Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 12, 1994 TAG: 9411140050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
McRae died at home Thursday night. She had fallen into a semi-coma four days earlier, a month after she was hospitalized for a stroke, said her secretary and friend of 26 years, Jan March.
``She said, `I don't want a memorial. I don't want a funeral. I don't want flowers. All I want to be remembered for is my music,''' March said. ``That was her whole world.''
McRae had been bedridden since suffering respiratory failure four years ago during a show at the Blue Note nightclub in New York, March said. She never performed again.
In December, the National Endowment for the Arts named McRae one of its masters of jazz, hailing her ``instinctive feeling for rhythm, her skillful vocal technique, her innovative scat singing, as well as her relaxed manner of presentation.''
Jazz saxophonist Stanley Turrentine today called McRae ``the last great stylist of her time. ... She was spicy. She was Carmen. And she didn't hesitate to speak her mind.''
``The world has lost an icon, a very precious gift that was given to us all,'' said jazz singer O.C. Smith, a longtime friend. ``At least we have her music, her gift, to remember her by.''
A pianist as well as a singer, McRae was one of jazz's best-known female performers. Her repertoire included ``God Bless the Child,'' a song closely associated with her biggest influence, Billie Holiday; Cole Porter's ``I've Got You Under My Skin;'' Billy Joel's ``New York State of Mind,'' and Dave Brubeck's ``Take Five.''
``She picked unusual songs, not standard songs,'' Turrentine said. ``She was a great piano player, too. Not just a vocalist, a great musician.''
She was born in New York City's Harlem on April 8, 1920 (some references say 1922). McRae's parents sent her to piano lessons in the hope that she would become a concert pianist., but ``I'd keep sheet music of pop tunes hidden among the classical stuff in the piano bench, and when everyone was out of earshot, I let go with the pops,'' she told the New York Post in 1966.
At 17, she won an amateur talent contest at the Apollo Theater and went on to sing with Benny Carter, Count Basie and Earl ``Fatha'' Hines.
After World War II, she went solo. By 1953, she had been named Downbeat magazine's new star of the year. Her first album came out in 1954, and in 1955 she tied with Ella Fitzgerald for best female vocalist in a Metronome magazine poll.
McRae's focus was always the words, delivered in a contralto that she modulated from a purr and gutteral points of punctuation.
``Every word is important to me,'' she once said. ``It's like an actress who selects a role that contains something she wants to portray. If I don't have something new to offer in a song, well, I just won't sing it.''
by CNB