OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With the Sensational Sallie Blair!

Welcome, Manor music sluts, to another edition of Manor Music Monday! And happy Almost-Turkey-Day for those of you in The Land of the Free (ish). Are you getting your playlists ready for your Turkey Day gathering? Me, too. And I'm avoiding Christmas tunes, thankyouverymuch, because we'll all get enough of that in the coming weeks. Why not create a playlist with all your jazz favorites - just like DJ Li'l Scratch is doing. Trust me, even tots, tweens and teenagers will like jazz when introduced to it. Besides, haven't they listened to enough Cynthia and Arianna? 

Meanwhile, if the picture above doesn't say "sizzle," then I don't know what does. Behold Sallie Blair, a red-hot jazz chanteuse in the 1950s and early 60s who never attained big-time stardom. Why, you ask?

Once again, the rise of rock 'n' roll obliterated her and many other mainstream jazz artists from radio playlists, leaving her to record only a few LPs, score some TV gigs, and dazzle her devoted fans at various nightclubs from coast to coast. How dazzled were they? Very. At The Blue Angel nightclub in New York City, for example, her two week engagement was extended to an astonishing five months by popular demand. When you listen to her 1958 LP "Hello, Tiger" it's not hard to understand why. Her vocals have a predatory bite, whether she's singing ballads or more up-tempo tunes. Even her rendition of "Fever," a song I'm getting close to maxing-out on (no, really), feels newly voracious in her hands. Sex sells (obvi), but few sell it with such scorching expertise.

Born in Baltimore in the mid-1930s, Sallie began singing as a teen and quickly developed a reputation as a hot-cha! performer with a trademark husky voice. Her first big-time break came when she joined Lionel Hampton’s orchestra in the early 1950s, and thereafter, she blew up even more, becoming a huge nightclub sensation, especially at high-end rooms in Las Vegas and New York. Everyone wanted to hear - and by all means, see - our Sallie. Not for nothing did Miles Davis call her "the brown Marilyn Monroe." 

Her showmanship and drop dead gorgeous sex appeal - she was known for wowza, spectacularly-costumed stage entrances - sometimes overshadowed her musicality, but she was very much respected by the jazz community. When you hear the only two albums she ever cut (click through Spotify below to play the full LP), I swear you'll become a fan of her smoky, velvety tones. Listen to how she softly scoops into the notes - teasingly, just behind the beat - and her restrained vibrato, which she deploys at just the right moment to build drama and tension. Listen closer still and you'll realize that her phrasing is mathematically precise, intellectual, but never cold. Sallie always warms up the room.

What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾

Photo Credits: Getty Images, Bethlehem Records, AAMCO