Thursday 28 March 2024

Germaine Bazzle born 28 March 1932


Germaine Bazzle (born March 28, 1932) is a jazz vocalist from New Orleans. Her musical influences include Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billy Eckstein. 

Bazzle was born in New Orleans, Los Angeles. She learned to play songs at the age of nine and started to accept formal training of music around the age of eleven. Both of her parents played the piano. Bazzle started to play the bass at the age of fourteen, and she participated in Xavier University’s Junior School of Music Orchestra. Bazzle sang with the St. Louis Cathedral Choir. She was also a member of The New World Ensemble, an all black choral group. Bazzle earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Xavier University. 

Followed her graduation from Xavier University, Bazzle was an educator at Washington High School in Thibodaux, Louisiana during the early 1960s. At the same time, she was also a youthful member of Earl Foster’s band. Bazzle also engaged in professional duo-piano playing between her bass-playing years and vocal specialization years.  Early in the 70s, she started to serve on the faculty of Xavier Preparatory High School, an all-girl catholic high school in New Orleans. She was also encountered as a bassist with traditional jazz bands during the same time period. Bazzle taught at the Xavier Preparatory High School until her retirement in 2007. 

Bazzle has always prioritized teaching above touring and recording. She taught nine through twelve grade music lessons in the Prep and she also taught choral music because she believes that “education is her calling”. She is currently a vocal music instructor at the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp. She contributes greatly to jazz education for young people. Although she has never performed beyond New Orleans, she is admirable both as an educator and a musician. 

                           Here’s “Lush Life” from above 1988 album. 

                                   

“Teaching was what I was supposed to do; the gigs are what I could do,” she said emphatically upon her receipt of the 2015 Off Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music Education award. “As far as I was concerned, I had the best of both worlds.” In an interview she added, “The voice is the original musical instrument and sometimes we forget that. Learning how to do the scales, learning how to do the arpeggios, learning how to read music...all of these things make good jazz.” 

She has collaborated and performed with Red Tyler, Peter "Chuck" Badie, Victor Goines, George French, Ellis Marsalis, Emile Vinnette, Larry Siebert, and David Torkanowsky, along with their band Germaine Bazzle & Friends.She sang regularly with the Saint Louis Catholic Choir and The New World Ensemble. She has performed in New Orleans night clubs for over twenty years. She has recorded two albums of her own in 1996 and 2018 and has been credited as a collaborator on more than a dozen other albums between 1962 and 2016. 

Her voice is rich, full of quirks and surprises; she is truly an acquired taste. Her repertoire consists, for the most part, of classic tunes written by Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington, freshly interpreted and given new arrangements. In any standard number, she may imitate a bass, trumpet, saxophone and imaginary instruments. She will also add idiosyncrasies where they are least expected or veer off into scatting, always displaying an abundance of technique and flexibility and never singing the same song the same way. Bazzle radiates engaging warmth and an infectious joy when she sings. The music flows through her and she resonates with it. 

Germaine Bazzle’s unique talent and unparalleled artistry as a vocalist is perhaps one of New Orleans’ best kept secrets. Her command of tone and melody coupled with her brilliance in the manipulation of her own vocal timbre are nothing short of spectacular. Still performing today, she is a frequent headliner with her own backup band at Snug Harbor in the heart of the Frenchmen Street. Even as she turns 92. Bazzle shows no sign of letting up, and the physical energy she emits from the stage is still there in full force. 

In an interview given in 2022, Bazzle acknowledged that if she had cut more records and was willing to go on tour, she might have had a lucrative full-time career as a singer. However, touring held no interest for her. She was content to stay at home in her beloved New Orleans, doing what she enjoyed most, teaching and performing locally for her legion of appreciative fans. 

(Edited from Scalar.usc.edu, The French Quarterly Magazine, Where y’at Magazines & Wikipedia)

Wednesday 27 March 2024

Wilson Miranda born 27 March 1940

Wilson Miranda (March 27, 1940 - June 20, 1986) was a Brazilian singer of samba, rock and jazz, and music producer who early on, was identified with the "jovem guarda" a teen-oriented rock'n'roll sound of the early 1960s, but later found his way into the pop mainstream. 

