Introducing Miss Lorraine Ellison

 

My Man's Gone Now

Introducing Miss Lorraine Ellison

Produced by Jerry Ragovoy

Engineer: Phil Ramon

Cover Photo: Sherman Weisburd

Art Direction: Ed Thrasher

Warner Bros. Records WS 1674

1967

From the back cover: Lorraine Ellison. An attractive mellifluous name for a girl about to make it big. On two evenings and an afternoon in New York City, in the middle of an uncomfortable warm and steamy November, she is recording her first album for Warner Bros. Records. Cradling her unique, multifaceted voice at these three session are the beautifully contrived instrumentations of young arranger-conductor Oliver Nelson; propulsive, infectious sound. Raspy funk sounds. Deep, dark amber sounds. Heart and soul sounds.

In the close quarters of the recording studio, in an old building on the West Side, she waits quietly in the control room for the first session to begin, the words to her songs written in grateful longhand on lined yellow paper. Album producer Jerry Ragovoy, a jack-in-the-box with sad eyes, asks what she'd like to do first. "Better do something to open up my voice." A sip of cold coffee and into the studio. Tall, confident. Her large frame telegraphing a powerhouse of a voice. A husky "Hello, baby" to someone. "Oh, yes, sweetheart" to someone else. Mother Earth in black seater, black-and-white checked slacks, back leather boots.

No-nonsense Nelson gives his boys the downbeat. Some of the best oil the business. They read the arrangement through twice, Lorraine singing to herself, rocking back and forth in a precariously fragile folding chair. From the control room, Jerry Ragovoy suggests, "Let's try one, Lorraine." The red light signaling "Quiet" flicks on. Lorraine slips into the small recording booth behind the ragged rows of musicians. The engineer announces "Take one," and they go.

This is Lorrian Ellison, who was singing gospel and playing piano in church when she was six. The girl from Philadelphia who formed a Gospel group called "The Ellison Singers" with two sisters and a cousin while in high school. The same Lorraine Ellison who conquered the local small time as a single, then packed up and lived in Europe for awhile, cracking the sienna stucco of Spoletto at the Festival of Two Worlds and short-circuiting the cables of Italian radio and television with the Ellison sound. The same sweet Lorraine who recently shook her name right off the marquee of Harlem's famed Apollo Theater while wailing in a baby pink spotlight onstage.

And now, here she is, shut up on the private world of four-by-four recording booth, peering out at Oliver Nelson through dusty glass, listening to her arrangement through a pair of over-sized earphones, and singing up a veritable tidal wave of music on her first take. In the control room, her manager is beaming. "That Lorraine is crazy. Jesus Christ, she's crazy." Someone else murmurs, "Fifty thousand souls."

Hands on hips, eyes closed now, she sends the blues packing fast as their ugly legs will carry them. At the end, she rears back, forgets the words on the yellow lined paper, and just goes.

After the take, musicians who usually spend the break minding their own business find themselves in the control room listening to the playback. There are subtle nods of approval, then smiles of unadulterated pleasure. At the climax someone calls out, "That's chasing 'em baby. That's chasing 'em."

Lorraine Ellison. Blues chaser. Ballad swinger. At the brink of stardom one of the most original and compelling jazz singers around. – Hal Halverstadt

From Billboard - February 18, 1967: She has style, she has soul... and she combines them with class that should take this LP high on the charts. Here are soul presentations of standards like "Heart And Soul," "Games That People Play" and "Cry Me A River," as well as "If I Had A Hammer" and "Stay With Me."

Heart And Soul

Games That People Play

He's My Guy

What A Difference A Day Makes

A Chance Is Gonna Come

If I Had A Hammer

When Love Flies Away

Cry Me A River

Stay With Me

What Is A Woman

That's For Me

My Man's Gone Now