Sir George Shearing, who died yesterday aged 91, was one of the most successful pianists in jazz, developing a style of such enduring yet broad appeal that it became known as the "Shearing sound"; he also composed several well-known jazz themes, including the standard Lullaby Of Birdland.
Photo: BBC
Shearing's international popularity was based initially on the quintet which he formed in 1949, featuring the novel and attractive sound of piano, guitar and vibraphone playing in unison. This was much imitated, but no one else could quite replicate its fragile charm, or the fleet virtuosity of the leader's own piano solos. As his career developed, Shearing broadened his musical range, revealing himself to be an immensely resourceful and witty improviser.
George Albert Shearing was born on August 13 1919, the youngest among nine children of a Battersea coalman. An inveterate punster, he sometimes referred to his father as "Not the Cole Porter, but a coal porter." His mother looked after her brood during the day and worked cleaning trains at night.
Blind from birth (the result, he suspected, of an attempted abortion), George showed an early affinity for music by picking out radio songs on the piano, and for four years took piano lessons at Linden Lodge School for the Blind, in Wandsworth. His natural ability quickly shone through and he was offered several scholarships to complete his education and study at university, but his family's financial constraints forced him to start earning a wage.
His first job on leaving school at 16 was as a pub pianist ("25 bob a week and a box on top of the piano"), followed by a spell with an orchestra of blind musicians. It was at this time that he met and made friends with the jazz critic Leonard Feather, who helped him get a break with BBC radio.
Shearing made his first solo broadcast at 19 and quickly rose to prominence in the British jazz world, playing with Stephane Grappelli, Harry Parry, Ambrose and his orchestra, and recording under his own name for Decca. He was voted top pianist in the Melody Maker readers' poll for seven consecutive years.
In December 1947, sponsored by Feather, Shearing moved to New York. "When I first hit the shore of the United States," he recalled, "I banged my foot on the ground and said: 'This is the country of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw and Charlie Parker!' And I soon got to know many of them in person."
To begin with his contact with the greats of the jazz scene was purely in a supporting role. His first job was at the Onyx Club, playing interval piano to Sarah Vaughan, followed by the same spot opposite Ella Fitzgerald at the Three Deuces. But he revelled in his proximity to the stars. "Died and gone to heaven, and serving an apprenticeship that money couldn't buy," was how he summed up his first year in New York.
His transformation into a star in his own right came in January 1949, with the formation of The George Shearing Quintet. The band made its first recording, September In The Rain, for MGM the following month and scored an instant hit. The timing was lucky. The new bebop style had caught the public ear, but the complex work of its most authentic exponents, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, was proving rather too formidable for mass consumption.
Shearing's quintet, which initially featured Margie Hyams on vibraphone and Chuck Wayne on guitar, supplied the ideal popular substitute. Its music was original, imaginative and beautifully played, but bland and uninsistent in timbre and therefore suitable as both foreground and background listening. September In The Rain sold 900,000 copies and, for the next two decades, whenever a film composer sought to suggest low lights and an intimate atmosphere, the "Shearing Sound" was called into service.
Among the Quintet's biggest successes were a version of Jerome Kern's Pick Yourself Up (1950), with its clever introductory eight bars in strict canon, and – in homage to the celebrated jazz club in Manhattan – Shearing's own Lullaby Of Birdland (1952). Ultimately the latter tune acquired such overwhelming renown that Shearing was well-used to being known for little else. At one concert, almost half a century after Lullaby had been composed, he introduced it by saying: "I have been credited with writing 300 songs. Two hundred ninety-nine enjoyed a bumpy ride from relative obscurity to total oblivion. Here is the other one."
Later in the 1950s, Shearing pursued an interest in Latin-inflected jazz. He had another hit record with Mambo Inn (1954) and appeared leading a Latin ensemble in the 1959 film Jazz On A Summer's Day. In the same year he recorded the hugely popular album Beauty and the Beat with the singer Peggy Lee.
During the 1960s Shearing began giving concerts with symphony orchestras, usually playing a concerto in the first half and leading the quintet with orchestral backing in the second. He derived particular satisfaction from this demonstration of technical accomplishment, since his teacher at Linden Lodge had advised him to stick to jazz and forget any idea of playing classical music professionally.
Towards the end of the decade he finally abandoned the quintet format to work as a soloist and as a duettist with a series of virtuoso double-bassists, including Neil Swainson and Brian Torff. This was when the true extent of his abilities, as both pianist and improviser, became clear.
Recordings such as the solo album My Ship (1974) and a particularly impressive duet session with fellow-pianist Marian McPartland, Alone Together (1981), reveal an immensely fertile imagination and a penchant for lateral thinking which echoed his love of puns and wordplay.
One of his best musical jokes, later widely imitated, was to begin playing the slow movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and gradually allow his right hand to stray into Cole Porter's Night And Day, until the two became inextricably tangled.
