Billy Eckstine

Billy Eckstine - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Billy Eckstine

William Clarence Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing and bebop eras. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. In 2019, Eckstine was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award "for performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording". His recording of "I Apologize" (MGM, 1951) was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. The New York Times described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone" and "full-throated, sugary approach to popular songs inspired singers such as Earl Coleman, Johnny Hartman, Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock, and Lou Rawls."

This profile of Billy Eckstine covers Early Life and Family Background, Career and Rise to Fame, Personal Life, Health and Later Years and Tributes.

Early Life and Family Background of Billy Eckstine

Eckstine was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of William Eckstein, a chauffeur, and Charlotte Eckstein, a seamstress. Eckstine's paternal grandparents were William F. Eckstein and Nannie Eckstein, a mixed-race, married couple who lived in Washington, D.C.; both were born in 1863. William was born in Prussia (now Germany), and Nannie in Virginia. Billy's sister, Maxine, was a high school teacher.

Eckstine attended Peabody High School in Pittsburgh. Other notables who were educated there include the artist Romare Bearden, Gene Kelly, pianist Dodo Marmarosa and Lorin Maazel. During this time, Eckstine moved to Washington, D.C., attending Armstrong High School (where his sister taught), St. Paul Normal and Industrial School, and Howard University. In 1933, aged 19, he left Howard to start a music career, after winning first place and $10 in an amateur talent contest at Washington's Howard Theatre, where he imitated Cab Calloway singing a nursery rhyme with interpolated scatting.

Career and Rise to Fame of Billy Eckstine

Heading to Chicago, Illinois, Eckstine joined Earl Hines' Grand Terrace Orchestra in 1939, staying with the band as vocalist and trumpeter until 1943. By that time, Eckstine had begun to make a name for himself through the Hines band's juke-box hits, such as "Stormy Monday Blues", and his own "Jelly, Jelly".

In 1944, Eckstine formed his own big band, and it became the finishing school for adventurous young musicians who shaped the future of jazz including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Cecil Payne, Fats Navarro, Lucky Thompson, John Malachi, Sarah Vaughan, Pearl Bailey, and Lena Horne. Tadd Dameron, Gil Fuller and Jerry Valentine were among the band's arrangers. The Billy Eckstine Orchestra is rated as the first bebop big-band, and had Top Ten chart entries that included "A Cottage for Sale" and "Prisoner of Love". Both were awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.

Dizzy Gillespie, in reflecting on the band in his 1979 autobiography To Be or Not to Bop, gives this perspective: "There was no band that sounded like Billy Eckstine's. Our attack was strong, and we were playing bebop, the modern style. No other band like this one existed in the world." In 1946 Eckstine starred as the hero in the musical film Rhythm in a Riff, which also starred Ann Baker and Lucky Millinder.

Eckstine became a solo performer in 1947, with records featuring lush, sophisticated orchestrations. Even before folding his band, Eckstine had recorded solo to support it, scoring two million-sellers in 1945 with "Cottage for Sale" and a revival of "Prisoner of Love". Far more successful than his band recordings, these prefigured Eckstine's future career. Eckstine recorded more than a dozen hits during the late 1940s. He signed with the newly established MGM Records, and had immediate hits with revivals of "Everything I Have Is Yours" (1947), Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon" (1948), and Juan Tizol's "Caravan" (1949).

Eckstine had further success in 1950 with Victor Young's theme song to "My Foolish Heart", and the next year with a revival of the 1931 Bing Crosby hit, "I Apologize".

According to The New York Times, his 1950 appearance at the Paramount Theatre in New York City drew a larger audience than Frank Sinatra had done at his performance there. He was even called "the sepia Sinatra" for his rivalry of the country's most popular vocalist.

Eckstine was the subject of a three-page profile in the April 24, 1950 issue of Life magazine, in which the photographer Martha Holmes accompanied Eckstine and his entourage during a week in New York City. One photograph taken by Holmes and published in Life showed Eckstine with a group of white female admirers, one of whom had her hand on his shoulder and her head on his chest while she was laughing. Eckstine's biographer, Cary Ginell, wrote of the image that Holmes "...captured a moment of shared exuberance, joy, and affection, unblemished by racial tension". Holmes later described the photograph as the favorite of the many she had taken in her career, because it "...told just what the world should be like". The photograph was considered so controversial that an editor at Life sought personal approval from Henry Luce, the magazine's publisher, who said it should be published. The publication of the image caused letters of protest to be written to the magazine, and singer Harry Belafonte later said of the publication that "When that photo hit, in this national publication, it was if a barrier had been broken". The controversy that resulted from the photograph had a severe effect on the trajectory of Eckstine's career. Tony Bennett recalled that "It changed everything...Before that, he had a tremendous following...and it just offended the white community", a sentiment shared by pianist Billy Taylor who said that the "coverage and that picture just slammed the door shut for him".

In 1951, Eckstine performed at the seventh Cavalcade of Jazz concert held on July 8 at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr. Also featured were Lionel Hampton and his Revue, Percy Mayfield, Jimmy Witherspoon, Joe Liggins and The Honeydrippers and Roy Brown.

Among Eckstine's recordings of the 1950s was a 1957 duet with Sarah Vaughan, "Passing Strangers", a minor hit for them in 1957, but an initial No. 22 success in the UK Singles Chart.

The 1960 Las Vegas live album, No Cover, No Minimum, featured Eckstine taking a few trumpet solos and showcasing his nightclub act. He recorded albums for Mercury and Roulette in the early 1960s and appeared on Motown albums during the mid to late years of the decade. After recording sparingly during the 1970s for Al Bell's Stax/Enterprise imprint, the international touring Eckstine made his last recording, the Grammy-nominated Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter in 1986.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Eckstine), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.