My name is Monk Rowe and we are in New York
City filming for the Hamilton College Jazz Archive. I'm extremely pleased to have Annie Ross with
me this evening. AR: I'm happy to be here. MR: Well I appreciate it so much. You are an actress and a vocalist and you've
been on numerous continents working. AR: I'm a singer, I'm a writer, I'm a lyricist,
I'm an author. MR: Let's see, what should we talk about first? I just learned, if I can ask, an interesting
thing before the cameras were rolling, that you came through Ellis Island. AR: Yes I did. I was five and I came over with my mother
and father from Scotland, steerage of course, which was the lowest fare that you could get. And then from here, in New York, where I'd
stayed for about six months, I won a contest that got me a job in Hollywood so I was raised
there. MR: Do you have any memory of the trip over? AR: Oh absolutely. MR: Really. Oh, yeah, I guess five years old, yeah. AR: Oh yeah. And I was pretty precocious, you know, and
I'm writing it all down in my book. MR: Good. AR: Which will give all the details. MR: It was a big adventure at the time? AR: Oh it was going to Hollywood, you know,
it was going to America and you're going to be a star and you're going to go to Hollywood. Because I used to sing and dance. MR: In your home before you came over, you
said you were precocious and were you singing and doing all that over there? AR: My mother and father had an act. I had three brothers and at that time my little
sister wasn't born, but we used to work bandstands in the park. And then my father would pass the hat. So we all had to do something. Someone would - we didn't have tickets, because
we weren't that rich to print tickets. But we all played a part in the show. My mother was a comedienne and sang, my father
sang and my brothers sang, so it was a natural kind of development. MR: What kind of songs would you have sung? AR: Songs that my father wrote. MR: No kidding? AR: Yeah. I'd pretend I was lost. I'd walk up to the little bandstand and pretend
I was lost and there was an actor playing a policeman and he was chewing on a big Danish
or something. And I would say, "You know I'm hungry and
I'm lost." And he'd say, "Well if I give you a bite of
this, what can you do?" And I'd say, "Oh I can sing and I can dance." At which point my father would play an arpeggio
on the accordion and I'd start to sing. MR: That's neat. And then when you got to New York, you must
have been in some kind of contest for child actresses? AR: Yeah. I had a little playmate in the building I
was staying in and she told me her father had a radio show. So when her father walked in I said I should
be on it, and it was a contest for children, and the man was Paul Whiteman. MR: It was Paul Whiteman? AR: Yeah. So I won. I had a kilt and a glengarry and all those
Scottish things, and I went out to Hollywood. And my mother thought I was going to be, you
know, a Shirley Temple. Well they already had a Shirley Temple. So I just settled down and went to school. MR: Did you go out there with a family member? AR: I went out with my mother and then she
had to go back and take care of the other kids. So I was raised under the guardianship of
an aunt, who was also a singer, called Ella Logan. MR: Oh Ella - yes I've read the name. AR: She was in "Finian's Rainbow" and she
scatted and she sang with Leo Watson. MR: Did you get into films out there at that
time? AR: I did one Little Rascals film where I
sang a swing version of "Loch Lomond." And then my aunt said, "No, you have to go
to school." And then I did a film with Judy Garland, I
think I was about eleven, and then my aunt again said, "no, you've got to go to school." So although I didn't complete my schooling,
instead I came here to New York, went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and then
left for Europe to re-join my family. But there was never any doubt in my mind as
to what I wanted to do. I mean I knew I was going to be in the business. MR: It was in your blood then. AR: Yeah, it was. MR: Have you ever seen, do you have copies
of those early things you were in? AR: I suppose somewhere I do, but I don't
really look at them. MR: You might want to look at them again when
you write your book maybe. AR: Well I'm in the process of doing that
now. MR: Great. And so you say your family went back to Europe
and you followed? AR: Back to Scotland. No I didn't see them until I was 17. MR: Wow. AR: And then I stayed a couple of weeks and
went down to London. I got a job in a club, bought a second-hand
dress and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. MR: Can you recall what kind of wages you
were working for back then? AR: Oh yes, seven pound ten a week. MR: And that translates to? AR: About ten bucks a week. But I didn't care. It was enough to pay my rent. I could eat at the club, I was singing many
