school, Dane began to sing regularly at demonstrations for
racial equality and economic justice.
While still in her teens, she sat in with bands around town and won the
interest of local music promoters. She got an offer to tour with Alvino
Rey's band, but she turned it down in favor of singing at factory gates
and in union halls.
Moving to San Francisco in 1949, Dane began raising her own family and
singing her folk and topical songs around town as well as on radio and
television. A jazz revival was then shaking the town, and by the 1950s
she became a familiar figure at clubs along the city's Embarcadero with
her own versions of women's blues and jazz tunes.
New Orleans jazz musicians like George Lewis and Kid Ory and locals
like Turk Murphy, Burt Bales, Bob Mielke and others invited her onto the
bandstand regularly. Her first professional jazz job was with Turk
Murphy at the Tin Angel in l956.
"Bessie Smith in stereo," wrote jazz critic Leonard Feather in the late
1950s. Time said of Dane: "The voice is pure, rich ... rare as a 20
karat diamond."
To Ebony, she seemed "startlingly blonde, especially when that powerful
dusky alto voice begins to moan of trouble, two-timing men and freedom
... with stubborn determination, enthusiasm and a basic love for the
underdog, [she is] making a name for herself ... aided and abetted by
some of the oldest names in jazz who helped give birth to the blues."
The seven-page Ebony article was filled with photos of Dane working with
Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Clara Ward, Mama Yancey,
Little Brother Montgomery and others.
By 1959, Louis Armstrong had asked Time magazine readers: "Did you get
that chick? She's a gasser!" and invited her to appear with him on
national television. She appeared with Louis Armstrong on the Timex
All-Star Jazz Show hosted by Jackie Gleason on January 7, 1959. She
toured the East Coast with Jack Teagarden, appeared in Chicago with Art
Hodes, Roosevelt Sykes, Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Slim, Otis
Spann, Willie Dixon and others, played New York with Wilbur De Paris and
his band, and appeared on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show as a solo
guest artist. Other national TV work included The Steve Allen Show,
Bobby Troop's Stars of Jazz, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
In 1961, the singer opened her own club, Sugar Hill: Home of the Blues,
on San Francisco's Broadway in the North Beach district, with the idea
of creating a venue for the blues in a tourist district where a wider
audience could hear it. There Dane performed regularly with her two most
constant musical companions: Kenny "Good News" Whitson on piano and
cornet and Wellman Braud, former Ellington bassist. Among her guest
artists were Jimmy Rushing, Mose Allison, Mama Yancey, Tampa Red, Lonnie
Johnson, Big Mama Thornton, Lightnin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Brownie
McGhee and Sonny Terry.
In her speech to the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era (whose text can
be found in the booklet that's included in Paredon Records' FTA! Songs
of the GI Resistance vinyl album of 1970), Barbara Dane said, "I was too
stubborn to hire one of the greed-head managers, probably because I'm a
woman who likes to speak for herself. I always made my own deals and
contracts, and after figuring out the economics of it, I was free to
choose when and where I worked, able to spend lots more time with my
three children and doing political work, and even brought home more
money in the end, by not going for the "bigtime." I did make some really
nice records, because I was able to choose and work with wonderfully
gifted musicians.
She continued to weave in appearances as a solo performer on the
coffeehouse circuit with her folk-style guitar. She also stepped up her
work in the movements for peace and justice as the struggle for civil
rights spread and the Vietnam war escalated. She sang at peace
demonstrations in Washington, D.C. and throughout the US and toured
anti-war GI coffeehouses all over the world. In l966, Barbara Dane
became the first U.S. musician to tour post-revolutionary Cuba.
In 1970 Dane founded Paredon Records, a label specializing in
international protest music. She produced 45 albums, including three of
her own, over a 12-year period. The label was later incorporated into
Smithsonian-Folkways, a label of the Smithsonian Institution, and is
available through their catalog.... (Wikipedia)
NEW!
1962-When I Was A Young Girl (LP) @FLAC24-96+
1964-Barbara Dane Sings the Blues @FLAC+
1973-I Hate The Capitalist System @FLAC+
2016-Throw It Away... @FLAC+