The entrance to Birdland in the early days
Betty Roché sings Take The A Train
Betty Roché‘s career started around 1940 and in 1943 she performed with Duke Ellington’s orchestra at the Hurricane Restaurant in New York City. The jazz fans got a glimpse of her already in late 1942, when she appeeared with the Ellington band in a movie titled Reveille With Beverly, where she ahe performed her scat version of Take The A Train, which would be associated with her for the rest of her life. Unfortunately her stay with the band coincided with Petrillo’s recording ban so during this period all we have is broadcast material. She also performed with the band in Black, Brown and Beige from Carmegie Hall in 1943. She rejoined Ellington in 1951 and now her scat version of Take The A Train became available to the public on vinyl.. After she left the band in 1954 she sang with sveral famous jazz musicians but after 1960 she would only appear sporodically in public.
Betty Roché singing with Duke Ellington in 1943
The first concert in this NBC Silver Jubilee Program series is from Nov 20, 1952 has been issued comercially together with another broadcast from Nov 24 on Jazz Up JUCD-2036, the rest have not been issues commercially.
In the Goodies Room, DESS members will able to hear the following numbers:
*Theme & intro*Lullaby Of Birdland*Take The A Train*Perdido*Leonerad Feather introduces Pretty And The Wolf*Things Ain’t What They Used To Be & bc close*
Paul Gonsalves is the soloist on Lullaby Of Birdland,, Clark Terry on Perdido, and in Pretty And The Wolf (AKA Monologue) we hear Ellington, Hamilton, Procope and Carney.
There is another commercially unissued NBC broadcast dated November 1952 in the Silver Jubilee series, which we plan to make available in a couple of week. In the meantime we hope you will enjoy this.
Author: Anders Asplund