Carol Sloane

Carol Sloane was born to Claudia and Frank Morvan on March 5, 1937, in Providence, Rhode Island, the older of two daughters, but she never lived in that city. Instead, she spent her happy childhood in the small town of Smithfield, just a few short miles north of the city. Her parents worked steadily through the years of World War II in the textile mill near their home. Carol was the lucky member of a large family of cousins, aunts and uncles who all possessed natural singing voices. Only one uncle ever received formal musical education, and he played the tenor sax. In 1951, her Uncle Joe arranged an audition for her with a society dance band led by Ed Drew, and she began singing the stock arrangements of popular hits of the day each Wednesday and Saturday night at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet Ballroom, located in Cranston, Rhode Island. In 1955, Carol married a Providence disc jockey named Charlie Jefferds, and almost immediately, the couple found themselves at Fort Carson, Colorado where Charlie endured the rigors of basic training followed by a one-year obligatory tour of duty in Germany. They returned to the US in January 1958, and were amicably divorced in that year. Carol continued to sing in small bars and clubs until she met the road manager of the Les and Larry Elgart Orchestra, which was touring the amusement park ballrooms in the southern New England area. She auditioned for Larry Elgart, who then asked her to come to New York with his band. The brothers had recently split the organization, Les taking the territory west of Chicago, Larry to handle everything east of Chicago. Larry Elgart suggested she change her name to Carol Sloane. The “road years” with the Larry Elgart band continued until 1960, when the road simply became too boring and too difficult for her. After two...

Ella Fitzgerald, “Twelve Nights in Hollywood”

This 4-CD collection is a real gem unearthed from Verve’s vaults — 73 previously unreleased live small-group recordings from the “First Lady of Song.” In some cases these are the first and/or only live versions of the songs she ever recorded. This is Ella at the creative peak of her career. Verve founder Norman Granz personally supervised the live recordings over 12 nights in 1961 and 1962 of every set Fitzgerald performed with her quartet in the intimate setting of Los Angeles’ Crescendo Club. This collection finds Ella ranging through her entire repertoire from the familiar to the obscure, including new versions of her earliest hits (“A-Tisket, A-Tasket”) and those of her peers Billie Holiday (“Good Morning Heartache”) and Frank Sinatra (“The Lady is A Tramp”). And there’s the spontaneity and humor ever present in Ella’s live performances — whether she’s messing up the lyrics to “Blue Moon” without skipping a beat or affectionately imitating Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington on “Bill...