obscure Rogers & Hart and Cole Porter and Jerome Kern. I mean they had never heard that before. It was a private club, very snooty. But they did give me a little button to switch
on when I got up to sing, which gave me a little spotlight. A bit like Marilyn Monroe in "Bus Stop." MR: Yeah. Was that - is the word "cabaret singer" appropriate
here? AR: No. MR: Okay. AR: A cabaret singer gives a performance. I didn't give a performance, I sang with a
band, which was as it should be. I was starting out, it was the best experience. MR: And again, what kind of tunes would that
particular band have been doing? AR: Oh, "I've Got Five Dollars," and you know,
all the great standards of the time. MR: When was your first chance to record? AR: When I went to Paris. I was living in Paris and Moody, James Moody,
had written a tune with no words, which was kind of prophetic in a way, because I've sung
many songs without words, and it was called "Le Vent Vert" and that was the very first
time I ever made a record. MR: Did you set the words to it? AR: No, it was ooooooh. MR: You just oooooh-ed it. And so it was a single record? An A and a B side? AR: Yep. A 78. MR: It was a 78. Did you like the way it came out? You were like in heaven, right? AR: Yeah. With James Moody? You know, I had just heard "Things to Come,"
Dizzy Gillespie's tune. And that hit me like a freight train. I didn't know what was going on. It went by like a bullet train. I'd never heard musicians play like that. And so I was acquiring my knowledge of Dizzy's
band and - not so much Basie's band because that came later - but all the great musicians. And many of them were in Paris, you know,
because of the exodus of the black musicians to Paris for the acceptance of their music. And it was Kenny Clarke and Don Byas and Rex
Stewart and on and on and on. MR: There was some good clubs in Paris for
these fellas to play in, wasn't there? AR: Yeah, there were, especially on the Left
Bank. But it was a wonderful opening of my ears
and being in the company of those people. And I loved them and they loved me because
I loved their music. And they'd sing down chords and get me to
sing down chords and, you know, so I would get the harmonics and all that. And it was joyous. MR: It was a great time. Plus you were making contacts for years to
come, right? AR: Well there was Dizzy, there was Bird,
you know, there was Clifford Brown, who didn't come over there but when I sang with the Hampton
band, our trumpet section was Art Farmer, Clifford Brown and Quincy Jones. That's not too shabby. MR: Yeah. That was around the early 50s with Hampton? AR: Yeah. Very early. MR: Yeah, '51 I think, if my notes are correct
at all. And a vocalist in front of a big band, is
it taxing? AR: I don't like it. I feel too restricted. I'd much rather sing with a quartet, maybe
piano, bass, drums and guitar or I love flutes and saxophones. There are some people who are brilliant at
it. I don't feel I'm one of those. Joe Williams was - I mean Sarah - any singer. But I felt looser when I was with a smaller
group. MR: Tell me how the Farmer's Market and that
whole thing came about. AR: Well necessity is the mother of invention. And the necessity was the money. I knew George Wallington's wife, who, you
know he was the piano player with the Lionel Hampton band when I joined. He joined as well. And she took me down to see a man called Bob
Weinstein [Weinstock], who owned Prestige Records, which was a very popular record label for young
artists - Miles and people like that - who would be paid and who would sell their songs
and be very happy to sell it because it meant money in the hand. I met him - "Moody's Mood" had just come out. And he said to me, "Do you know 'Moody's Mood'?" I said yes. He said, "Do you think you could write words
to an instrumental like Eddie Jefferson did?" Eddie having done "Moody's Mood for Love"
not King Pleasure. So I said yeah. I mean if you'd asked me if I could fly I
would have said yes. So he said, "Well here's a pile of records,
go back to your place, pick one, write the words, when you're ready come to me." Well I was living, I was sharing a floor,
I had a room in this big building where you shared the kitchen, you shared the bathroom
and it was - yuhlch. And so I was there the next morning with "Twisted." MR: Is that right? AR: Yeah. MR: That's amazing. AR: I hurried up and wrote those words. I got out of that place. MR: And the tenor player - refresh my memory,
was it Wardell Gray? AR: Wardell was the one who wrote the tune,
yeah. MR: How did the initial -
AR: Idea? MR: Idea come from that? AR: From the title. "Twisted." What would that be? And then I looked at myself. When I write I write very fast. I'm very lazy. I really, you know, I should be much more
productive than I am, I bide my time. MR: But when necessity -