Shearing's musical partnership with the singer Mel Torme, which lasted almost a decade, had begun in the early 1980s, and brought out the best in both. They were evenly matched as regards musicianship, and both took delight in pursuing melodic and harmonic hares for the sheer fun of the thing. The pair won Grammy awards in successive years for An Evening with George Shearing & Mel Torme (1983) and Top Drawer (1984). Their 1990 album Mel and George Do World War II is also a minor classic.
Shearing remained fit and active well into his later years and continued to perform, even after being honoured with an Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Early the following year he released a memoir, Lullaby of Birdland, which was accompanied by a double album "musical autobiography", Lullabies of Birdland. Shortly afterwards, however, he suffered a fall at his home and retired from regular performing.
He was appointed OBE in 1996. In 2007 he was knighted. "So," he noted later, "the poor, blind kid from Battersea became Sir George Shearing. Now that's a fairy tale come true."
In later years Shearing returned to live for part of each year in England, in a house at Chipping Camden which he bought with his second wife, the singer Ellie Geffert. She survives him. With his first wife, Trixie Bayes, whom he married in 1941, he had a daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8324291/Sir-George-Shearing.html
To begin with his contact with the greats of the jazz scene was purely in a supporting role. His first job was at the Onyx Club, playing interval piano to Sarah Vaughan, followed by the same spot opposite Ella Fitzgerald at the Three Deuces. But he revelled in his proximity to the stars. "Died and gone to heaven, and serving an apprenticeship that money couldn't buy," was how he summed up his first year in New York.
His transformation into a star in his own right came in January 1949, with the formation of The George Shearing Quintet. The band made its first recording, September In The Rain, for MGM the following month and scored an instant hit. The timing was lucky. The new bebop style had caught the public ear, but the complex work of its most authentic exponents, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, was proving rather too formidable for mass consumption.
Shearing's quintet, which initially featured Margie Hyams on vibraphone and Chuck Wayne on guitar, supplied the ideal popular substitute. Its music was original, imaginative and beautifully played, but bland and uninsistent in timbre and therefore suitable as both foreground and background listening. September In The Rain sold 900,000 copies and, for the next two decades, whenever a film composer sought to suggest low lights and an intimate atmosphere, the "Shearing Sound" was called into service.
Among the Quintet's biggest successes were a version of Jerome Kern's Pick Yourself Up (1950), with its clever introductory eight bars in strict canon, and – in homage to the celebrated jazz club in Manhattan – Shearing's own Lullaby Of Birdland (1952). Ultimately the latter tune acquired such overwhelming renown that Shearing was well-used to being known for little else. At one concert, almost half a century after Lullaby had been composed, he introduced it by saying: "I have been credited with writing 300 songs. Two hundred ninety-nine enjoyed a bumpy ride from relative obscurity to total oblivion. Here is the other one."
Later in the 1950s, Shearing pursued an interest in Latin-inflected jazz. He had another hit record with Mambo Inn (1954) and appeared leading a Latin ensemble in the 1959 film Jazz On A Summer's Day. In the same year he recorded the hugely popular album Beauty and the Beat with the singer Peggy Lee.
During the 1960s Shearing began giving concerts with symphony orchestras, usually playing a concerto in the first half and leading the quintet with orchestral backing in the second. He derived particular satisfaction from this demonstration of technical accomplishment, since his teacher at Linden Lodge had advised him to stick to jazz and forget any idea of playing classical music professionally.
Towards the end of the decade he finally abandoned the quintet format to work as a soloist and as a duettist with a series of virtuoso double-bassists, including Neil Swainson and Brian Torff. This was when the true extent of his abilities, as both pianist and improviser, became clear.
Recordings such as the solo album My Ship (1974) and a particularly impressive duet session with fellow-pianist Marian McPartland, Alone Together (1981), reveal an immensely fertile imagination and a penchant for lateral thinking which echoed his love of puns and wordplay.
One of his best musical jokes, later widely imitated, was to begin playing the slow movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and gradually allow his right hand to stray into Cole Porter's Night And Day, until the two became inextricably tangled.
Shearing's musical partnership with the singer Mel Torme, which lasted almost a decade, had begun in the early 1980s, and brought out the best in both. They were evenly matched as regards musicianship, and both took delight in pursuing melodic and harmonic hares for the sheer fun of the thing. The pair won Grammy awards in successive years for An Evening with George Shearing & Mel Torme (1983) and Top Drawer (1984). Their 1990 album Mel and George Do World War II is also a minor classic.
Shearing remained fit and active well into his later years and continued to perform, even after being honoured with an Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Early the following year he released a memoir, Lullaby of Birdland, which was accompanied by a double album "musical autobiography", Lullabies of Birdland. Shortly afterwards, however, he suffered a fall at his home and retired from regular performing.
He was appointed OBE in 1996. In 2007 he was knighted. "So," he noted later, "the poor, blind kid from Battersea became Sir George Shearing. Now that's a fairy tale come true."
In later years Shearing returned to live for part of each year in England, in a house at Chipping Camden which he bought with his second wife, the singer Ellie Geffert. She survives him. With his first wife, Trixie Bayes, whom he married in 1941, he had a daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8324291/Sir-George-Shearing.html
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