Album Notes

As a child she sang for Duke Ellington and was praised by him. As a teenager she heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and lived hippily ever affter. Well it wasn't that simple - or easy, But if show business was in her blood, jazz crept into her bones. She rubbed elbows with Stella Brooks; subbed at the Apollo Theater for Billie Holiday and became a caring friend to Lady Day; was married to Kenny Clarke and recorded with an incipient Modern Jazz Quartet; wrote the lyrics to Wardell Gray's "Twisted" and Art Farmer's "Farmer's Market" and vocally negotiated their serpentine contours with uncanny elan; was a nightclub entrepreneur in London at "Annie's Room"; appeared with Anthony Newley in Cranks; Vanessa Redgrave in Three Penny Opera; and was directed by Robert Altman in The Player and Short Cuts