AR: Yeah, when necessity calls I really get to work. MR: So I guess Mr. Weinstein liked it. AR: He was pretty surprised, yeah. And the next thing I knew we recorded it. MR: And it worked. AR: Well I recorded it and I left immediately
for France. And while I was - no I didn't leave for France,
I went to Scotland to kind of see my family. And while I was there I was notified that
I'd been awarded the New Star Award for Down Beat for doing "Twisted," and I thought well
that's nice. But my mind wasn't really that attuned to
staying in America. And then I eventually came back and I started
to get work which then led me to the Lionel Hampton band. MR: Okay, I had that backwards in my head. That "Twisted" came before the Hampton band. AR: Oh it did. MR: Yes, okay. AR: Oh yeah. MR: So you got - the Hampton thing was not
like your actual choice of your musical background that you'd work with. What kinds of tunes would you do with him? Would you be scatting with him and all that
kind of thing? AR: Nope. There's a very interesting book about Clifford
Brown that came out about six months ago. And it explains it well because you know we
went to Sweden and Norway and Denmark and all around. What I didn't know was that Hamp had been
told to bring a lady blues singer. Not white. And I didn't know this. And I had my two numbers, I sang "Twisted"
and I forget what else. But I was not received well. And it was wrong. It was not good for the people who were involved
because at that time there were two factions in European jazz. There was Charles Delaunay, who had the Hot
Club of France, there was Hughes Panassie, who had the equivalent of the Hot Club but
it was a Dixieland. They were Dixieland bands. And Louis Armstrong did not like bop. And later he changed and we recorded with
him, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. But at the time there was a big faction in
Europe about moldy figs and how do you understand this new bebop thing and it's not music and
it doesn't make people tap their feet and be happy and all this. So because of that my services were no longer
required. And when I left, George Wallington left. We had some good times. MR: Well where would a big band - what camp
is that going to fall in? That's going to fall in the bebop camp, isn't
it? AR: Well the band did, the arrangements did. But Hamp could still go out and play blues
and then you had wonderful soloists like Art Farmer and like Brownie [Clifford Brown]. But they wanted a blues shouter and I'm not
that. MR: So what did you decide after that? Back to New York? AR: No, I stayed in Paris for quite a while. Then I came back. Then I just kind of went all over the place
and did some gigs in America. And then I went back to London and I was in
a show called "Cracks" with Anthony Newley, who wrote some very good songs, and three
other guys and we were a big hit in London and then we brought it to New York. And it didn't work. And I didn't want to go back to London. And I happened to meet Dave Lambert, who introduced
me to Jon Hendricks, and that's how "Sing a Song of Basie" came about. MR: Oh that is quite an amazing recording. Of course, it's pretty well documented. AR: It still stands up. MR: It's mind boggling. Was it an arduous process? AR: No. It happened so quickly. The fact that they had hired session singers
who didn't swing. I mean they could hit all the notes and it
was all beautifully precise and all that, but they didn't swing. And they didn't have the capacity to swing. And I got a call from Dave to say, "come down
here and we've got six women, six men, and the women - I want you to come down and give
them the Basie feel." Well I just started to laugh. I said sure. So I went down and I did whatever I could
and it didn't work. And the money had been spent and the producer
was tearing his hair out. And finally Dave Lambert said, "I have an
idea, let's multi-track." And I didn't know what he was talking about,
but I said, "Yeah, let's multi-track." And we learned the harmonies in about, oh
an hour, and we laid the first track down, and then we sharpened up the second part and
laid that down. The minute I heard the two together I knew
we had something magic. And it was a labor of love really. MR: I have a quote here about that particular
thing from the "CD Guide to Jazz." It says "Miss Ross has a particular genius
for the sound of trumpets. Her section work is remarkable, full of growls,
shakes and percussive blasts. Her version of Buck Clayton and Joe Newman's
solos are remarkable." AR: Oh. That's nice. MR: That's pretty nice. AR: Yeah. We had a lot of fun. A lot of fun. MR: Was there a decision after this record
was over, like this is a trio right here? AR: Umm, again I left for Europe when it came
out. There's a nice story about when I came home
