Alice Hall, "Caravan," 78 rpm record, Capitol 57 60007

Описание: Alice Hall was a smokin' jazz accordionist in the 40s-60s. Born in 1917, this was her only commercial recording, a 78 rpm single on Capitol, recorded in about 1949. (Caravan / Pennies from Heaven, Capitol 57 60007) When she died in 1999, it had not been available for fifty years -- it still isn't.

Hall worked and played with Benny Goodman, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Peggy Lee, and Nat King Cole. Louis Armstrong said about her, "Nobody teaches you to play that kind of music, you gotta feel it." You'll hear Alice scatting along as she solos here.

She gained a bit of belated attention when a privately recorded (bootleg quality) live track was included in the great Planet Squeezebox anthology in 1995. She was interviewed on NPR and got some well-desearved press. In her later years Alice was highly involved promoting others with the Friends of the Accordion group in Los Angeles.

Her accordion was an unusual "finto-piano" (fake/false piano) keyboard which looks like a piano but is played like a three-row chromatic button accordion. Earlier Pietro Frosini played a similar instrument and later Leon Sash did.

I post this in hopes that more information about her will become available. (Maybe even tapes of her on the Nat King Cole Show? Anyone?) She has been sadly neglected by music historians up until now. I'm writing more about her on my www.AccordionUprising.org blog and in a book of that name to come, hopefully in 2013.

[I post these for historical purposes. I hope Capitol Records understands that I'm not intending to compete with their criminally sixty-years out-of-print property.]