Miranda was born as Wilson Antonio Chaves de Miranda in Itápolis, São Paulo, Brazil. He began his career as the lead singer of a jazz ensemble. During the late fifties he signed a contract with the Chantecler label and recorded many singles from 1958 to 1965. In 1960, he managed to sign a contract with Rádio Tupi, where he started to sing his rock-ballad songs. 

He alternated the repertoire of his recordings with the inclusion of Samba-Canção and Boleros in his albums. Although it was not well received by critics, who considered the then newcomer Rock’n’roll as a kind of sub-music, he achieved commercial success with "Quando", "É Porque", "Veneno", "O Apacheand "Bata Baby" (a version of Little Richard’s  Long Tall Sally.). 

1960 was a busy year for Miranda, he participate in the film "Conceição", under the direction of actor Hélio Souto, a show of the crime, police and suspense genre and where he appeared singing the song "Bata Baby" together with the group "The Rebels". He also recorded the  LP "Samba e Rocks", containing 13 songs versions of American hits, some new ones such as "Aquele Relógio" and "Ring a Rockin'" and other re-recordings such as "Bata Baby", among others. 

                                      

More singles an albums were issued from 1961 to 1964  including the LPs. "Teu Amor é Minha Vida" an "A Outra Face de Wilson Miranda", with exclusive Bossa Nova songs, presenting a more jazzy and intimate performance recording Brazilian classics such as "Minha Namorada" by Carlos Lyra and Vinicius de Moraes an "Samba de Verão" by Marcos an Paulo Sérgio Valle. 

By 1965 Miranda was ready to shed his teenybopper roots and recorded his second album with Bossa Nova songs and other sambas, under the name of "Tempo Novo", by his new label RCA Victor, which was very well received earning him many awards, Among the 11 tracks recorded, there are the sambas "Tempo Feliz" by Baden Powell and Vinícius de Moraes, "Amanhã" by Walter Santos and Tereza Souza, and other hits, with arrangements and orchestras by Chico Moraes and Erlon Chaves. 

It was about this time that the TV show called Jovem Guarda (Young Guard), was aired in São Paulo, influenced by the Rock and Roll movements of the 50s and 60s. The program was led by Roberto Carlos, Erasmo Carlos and Wanderléa and had the participation of several young artists of the time, including Wilson Miranda who sang several of his hits during the time the program was on the air. 

In 1967 he recorded the million selling single "Estou Começando a Chorar" (I'm Starting to Cry), a composition by Roberto Carlos and one of the biggest hits of that year. Even so, in the following years he left his singing career in the background, acting as a producer on albums by Nelson Gonçalves, Bendegó, Banda de Pífanos de Caruaru, and others of more popular appeal. 

It was only in 1978 that he recorded again, this time for the Continental label, the LP entitled "Relevo", with a completely different repertoire, definitively moving away from the rocker image of the beginning of his career, more focused on Brazilian Popular Music. In 1984, he released CD single of  “Viviana, in search of love” , the theme of Lucía Méndez's soap opera aired on SBT that year. In his latter years, he lived in the Campo Belo neighborhood of São Paulo with his family, where he had a room full of gold records and awards from the Jovem Guarda period. 

Wilson Miranda died on June 20, 1986, victim of a cardiac arrest in his car while he was stopped at a traffic light in São Paulo. Several artists from the Jovem Guarda attended the funeral. He was buried in the Araçá Cemetery. 

(Edited mainly from a translated Wikipedia article)

Tuesday 26 March 2024

James Moody born 26 March 1925

James Moody (March 26, 1925 – December 9, 2010) was an American jazz saxophone and flute player and very occasional vocalist, playing predominantly in the bebop and hard bop styles. The annual James Moody Jazz Festival is held in Newark, New Jersey. 