after the session with a tape, and I called Miles and I said, "what do you think of this?" And four bars and he said, "wait a minute,
wait a minute" he said, "Mingus, pick up the phone." And he picked up the extension. And that was it. I mean they just - you know I wanted confirmation
and also to let them hear what was going on. And I knew I was right. I knew I was right. And when they went crazy, that was it. MR: That's a good story. Are you holding the phone to the speaker? AR: Yeah. A little tape recorder. A portable tape recorder. It wasn't even a -
MR: With the reels, right? This was a reel to reel tape? AR: No, this was a regular, little, as my
mind recalls it, it was a regular little tape that they had done in the studio. MR: Wow. Well it seems to me you must not have had
a lot of possessions. You moved around so much. AR: No. I left full apartments with full fridges,
you know, food in the fridge and everything. I did that when I went with Hamp because I
was singing at a place called the Band Box. And I had Max on drums and Tommy Potter on
bass and Ernie Henry on alto. And George on piano. And Hamp was at Birdland next door. I was at a club called the Band Box. And Hamp came in and he called me over and
he said, "hey, want to go to Europe?" And I said yeah? With the band? He said yeah. I said when? He said tomorrow. And that was it. That was another apartment gone. MR: Meanwhile, did your family - able to follow
your exploits? AR: Oh bits and pieces you know. I'm a terrible correspondent. I never wrote. But I was too busy having a good time. MR: Well Lambert, Hendricks & Ross did, let's
see, six years you guys were together? I think so. Five or six. Did you have a favorite recording besides
"Sing a Song of Basie?" AR: Well yeah. I have many. I loved "Sing Along with Basie" because we
were with Joe and the band. "The Hottest New Group In Jazz," and I loved
"High Flyin'" which didn't get that much distribution but it was a good album, and those things
of Randy Weston's are wonderful. MR: How was the rehearsal process for those
tunes? AR: It was called doing it as you did it. We never - we would get together, I'd walk
in with that many newspapers, I was a newspaper freak. Jon would be doing a crossword puzzle, Dave
would be putting things on paper and voicing, at Dave's little apartment in the Village
And he'd say okay, let's try this. And we'd put everything aside and we'd go
up and we'd rehearse for maybe an hour. And then we'd have a party. And it was like, you know it's like musicians
who play a song so much that they want to see how fast they can play it and still be
coherent. And we did our rehearsing really and our polishing
by doing it. MR: Did you guys have a typical assignment
as far as voicing? AR: Well I was usually the trumpet or the
piano, and Jon was the tenor sax, and Dave was the trombone. So now when I work with Jon I have to occasionally
do another instrument, you know, because it ain't as easy with two. But it works out. MR: I'm curious if the albums that you guys
did, were you happy with the financial return? AR: No. No. See in those days, we didn't know about lawyers,
and we didn't know about you consult your lawyer before you sign anything. So no, I wasn't happy with that. But hey, the music was so great, what came
out of it, money couldn't buy. MR: That's for sure. It kept your writing skills pretty sharp. AR: A little, yeah. I left most of it to Jon. But it was a wonderful thing because it wasn't
founded by any one person, it was the three of us as one. MR: You were quite hard to replace I would
have to say. AR: Well it's a hard gig. MR: Oh boy, that's great stuff. Were you doing a few solo albums at the same
time? AR: Um hum. MR: One with Gerry Mulligan? AR: Um hum. MR: Now that's a good match for you I think? AR: Yeah, and Zoot. I loved that. You know, records or CDs, or whatever you
want to call them, are like children. You know it's very hard to find - you maybe
have a sentimental favorite, because of everything that it involved. It's very hard to choose one particular one
that you say is the best for you. Because I think all of them have something. MR: Well post Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, you
did some more theater? AR: I did some wonderful theater in London. I did "Kennedy's Children" which is a wonderful
play. I did Jenny, the betrayer in "Three Penny
Opera" with Vanessa Redgrave. I've done all kinds. You know, if I couldn't work anymore and couldn't
sing anymore, I could always go into the theater and be a wonderful dresser, you know, dress
people for their parts. Because I know how to do all that, and stage
managing. I've had a really good grounding in that. And one is an extension of the other. You know, acting is singing, singing is acting. MR: What do you listen to at home these days? Anything in particular? AR: You know it's very funny because I love
