Shirley Horn

Did You Know?

• Horn worked with the same rhythm section—Charles Ables on electric bass and Steve Williams on drums—for 25 years.
• She was a breast cancer survivor and died at age 71 from complications of diabetes.

Biography

Shirley Valerie Horn came into the world on May 1, 1934, and grew up in Washington, D.C. Her grandmother, who played the organ as a hobby, pushed her to start piano lessons when she was just four years old. By the time she was twelve, Horn was studying piano and composition at Howard University, and she eventually graduated from there with a degree in classical music. She got an offer to attend the Juilliard School, but her family didn't have the money to send her.

When she turned twenty, she put together her first jazz piano trio. The pianists who shaped her early style were Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, and Ahmad Jamal. As she moved away from her classical training, Horn once said that Oscar Peterson became her Rachmaninov and Ahmad Jamal became her Debussy. She fell in love with the U Street jazz scene in Washington, a neighborhood that was mostly wiped out during the 1968 riots, and she would sneak into jazz clubs before she was old enough to be there legally.

According to jazz journalist James Gavin, a small New York City label called Stere-O-Craft found Horn in Washington and took her to New York to cut her first album, Embers and Ashes, which came out in 1960. Before that, in 1959, Horn had played piano with violinist Stuff Smith in Washington as part of one of the rhythm sections on his album Cat on a Hot Fiddle. Verve Records didn't list her name among the backing musicians on that album, so the gig didn't help her career much.

A later reissue of Stuff Smith's Verve recordings by Mosaic Records did confirm Horn's involvement and included three vocal performances of George Gershwin songs by her that had been left off the original album. Horn's Embers and Ashes caught the ear of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. He gave her a public shout-out and asked her to play intermission sets during his shows at the Village Vanguard. Davis's praise carried a lot of weight because he was so respected and because he rarely complimented other musicians publicly back then.

A live show from 1961, recorded in St. Louis's Gaslight Square district, was later released on vinyl as "Live" at the Village Vanguard. A later CD version of that material came out under the title At the Gaslight Square 1961. By 1962, Quincy Jones, who was both a jazz arranger and a vice-president at Mercury Records, had noticed Horn and signed her to the label. On her two Mercury albums, Horn was put into a standard pop setting with a medium-sized jazz orchestra, and she didn't play piano on either one.

According to James Gavin, a third Mercury album was recorded but never released, and as of 1993, the tapes for that record were thought to be lost. Her last LP from the 1960s was Travelin' Light, recorded for ABC-Paramount in 1965. Jazz critics liked her, but she never found big commercial success. Even though she had recorded a Beatles song, And I Love Him, on Travelin' Light, Horn mostly pushed back against efforts to turn her into a pop singer in the mid-1960s. She later said about those attempts, "I will not stoop to conquer."

From the late 1960s through the late 1970s, Horn stepped back from music. She stayed in Washington, D.C., to raise her daughter Rainy with her husband, Sheppard Deering, whom she had married in 1955. She mostly played local gigs. In 1972, she made one album for Perception Records, but it got little attention, and she didn't tour to support it.

In 1978, Horn's career got a boost when SteepleChase Records from Denmark tracked her down in Washington and offered to record her with drummer Billy Hart, whom she had known for years, and bassist Buster Williams. That album, A Lazy Afternoon, was the first of four Horn records released by SteepleChase between 1978 and 1984. She also started playing shows in North America and Europe, including the North Sea Jazz Festival, where two of her albums were recorded live.

In 1986, Horn signed a one-album deal with CBS-Sony for the Japanese market and put out All of Me, a studio session cut in New York City with her usual rhythm section and guest Frank Wess on three tracks. By early 1987, Verve Records was chasing her for a contract, and in May of that year, the live album I Thought About You, her first for Verve, was recorded in Hollywood. She did one more session for an independent jazz label, Softly for Audiophile Records in 1987, and then went back to Verve.

During her lifetime, she released eleven studio and live albums for Verve, with more compilation albums adding to that total. Her most commercially successful years were with Verve, and the label helped her reach a large international audience. Miles Davis made a rare appearance as a backing musician on Horn's 1991 album, You Won't Forget Me. Although she liked performing in small settings, like with her trio, she also recorded with orchestras, as on the 1992 album Here's to Life.

The title song became her signature piece. A video documentary about Horn's life and music came out at the same time as Here's to Life and shared its name. Around then, arranger Johnny Mandel said that Horn's piano skill was on par with Bill Evans's. A follow-up album, You're My Thrill, was released in 2001. Horn worked with the same rhythm section for twenty-five years, including Charles Ables on electric bass.

Awards and honors

Horn was nominated for nine Grammy Awards during her career, winning the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance at the 41st Grammy Awards for I Remember Miles, a tribute to her friend and mentor (the album's cover featuring a Miles Davis drawing of them both). She was officially recognized by the 109th US Congress for "her many achievements and contributions to the world of jazz and American culture", and performed at The White House for several U.S. presidents. Horn was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music in 2002. She was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2005 (the highest honors that the United States bestows upon jazz musicians).