He was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised by his (single) mother, Ruby Hann Moody Watters. Born partially deaf, he was deemed to have learning difficulties at school, and his mother moved him to Newark, New Jersey, where he attended the Bruce Street school for deaf children, and then Newark's Arts high school. Encouraged by an uncle who gave him a saxophone, a 16-year-old Moody began to learn the alto, and then the tenor sax.  

Moody joined the US Army Air Corps in 1943 and played in the "negro band" at the segregated Greensboro Training Center. Following his discharge from the military in 1946, he played bebop with Dizzy Gillespie for two years. Moody later played with Gillespie in 1964, where his colleagues in the Gillespie group, pianist Kenny Barron and guitarist Les Spann, would be musical collaborators in the coming decades. 

His first recordings as a bandleader were with James Moody and his Modernists in 1948, but he moved to Paris to stay with an uncle in an attempt to overcome alcoholism, and worked there in 1949 with the Miles Davis/Tadd Dameron quintet. In 1949, during a session with local players in Sweden, Moody recorded the improvisation on I'm in the Mood for Love, which was to become one of his signature achievements. The vocalist Eddie Jefferson put lyrics to the passage, and in 1952 King Pleasure turned the combination into the pop hit Moody's Mood for Love. 

                                    

It wasn`t until he returned to the U.S. and toured with The Brook Benton Revue (with The James Moody Orchestra) that he became acquainted with music theory, crediting Tom Macintosh with explaining to him chord changes. Moody and his Orchestra performed for the eleventh famed Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr. on July 24, 1955 and also featured Big Jay McNeely, Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra, The Medallions and The Penguins. 

But after a fire in Philadelphia in 1958 destroyed his band's instruments, uniforms and scores, Moody decided on a change. He checked himself into Overbrook hospital, New Jersey, for rehab and recorded his masterly Last Train from Overbrook on his discharge six months later. By the beginning of the 1960s he was a sideman in the classic bebop group led by the saxophonists Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt. But in 1962 he returned to Gillespie. 

Though he continued to record distinctive projects that reaffirmed his stamp on the bebop tradition,   Moody stayed with Gillespie's quintet until 1973, when he decided to give up touring and devote more time to his young daughter. Joining the Las Vegas Hilton orchestra, he found himself backing Bill Cosby, Ann-Margret, Liberace, Elvis Presley, the Osmonds, Lou Rawls and many others. 

But after divorce from his first wife in 1979, he resumed his jazz career with appearances at the Nice jazz festival, the Sweet Basil club and the Kool jazz festival, both in New York, and Montreux in 1981, receiving a Grammy nomination for his solo on Manhattan Transfer's Vocalese album in 1985. By 1986 he was back as a jazz leader on a major label. He recorded the album Something Special for RCA/Novus that year, met his second wife, Linda, in 1987, married her in 1989 (with Gillespie as his best man), and settled in San Diego. 

Through the 1990s, Moody also worked with Jackson, took up soprano saxophone, received a Grammy nomination for his singing Get That Booty, (a duet with Gillespie), worked with Lionel Hampton and Tito Puente, and saw a tribute to his remarkable flute improvisation with the publication in 1995 of James Moody's Greatest Transcribed Flute Solos. In 1997 he had a minor role in Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, received a Jazz Master award from the National Endowment for the Arts the following year, and in July 2000 was presented with an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts. 

In 2005 Moody and his wife founded the James Moody scholarship endowment at Purchase College, New York, and, in early 2010, the James Moody scholarship fund for Newark youth in the town where he was raised. He kept the news of his inoperable pancreatic cancer from all but his innermost circle, and though he declined further treatment, he remained comfortable and typically genial through his last months, continuing to play his instruments at home on his stronger days. After palliative care, Moody died in San Diego, on December 9, 2010, from complications resulting from the cancer. Two months after his death, Moody won the Grammy Award posthumously for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for his album Moody 4B.  

