Artist Info
Biography
The music world certainly needs people with this first name to counteract the combined effect of Ozzie Nelson and Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzie Bailey was a New York singer who was known for his involvement with the Duke Ellington orchestra and some of Ellington's special, more elaborate projects, particularly the television special entitled A Drum Is a Woman. Bailey was a quite specialized type of singer, like many of the vocalists Ellington featured. He sang ballads that were as slow as the drip of pine resin and was not known as a jazz singer. Listeners who don't enjoy the certain type of decidedly un-jazzy vocalists Ellington sometimes made use of can stand warned.He began to study voice in the early '50s, eventually studying privately with Luther Henderson, with whom he later recorded for MGM. After years of singing at parties and in small clubs, Bailey joined up with Ellington in 1957, the same year as the aforementioned television broadcast. Ellington recorded this material for Columbia and took the vocalist on a tour of Europe in 1958. One of Bailey's best performances was on a Strayhorn arrangement of "Autumn Leaves," in which the singer made use of both the French and English lyrics. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide
