Blossom Dearie

A girlish timbre, crystalline diction, and buoyant rhythmic lilt combined to make Blossom Dearie one of the most engaging vocalists of the postwar era. Her innate warmth and effervescence allowed her to refresh familiar standards that could sound merely routine when interpreted by lesser artists. Although a series of outstanding Verve LPs from the 1950s established her reputation, she continued to draw enthusiastic Manhattan cabaret crowds well into the twenty-first century.

She entered the world as Blossom Dearie in New York’s Catskill Mountains, took up the piano while still young, and pursued classical studies until high school, when jazz claimed her attention. Upon finishing school she relocated to Manhattan, sang with the Blue Flames under Woody Herman and the Blue Reys under Alvino Rey, and supplied cocktail-piano music in various clubs. In 1952 she moved to Paris, assembled the Blue Stars of France, shared a stage act with Annie Ross, and contributed an uncredited vocal to King Pleasure’s celebrated vocalese recording of “Moody’s Mood for Love.” She also cut a little-known set of solo piano performances; then, in 1954, the Blue Stars reached the national charts with their French-language adaptation of “Lullaby of Birdland.”

Norman Granz caught her act in Paris in 1956, offered a Verve contract, and brought her back to the United States before the year ended. Her first Verve album presented standards that traced contemporary pop back to its Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and cabaret origins, delivered in an intimate trio format with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Jo Jones, Dearie herself at the keyboard. The approach underscored her cabaret roots while spotlighting numbers such as “Deed I Do” and “Thou Swell.”

Subsequent sessions for the label maintained the emphasis on standards and compact ensembles, yet her own songwriting surfaced in pieces like “Blossom’s Blues.” She appeared solo at New York supper clubs and guested on the more sophisticated late-1950s talk programs. Her husband, flutist Bobby Jaspar, guested on several dates, most notably the 1959 collection My Gentleman Friend. After a hiatus from recording in the early 1960s she issued one Capitol album, May I Come In?, in 1964 and thereafter recorded only occasionally for the remainder of the decade.

In the early 1970s she launched her own Daffodil Records imprint and issued her own material, among them Blossom Dearie Sings (1974) and My New Celebrity Is You (1976). She also joined Anita O’Day and Joe Williams for a Carnegie Hall concert billed as the Jazz Singers. From the 1980s into the early 2000s she maintained an active schedule of performances and recordings, centered primarily in New York yet regularly extending to London. Health issues prompted her retirement from live performance in 2006; she died quietly in her Greenwich Village apartment on February 7, 2009.