(Edited from Guardian obit by John Fordham & Wikipedia)

 

Monday 25 March 2024

Mina Mazzini born 25 March 1940

Mina Anna Maria Mazzini OMRI (born 25 March 1940) known mononymously as Mina, is an Italian singer and actress. She was a staple of television variety shows and a dominant figure in Italian pop music from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, known for her three-octave vocal range, the agility of her soprano voice, and her image as an emancipated woman. 

One of the most beloved and iconic performers in Italian history, vocalist Mina was a fixture on the pop music scene in the '60s and '70s before she retired from the limelight in 1978. Her lush and powerful voice put a distinctive mark on her music, which frequently jumped genres, from Italian pop and R&B to bossa nova, jazz, and even disco. 

From her first number one single, 1959's "Tintarella di luna," and through her run in the '70s with "Amor mio," "Parole Parole," "E poi...," and "L'importante e finire," she was a trailblazing figure who challenged social mores and became a symbol for female empowerment, pushing boundaries with her liberated image and unapologetic lyrics. Into the 21st century, her prolific and genre-shifting output kept her atop the charts with over a dozen number one albums and multiple hit singles. 

Anna Maria Mazzini was born into a working-class family in Busto Arsizio, Lombardy. The family moved to work in Cremona in her childhood. She listened to American rock and roll and jazz records and was a frequent visitor at the Santa Tecla and the Taverna Messicana clubs of Milan, both known for promoting rock and roll. After finishing high school in 1958, she attended college where she majored in accounting. 

In September, she started her solo career with the backing of the band Happy Boys. Her concert in September 1958, before an audience of 2,500 people at the Theatre of Rivarolo del Re, won enthusiastic approval from local critics. She soon signed with Davide Matalon, owner of the small record company Italdisc. He was impressed with the young singer and soon recorded four songs with her: two in English under the name Baby Gate -- "Be Bop a Lula" and "When" -- and two in Italian as Mina: "Non Partir" and "Malatia." 

             

                                    

In December, her performance at the Sei giorni della canzone festival of Milan was described by the La Notte newspaper as the "birth of a star". It was Mina's last performance with the Happy Boys, as her family refused to let her skip college for a scheduled tour of Turkey. Less than a month after the breakup with her previous band, Mina co-founded a new group called Solitari, which consisted of a singer, a saxophonist, a pianist, a contrabassist, and a guitarist. Her first hit with the band featured Mina performing an extra-loud, syncopated version of the popular song "Nessuno" ("Nobody"), which she performed at the first rock festival in the Milan Ice Palace in February 1959. 

Mina was the name that she stuck with for her debut album, Tintarella di Luna, which was released in 1960. During that decade she recorded over a dozen albums, and -- thanks to her high visibility in the television commercials that began in Italy after WWII and the economic boom that followed -- she became one of the country's most famous stars, notching seven number one albums, including 1971's best-selling Mina and 1976's Singolare y Plurale. At the height of her popularity, Mina announced that she would retire from the spotlight, a public hiatus which she started after the 1978 live album Mina Live '78. Recorded where it all started at La Bussola, the set celebrated the first 20 years of her career. 

Withdrawing from the public eye, she continued to record and release albums, which maintained her chart presence through the '80s and '90s. During that era, she issued almost three dozen efforts, seven of which topped the Italian charts, including Si, Buana (1986), Lochness (1993), Leggera (1997), and Olio (1999). In addition to her fresh output, Mina began releasing greatest-hits collections, including 2004's chart-topping, triple-disc The Platinum Collection, which introduced her to a new generation of fans. The following year, she issued Bula Bula, another number one that incorporated sleek pop production and dance beats. 

Mina continues to publish gold selling albums to the present. She alternates pop albums with jazz-arranged projects and other styles and keeps surprising with new musical collaborations. Meanwhile, her voice and songs are omnipresent in radio and TV commercials, theme tunes of sports programs, talent shows (where they sing classics), tribute shows, new covers, and even as samples in the recordings of other artists.Even into her seventies, Mina showed no signs of slowing down, notching another pair of chart-toppers with Le Migliori (2016) and Maeba (2018). In 2019, she joined fellow pop vocalist Ivano Fossati for a duets album, Mina Fossati. 