talk radio, because it's immediate. And I love things like Jeopardy on television. I learn a lot from that, and when I play music
I play Ahmad Jamal, Gene Harris, or Zoot, or Zoot and Al, or Dizzy, or Miles. You know, all those, Hawk. Good stuff. As well as South American things. MR: Do you have vocalists that you still love
that you listened to on the way up, and who were they? AR: Well it was the greats. It was Lady, Sassy, Dinah, Ella. It seems to me there were a whole lot of really
individual singers at that time. It's finding your own voice you know. There are a lot of singers today and there
are some very good singers today. But they don't have that stamp of individuality
as much now. I mean Ernestine Anderson, Shirley Horne,
I mean those are some wonderful, wonderful singers. Irene Reid, who was with the Basie band as
a singer and has become a very good friend of mine for a long time, very underrated,
should be heard, you know, deserves to be heard. But I must say nothing moves me as much as
those other ladies. MR: You know I've heard that comment before
but mostly applied to instrumentalists. And I'm wondering why that is. AR: Well they were innovators. First of all there'll never be another Sweets. There'll be another Dizzy, there'll never
be another Bird. You know those are giants. Those are not inventors but - oh I'm trying
to think of a word where - they were innovators. They got their own thing going. I mean I think for singers, when you're young,
and I'm talking about ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, you listen to
lot of singers because you love the way they sound and throughout most of the songs you
are influenced by them and maybe you try to sound like them. But then you have to move away from that and
find your own voice. So when someone hears you you can say, oh
that's so-and-so. You know? And like I say, what I listen to is those
real individuals. And I'd rather hear Lady sing - well my favorite
album is "Lady in Satin" because there's a whole life in that. MR: Yeah, that was fairly near the end, wasn't
it? AR: Yeah. And that was Lady's favorite. You know it doesn't matter that the notes
weren't all crystal, pristine. Because the feeling was there. And that's the important thing. MR: If you would humor me for a minute, when
you mentioned Sweets, it reminded me about a couple of tunes I wanted to ask about, and
one was "Centerpiece." How did that come to be? AR: It just came to be, like it was supposed
to. I mean Sweets came in, Jon had written the
words. You know there's a wonderful story about when
we did "Sing a Song." We got to the gig - no it wasn't, yes it was
- we had I think it took two sessions. But we brought the instrumentalists in and
we showed them - we had Sonny Payne and Eddie Jones, Nat Pierce doing Basie, and suddenly
there was Freddie Jones on guitar. MR: Freddie Greene you mean? AR: No, Freddie Jones. Freddie Jones the guitar player with Basie. And we said, "What are you doing here? I mean the budget? He said, "What budget?" He said, "I brought my old guitar that I played
on those original records." I mean it was like that. But with Sweets or with Louis Armstrong, when
we did that album with Louis, you know to have Armstrong come in and say, "Annie, teach
me how to hit those notes." You know, all the money in the world could
not pay for those moments. MR: That's really touching. AR: Well I've been blessed to have known them. I mean when I got to Paris there was Willie
the Lion Smith, there was Bechet, there was Big Chief Russell Moore who played the tuba,
there were a lot of people that were much older than I was, but we connected. And it's called open up your ears and listen. Because like I told you about the one part
that the music people hated, what they called moldy figs and the other loved bebop. And I was sharing an apartment with Mary Lou
Williams in Paris. And she said, "I'm going to take you down
and let you hear Sidney Bechet." And I said Sidney Bechet? Oh, that old guy? And boy she laid into me. She said, "Don't you ever be that ignorant." She said, "We're going to go down there and
you're going to hear Sidney Bechet." And we went down and we heard Sidney Bechet
and was my face red. I mean he just swung so much. And you know, I just dissed him. And I shouldn't do that because I hadn't heard
him. And you don't make a comment like that about
somebody that you don't know. MR: Well said. Did the three of you ever have any problems
with Jon being black? AR: Only in the City of Brotherly Love. And Dave Lambert saved Jon because the police
there were very heavy at the time. Jon was going with the lady who is now his
wife who happened to be white, and they were looking to take him out and beat him up. And Dave could hear it, and immediately came
