From 1956. I haven't been able to find out anything about Martha Hayes, but this album is gorgeous and has one of the best renditions of "Black Coffee" I've heard.
It seems to be her one and only album. Fortunately for her memory, it is not impossibly rare, having enjoyed vinyl and digital reissues in Spain and Japan.
When it comes to learning more about the woman, even the album's liner notes give you little to go on. One paragraph states that she "has been in music as a business for quite a while," another that she had recently taken a semester-long piano course at Julliard, and that her longtime mentor was a pianist. That's just about it......(Edited From Steve Hoffman Music Forums )
1. By Myself
2. How Long Has This Been Going On
3. Black Coffee
4. Get Out Of Town
1. It Never Entered My Mind
2. Little Girl Blue
3. Yesterday
4. Good Morning Heartache
5. Gypsy In My Soul
4. Get Out Of Town
Has anybody got any more info on Martha ?
ReplyDeleteEnjoy !
Espy -- Thanks so much for allowing me to discover this Hayes named Martha -- She is exquisite! <3
DeleteOne good turn deserves another, and here are some words I found about the lady:
"In a well taken piece of criticism entitled The Vanishing Female Jazz-Singer (The Saturday Review, 3/17/56), Nat Hentoff surveyed the tundra of feminine jazz vocalizing and without pigeonholing in a convenient manner, brought to light the lack of talented newcomers and the discrepancies in the styles of the leading young chanteuses which prevent them from reaching greater stature. About a month after I was reading and agreeing with this article I was given a record to hear. It was A Hayes Named Martha. She is a singer, genus jazz singer.
It will strike you immediately how much like an instrument her voice is and how she phrases this hornlike sound with the inner sense of an instrumentalist yet never destroys a word or its meaning, individual or related.
She has been in music as a business for quite a while, paying her dues in small clubs where she often more than not accompanied herself on the piano. This knowledge of jazz from the instrumentalist's standpoint is certainly a salient factor in her feeling as a jazz singer.
Martha's recent studies include a semester in John Mehegan's piano class at Julliard and several years with her present mentor, pianist composer Hall Overton. There is no mistaking that she is a musician as well as a singer for as a singer she is a musician.
IRA GITLER
I was quite surprised when I found this one. Never heard of her, and first mistook this as a record by Martha Raye, who recorded also for Jubilee around this period. What first appealed to me was that beautiful cover. I suspected this to be a "moody" album, in the tradition of those singers on Bethlehem.
The liner notes by Gitler convinced me to buy it, especially the fact that she studied with Mehegan and Overton! Hayes sticks most of the time to ballads, with only swinging lightly on the last track of each side. Only 9 songs, but Hayes gets the chance to really stretch out on the material. In example 'Black Coffee' clocks in at 6:38 minutes! Hayes only improvises in a simple way, sticks close to the original melody, but sometimes surprises by choosing unexpected notes, for instance in the end of 'How Long Has This Been Going On?'. The winner of this album is for me the plaintive opening track. Nice to hear it done at a slowed-down tempo. Still thought she would be a little more "way out" since she studied with two forgotten pianists/composers that I admire, Mehegan and Overton.
The musical accompaniment is neat, even when the gentlemen aren't big name players."