In 2023, a surprising intergenerational duet of Blanco (at the age of 20) and Mina (at the age of 83) was issued, "Un briciolo di allegria", it made number 1 in the Italian hitparade for 5 consecutive weeks.

(Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia)

 

Sunday 24 March 2024

David Dee born 24 March 1938

David Dee (24 March 1938 – 22, March 2023) was an influential East St. Louis soul singer, guitarist and bandleader. His music career spanned more than five decades, during which he thrived as a charismatic and versatile performer.

Dee was born David Eckford  in Greenwood, Mississippi but St. Louis was the town he has called home since childhood after his mother moved the family in the middle of the night from Mississippi. She was in debt to the owner of a plantation, where the family was living as sharecroppers. She wanted a better life for her family. “She called the boss man and said she needed $200 to buy Christmas gifts for the kids,” Dee said. Instead, she used the money to buy bus tickets to St. Louis, where she had family." 

He began singing with a spiritual group at the age of 12. When he reached the age of 16, he moved to Chicago and in 1963 after a stint in the military, returned to East St. Louis to form his first musical group, David and the Temptations. Following the break-up of the group, he free-lanced as a singer for other groups such as Clyde Jones, Walter Rice, Wahtachie and others. A booking agent in Springfield, Illinois, suggested the name David Dee to him and that’s the name he has used on all of his recordings. Although he initially tried his hand at playing keyboards, alto saxophone, and bass, Dee permanently switched to the guitar in 1972. 

                                    

He worked the club scene, including the all-night venues in East St. Louis. Dee has been called the St. Louis area’s premier contemporary bluesman.  Howlin' Wolf recruited Dee to play bass for him. Albert King did the same. He played behind Jimmy Reed and performed and recorded with Oliver Sain, who presented Dee with a track that needed some lyrics. The collaboration became “Goin’ Fishin” in 1982 which took him from the local clubs of East St. Louis to the national soul-blues “chitlin circuit.” 

David has released numerous CDs, which include a substantial body of original work, perhaps most notable is his 1991 album "Going Fishing", which colorfully portrays the consequences of neglecting a spouse. It has been suitably described as ST. Louis blues anthem.. 

Considered at the time by many to be St. Louis’s reigning blues king, David Dee earned the title of one of his original standards, "Workin Blues Man". The moniker embodied the various roles of bandleader, song writer, guitarist, entertainer, and singer that had been cultivated through 40 plus years of travels, recording and performing. From Parisian Hotels to East St. Louis VFW halls to festivals in Amsterdam, his performances delighted just about every type of audience imaginable. He performed regularly with his Hot Tracks band, augmented on special occasions by his three daughters who also sang. 

Lesley Withers, a daughter of Dee, shared news of his death on 22, March 2023. He was 84 years old.

(Scarce info edited from Discogs, Soul Blues Music, Radio KDHX & AllMusic) (* some sources state 1942 as birth-year)

 

 

Saturday 23 March 2024

Karen Young born 23 March 1951

Karen Young (March 23, 1951 — January 26, 1991) was an American disco singer known for her 1978 hit song "Hot Shot". 

Young grew up in a Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse. She began as a singer of jingles and backing vocalist for Philadelphia-based production companies. In the early 1970s, she performed with the group Sandd, featuring Frank Gilckin (lead guitar), George Emertz (rhythm guitar), Frank Ferraro (bass guitar) and Dennis Westman (drums). 

In 1978, Young released the single "Hot Shot", written and produced by (Andy) Andrew Kahn and Kurt Borusiewicz. The song spent two weeks at number 1 on Billboard's disco chart and eventually peaked at number 67 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. An album, also titled Hot Shot, was then released by West End Records of New York City. The song propelled Young to international fame. With a powerful, soulful voice that invoked elements of Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand, Karen could tear through a song like a tornado," wrote a critic in Record World. 

