Justin Time /

No
Title
Duration
Excerpts
01
Honeysuckle Rose
00:02:07
02
J'ai Deux Amours
00:02:52
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03
Riffin' The Scotch
00:01:40
04
Fine And Mellow
00:04:58
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05
It Was Just One Of Those Things
00:02:48
06
One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)
00:04:17
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07
What Happened To The Hair On The Head Of The Man I Love?
00:02:38
08
It Takes Two To Tango
00:02:32
09
Surprise Party
00:02:52
10
Makin' Whoopee
00:03:56
11
Perdido
00:02:25
12
If You Could See Me Now
00:04:08
13
A-Tisket, A-Tasket
00:02:49
14
Oh Lady, Be Good
00:03:15
15
Yesterday When I Was Young
00:04:40

Liner Notes

"When I first discovered these women, I was quite young says Ranee Lee of the seven singers celebrated on this CD. "I remember each and every one of them. Each of these ladies had something so different and distinctive."

"Josephine Baker. Billie Holiday. Lena Home. Pearl Bailey. Dinah Washington. Sarah Vaughan. Ella Fitzgerald. In my early years, they were all so identifiable to me."

Dark Divas is much more than Ranee Lee's newest album. It's also a stage show she's written. And not only is she presenting portraits of these singers, she's just as much re-discovering how deeply these singers have touched her own life as an artist. "I was fortunate to have heard such a broad range of music when I was young. My mom listened to everybody. All these singers became part of my life."

Ranee Lee's life as a singer began as a child in Brooklyn. "School plays. Recitals. Doo-wop groups. I was always singing." Dinah Washington most of all inspired the young Ranee. "I got to see Dinah, I think it was at the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre. Dinah's was the first voice I heard and I said to myself 'okay, this is really what I want to do."'

Although, actually, her first work was dancing. She'd also taken dancing lessons early on, and she joined the dance troupe of a high school friend, Barbara Blackwood. "I went on the road as a dancer, but at one engagement we had, they needed more kinds of entertainment, and I was asked to sing - and eventually I stopped dancing and started singing."

She'd first performed in Canada with the dance troupe. Later, she was booked as a singer again and again around Canada and the United States. "And on one of the engagements in Montreal, I fell in love."

Dark Divas is her seventh album for Montreal's Justin Time Records. One of her earlier records, 1989's Deep Song, was a portrait of Billie Holiday and followed Ranee's much-acclaimed performance singing and acting - as Billie in the Lanie Robertson play Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. "I discovered when I was playing Billie that if I only tried to imitate her voice, it would fall short of the mark of who she really was. I'm not an impressionist. I have my own style, and I lent my style to that music."

Dark Divas similarly aspires to tap into an essence of Billie and the other singers she most admires, not only by singing their signature songs, but also, in the stage show, by briefly speaking as these ladies.

"I've tried to find each character. I separate them by certain idiosyncrasies. Billie had a very husky, drawling, inebriated type of sound. Lena Horne has a sophisticated, Southern type of feeling. I use a French accent for Josephine Baker that slides back into an American accent; she was always so 'show biz' and always put that accent on." Josephine Baker was the earliest of these divas, a young dancer from Saint Louis who became the sensation of Paris in the 20's. Ranee sings Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose" and Josephine's theme song, "J'ai Deux Amours." "I have two loves, my country and Paris," sarig the "Black Pearl," as she was called by the French. "Josephine Baker obliterated the reputation of every showgirl in sight," Ranee says in the show. And though Josephine is best-remembered for dancing naked but for a string of bananas, Ranee laughs and says she'll be wearing bananas on a skirt in the show. Billie Holiday is represented by the second song she recorded, 1933's "Riffin' the Scotch," and the blues she sang while looking loving at Lester Young on The Sound of Jazz telecast in a 50's, "Fine and Mellow," a tune which she wrote. "Billie was a great artist, not because of the dreadful things that happened to her, but in spite of them. As Duke Ellington said, Billie was the essence of black cool."

Ranee sings Cole Porter's "It Was Just One of Those Things" and the Aden-Mercer "One for My Baby" for Lena Home. "Lena Home summed up the feeling most divas had when appearing in clubs. She was telling her audience that she was one black woman who could not be had."

Though she admires each of these singers, it's also evident that Ranee feels a particular fondness for the wisecracking but always charming comedian and singer Pearl Bailey. "I use my voice to describe the way Pearl might feel in my shoes. She was a stylist and mostly a comedian who could sing. But there's a distinctive feeling in Pearl's voice that I tried to capture."

"Surprise Party" and "Makin' Whoopee" are songs of Dinah Washington. "Her popularity and showmanship in the late 50's encouraged every young hopeful who heard her sing and saw her perform," says Ranee in the show, speaking as much about herself.

"Above all else, Sarah Vaughan had the voice, a God-given instrument." Ranee swings "Perdido" for Sarah, and also sings one of Sarah's first hits, Todd Dameron's bebop ballad "if You Could See Me Now." Last in the show are songs for the First lady of jazz, Ella Fitzgerald, "A-Tisket A-Tasket" wish the Chick Webb band in the 30's catapulted the teenaged Ella into stardom, and "Lady Be Good" became her flagwaver with Jazz At The Philharmonic. "Ella has mesmerized audiences for generations. Her artistry will be with us forever."

Focusing her show on only severs singers wasn't easy for Ranee. "I could've performed a 7-hour show if I included all the people who've inspired me Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Della Reese, Carmen McRae, Diahann Carroll and Nancy Wilson. There's about a 50-person list." And not only "dark" divas. "I love Barbra Streisand. I listened to Judy Garland as a child and I liked her emotion, Rosemary Clooney, the list goes on. I love Mel Torme, Lou Rawls and Johnny Hartman, and they weren't divas at all."

Ranee selected these seven singers "because there's a little influence from each of them in me. These are the singers I most strongly identify with, and I chose them not only for their singing styles but also for their artistry. Josephine for her dancing and her 'out there' personality. Lena for her tremendous elegance and her quickness. Lena could cut you with her eyes or a shake of her head. Pearl for her comedy. Billie for ...Billie."

Dinah Washington was her first love as a vocalist, but Sarah and Ella have been her continuing ideals. "I love the depth and quality and emotion and color and everything that eve has eve said about Sarah Vaughan's voice. And the same for Ella also, her energy, her musicality. That's what I've always strived for. To be able to sing like a horn and have the freeness and that style she had. You have a lot of barriers to jump over to arrive at even the first step of Ella Fitzgerald."

Dark Divas as a show includes much more than what's on this CD. Comments, characterizations, and many more songs. Most of the show is included on the Canadian release of Dark Divas' and, ideally we'll hear Ranee sing these highlights and much more when the show comes together for a tour. Meanwhile, just as Ranee Lee was inspired by these great ladies of song, she is in turn inspiring the next generation of jazz singers -- her students at Montreal's McGill University, "I teach vocal jazz styling, if you can sing jazz, it is a very personal and discovering type of music. And the most important lesson is that you have to enjoy what you're doing." Ranee Lee indeed does.

Michael Bourne, Host, "Singers Unlimited" WBGO-FM, Newark
Also available: Ranee Lee Presents Dark Divas - The Musicals, a 2CD set including dialogue and music.