Artist: Jimmy Rushing

James Andrew Rushing was an American singer and pianist from  Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948. 

Rushing was known as "Mr. Five by Five" and was the subject of an eponymous 1942 popular song that was a hit for Harry James and others; the lyrics describe Rushing's rotund build: "he's five feet tall and he's five feet wide". He joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927 and then joined Bennie Moten's band in 1929.  He stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935. 

Rushing said that his first time singing in front of an audience was in 1924. He was playing piano at a club when the featured singer, Carlyn Williams, invited him to do a vocal. "I got out there and broke it up. I was a singer from then on," he said. 

Rushing was a powerful singer who had a range from baritone to tenor. He has sometimes been classified as a blues shouter. He could project his voice so that it soared over the horn and reed sections in a big-band setting. Basie claimed that Rushing "never had an equal" as a blues vocalist, though Rushing "really thought of himself as a ballad singer. Dave Brubeck defined Rushing's status among blues singers as "the daddy of them all." Late in his life, Rushing said of his singing style, "I don't know what kind of blues singer you'd call me. I just sing 'em."  Among his best-known recordings are "Going to Chicago", with Basie, and "Harvard Blues", with a saxophone solo by Don Byas. 

Rushing was inspired to pursue music and sing blues by his uncle Wesley Manning and George "Fathead" Thomas of McKinney's Cotton Pickers. He toured the Midwest and California as an itinerant blues singer in the early 1920s before moving to Los Angeles, where he played piano and sang with Jelly Roll Morton. He also sang with Billy King  before moving on to Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927. He and other members of the Blue Devils defected to the Bennie Moten band in 1929. 

Moten died in 1935, and Rushing joined Count Basie for what would be a 13-year job.  Due to his tutelage under his mentor Moten, Rushing was a proponent of the Kansas City, Missouri, jump blues tradition exemplified by his performances of "Sent for You Yesterday" and "Boogie Woogie" for the Count Basie Orchestra. After leaving Basie, his recording career continued as a singer with other bands.