down and said, "you're not taking him anywhere. Nowhere." But that was the only time. We opened on a tour in - was it El Paso - but
it was somewhere in Texas and we were going to be in a boxing ring. Well I'd sung in a boxing ring in Paris. There used to be a club called The Ringside. And it was when Sugar Ray Robinson was in
town and he would give exhibits etcetera. So we told Basie and he said - he took me
aside and he said, "Don't go." "Why?" He said, "You're going to be in a boxing ring. You're going to have people all around you. And because of you and Jon and Dave, you could
get hurt." But we went. Nothing happened. MR: Something must have happened to him down
there for him to say that. AR: Well yes of course, early on. MR: Yeah. AR: And he was wonderful. MR: What a man, huh? AR: Oh, a teddy bear. MR: Do you remember if you guys had a reaction
when he did the song "Cloudburst," like wow, that's really something? AR: Oh yeah. I mean we would get that - anything that we
did was an incredible reaction. We always, you know there were numbers that
are real crowd pleasers like "Cloudburst." And like I've said, it then became a question
of well how fast can we sing it and they can still understand the words? MR: I think - that particular record is one
of my favorites - and there's some very intricate things happening and I guess I just picture
arduous rehearsals. AR: Naa. No, no, no. MR: I guess it's not that much different than
the way instrumentalists talk about going into the studio and doing an album, and the
same kind of relying on your ears and your musicality. AR: Absolutely. You've got to have ears. They'll save you every time. MR: Well if you look back-
AR: But you know, that's why it kills me when I hear about the Beatles took four years to
do an album? Come on. It couldn't have been all rehearsal and all,
you know, you were lucky if you got two days to do it. And I'm sure in the beginning in some cases,
one day, one night, all night. But when you've got a good thing going you
want to keep the momentum. MR: Did you have the same rhythm section for
a lot of that? AR: Yeah. MR: Yeah, in fact I saw Jimmy Wormworth downstairs. AR: No. Oh. MR: Yesterday I saw him. AR: Oh I wish I could see him. I'd love to see him. MR: If you look back on the time since there,
is there a favorite thing that you were doing? The theater? Would that have been the -
AR: No. My heart is singing, and will always be. But there were wonderful moments in each of
the things that I did. You know the opening night of "Three Penny
Opera" in London was phenomenal. But, then there's "Sing a Song of Basie." No, and all this analytical stuff about jazz-
MR: What do you think about that? AR: Not a lot. Jazz is feeling. It's feeling. It has nothing to do with color. You know we know that it is a black music. But you can't dismiss a lot of people. It's not about that, it's about love and giving
and joy and enrichment. I never had a problem with that. MR: I hope that statement goes in your book. AR: If I can remember it. MR: You call me, I'll help you out. AR: Okay. MR: How's that progressing? Pretty well? AR: Yeah. It's almost like solving a puzzle. Because I've lived a long time, I'm 70. I have had many experiences and I'll remember
something and I'll write it. Then I'll go on to something else. I'm trying to do it chronologically, it's
the only kind of way I know how, and then I'll think, oh yeah, but that happened. So you have to go back, and because I've never
written a book, I've written a cookbook but that's not the same thing as writing your
autobiography. And I feel that I have found my voice in writing. Because when I talk to people about, well
like publishers and people like that, about I want to do it on my own, I don't want to
have a ghost writer, and they would say well yes, I think you probably have a voice. And I didn't really know what they were talking
about. But writing it now as opposed to a year ago
when I thought about it and started it, I suddenly found, ahhh, right, that's the way
to put it down. And it's my way of putting it down. And I believe, hopefully, I've found my voice. Laaa. MR: I can't imagine you haven't. I'll tell you that. AR: Well I hope so. I want it to be informative and funny and
there are sad bits but that's life. But to share some of the scenes that I've
had, which are wonderful. I'd like others to feel the same and enjoy
it. MR: Well I look forward to it and I want to
thank you for your time this evening. This was most enjoyable. AR: And it was enjoyable for me. MR: Good, I'm glad. And best of luck with your book and the upcoming
Blue Note engagement. AR: Tuesday night. It'll be fun. MR: Yeah, I'm sure it will be. It will be another excuse to come back. AR: Absolutely. MR: Well listen thank you so much again and
I appreciate it. AR: Oh, I've had a good time. MR: Good. Thank you.
