Artist: Johnny Hartman
John Maurice Hartman was an American jazz singer, known for his rich baritone voice and recordings of ballads.
After recording several singles with different orchestras, Hartman broke through in 1955 with the release of his first solo album, Songs from the Heart, for Bethlehem Records featuring a quartet led by trumpeter Howard McGhee. The album showcased Hartman's romantic and tender style of ballad singing. While these ballads were his bread and butter, he was also capable of swinging. For his next album, All Of Me: The Debonair Mr. Hartman (1957), also for Bethlehem, he worked with Ernie Wilkins' orchestra and the Frank Hunter Strings. Most of the songs on the album are ballads, with a few up-tempo numbers including the title track and the song "The Birth of the Blues".
Releasing two more albums with small, independent labels, Hartman got a career-altering offer in 1963 to record with John Coltrane. The album from that session, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, is widely considered Hartman's best work. It is also Coltrane's only album with a singer.
By the mid-1960s, popular tastes were embracing rock and roll, Hartman turned to playing cocktail lounges in New York City and Chicago. He did a television special in Australia and recorded several albums in Japan, including a tribute to Coltrane after the saxophonist's death in 1967.
Recording with small, independent labels such as Perception and Musicor, Hartman produced music of mixed quality as he attempted to be viewed as a more versatile vocalist. Speaking about his approach to interpreting a song, he said: "Well, to me a lyric is a story, almost like talking, telling somebody a story, try to make it believable." When he returned to the jazz combo format of his earlier albums, Hartman recorded Once in Every Life for the Bee Hive label, which earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Male Jazz Vocalist in 1981. He quickly followed this up with his last album of new material, This One's for Tedi, a tribute to his wife, Theodora.
Hartman recorded new tracks for Grenadilla Records on their jazz label, Grapevine. These were dance tracks of "Beyond the Sea" and "Caravan," with the latter also having an extended six-minute version.
Further information about Johnny Hartman is found here and here.
Photography credit: William P. Gottlieb, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Hartman, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
Johnny Hartman It Never Entered My Mind
John Coltrane - John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman 1963
Johnny Hartman: Videos
Johnny Hartman - The Nearness Of You