Chris Ellis

Chris Ellis exemplifies a gifted British jazz vocalist whose professional journey has unfolded largely away from the public eye. Although his own releases as a singer have appeared only sporadically over the decades, much to the frustration of listeners, Ellis has maintained a steady workload as a producer and A&R executive. He counts among Europe’s more established jazz producers and earned particular respect for his work with the late Susannah McCorkle, one of the artists he helped introduce. Observers drawn to free jazz or fusion might view his preferences as traditional by present-day measures, since he has consistently favored pre-bebop idioms such as swing, classic jazz, and Dixieland along with pre-rock popular song. As a vocalist his influences include Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong, and Bing Crosby. Ellis has nevertheless collaborated with various bop musicians, even while showing little affinity for modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, fusion, or jazz-funk. He has also demonstrated a stronger inclination to support singers than many jazz-focused producers, an outlook consistent with his own identity as a vocalist.

Born in Shrewsbury, England, on December 25, 1928, Ellis spent his childhood and early teenage years amid World War II, retaining vivid recollections of the Nazi regime’s sustained bombing of London under Adolf Hitler. By the time he reached adulthood the war had ended in victory for the Allied Forces—the United States, England, France, and the Soviet Union—freeing young Britons to devote greater attention to the arts. Ellis became active on the London jazz scene as a young singer yet soon concentrated the majority of his energy on production and A&R. During the 1960s and 1970s he held a staff position at EMI’s London office, where in the mid-1970s he encountered Susannah McCorkle, an American jazz and cabaret performer then living in England. Ellis was among the first to recognize her promise, producing her early demo recordings and her initial albums. At roughly the same period he served as featured vocalist with the New Paul Whiteman Orchestra, a ghost band devoted to the 1920s and 1930s repertoire associated with the late leader. Although Ellis has released comparatively few solo albums, he returned to the studio in the late 1980s to record Vocal with Hot Accompaniment for the Dormouse label.

After residing primarily in Great Britain for most of his life, Ellis relocated to Amsterdam, Holland, in the early 1990s and has since maintained an ongoing relationship with Challenge Records, a Dutch label. The artists he has produced for Challenge include trumpeter and flügelhornist Dick Sudhalter, veteran trombonist Spiegle Willcox, Dutch singer Soesja Citroen, who ranks among the Netherlands’ foremost jazz vocalists, and Philadelphia singer Lou Lanza.