HAPPY IN-BETWEEN DAY, AND ALL THAT JAZZ

One of the first great female jazz singers,  Annette Hanshaw (Oct. 18, 1910 – Mar. 13, 1985) ranked near the top of her field, along with Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, the Boswell Sisters and Mildred Bailey. She gave proper feeling to the lyrics, improvised, and always swung. [She] began her recording career when she was just 15 (discovered by her future husband, Herman Rose, who was the A&R man for the Pathe label), sounding quite mature from the start. Her trademark became saying “That’s all!” (which she had spontaneously ad-libbed on one of her first recording dates) at the end of her records. But the singer hated to perform in public, and at the age of 25 she retired from singing.
–Scott Yanow, CLASSIC JAZZ – THE MUSICIANS AND RECORDINGS THAT SHAPED JAZZ, 1895-1933

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At the behest of my good friend/mutual blog follower Don Frankel, I am deviating from my every-five-days publishing routine to post my first and (for a while, at least) last “in-betweener.” The occasion: the October 18, 1910 birthday of singer Annette Hanshaw and the slightly more recent (but decidedly less noteworthy) birthday of mistermuse. To celebrate the former’s birthday, I’d like to pay her tribute as one of my favorite vocalists of the late 1920s – early 30s. Regarding the latter’s birthday, the less said, the better.

On Oct. 15, Don did a satirical political post (on SWI) that ended with a clip of Hanshaw singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” about which I made a comment.  Turns out he didn’t know anything about her (but then who does, unless you’re really into early jazz?). But rather than go into detail that most readers probably aren’t interested in, I’ll let her singing do most of the talking. Here she is at age 16 in August 1927:

Next, the lady sighs “We just couldn’t say goodbye” in a rare filmed performance:

Finally, what could be more appropriate than to end with her last recording, Cole Porter’s “Let’s Fall In Love.”

And now, because we just couldn’t say goodbye, we are left with That’s all.