"Hot Shot" was featured in the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune and in the 2020 documentary The Times of Bill Cunningham. The song was a featured sample in Daft Punk's song "Indo Silver Club" on their album Homework. The song was also used by ITV in the mid-1980s during its coverage of the World Snooker Championship for "hot shots" compilations during the tournament. Hot Shot was covered by the pop band, Blondie and included as a bonus track on the Japan and South Africa editions of their comeback album, No Exit. Various remixes of the song were released in 2007. "Hot Shot" made three separate appearances in the UK Singles Chart in 1978, 1979, and 1997. The highest placing was number 34. 

                                   

Producer Andy Kahn told in an interview that success made Karen 'unmanageable' and difficult to work with. A new recording Rendezvous With Me was attempted towards the end of 1979 but was never finished because the relationship ran sour. Instead Karen started working with his brother Walter Kahn. Signing with his Sunshine Recordings label, her first single was a rendition of God Bless America, an unlikely choice considering her disco fame, and unsurprisingly it was not a hit. 

An album of pop/rock sides was shelved in favor of the dance track Dynamite, released late 1981, and seeing her have a modest disco hit when it reached #69 in the dance charts. Detour on Atlantic fared better at #34 in 1982, but none of the following singles, scattered on various labels, did particularly well. After 1987's double A-side Change In Me/Eye On You, she had no new recordings. After that, she was still a hot property, but the timing, or song or people, never quite worked. She tried different directions, but they led nowhere. In a business where the lights go out very soon after the song stops, Karen's time on the meter ran out. She was a dynamic piano player and, with her singing, created a large following for herself in the Greater Philadelphia area. 

On Sept. 30 1990 Young performed at the Mandell Theater on the Drexel University campus. It was a benefit concert for Action AIDS. It was basically a jazz concert, but Karen and the song "Hot Shot" would forever be inseparable, and that is what she sang."It brought the audience down. Five hundred people went bananas, “said producer Andy Kahn. 

Just two months before her 40th birthday, suffering from weight problems, she had trouble breathing and went to the hospital for a check-up, but she died on January 26, 1991, at her home in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. The exact cause of her death still isn't  known, but house mate and close friend Renee Koch, said a doctor called Karen's mother and said it might have been ruptured perforated ulcers that caused her death. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Bandcamp & The Inquirer Daily News) 

Friday 22 March 2024

Cecil Campbell born 22 March 1911

Cecil Campbell (March 22, 1911 – June 18, 1989) was an American bluegrass bandleader & musician, most famed as a steel guitarist for the Tennessee Ramblers during the 1930s and '40s, although he also played tenor banjo. 

Born Cecil Robert Campbell in Danbury, North Carolina, Campbell worked on his father's tobacco farm and played occasionally on WSJS in Winston-Salem. He graduated from Walkertown High School in Walkertown, near Winston-Salem, and moved to Charlotte in 1935. He taught himself to play the guitar when he was 14 or 15 years old, sitting around the tobacco farm chewing on the home-grown leaf. Seeking new opportunities, Campbell hitchhiked in 1932 to Pittsburgh where he lived with his brother where he met Dick Hartman and was asked to join Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers, a large group that played both Western swing and old-time string music. And since many performers used nicknames, Campbell was often called "Curley" at that time. 

The band continued to record until fall 1936, also as "Hartman's Heart Breakers" or "Washboard Wonders." This incarnation of the Tennessee Ramblers held its last session with RCA-Victor on October 11, 1936, in Charlotte. The Tennessee Ramblers kept on performing and also began appearing in various B western movies, including "Ride Ranger Ride" (1936), "The Yodelin' Kid from Pine Ridge" (1937, both starring Gene Autry), among others. Hartman left in 1938 but the band continued without him, simply calling themselves "The Tennessee Ramblers" 

                                   

Campbell played on radio broadcasts and Bluebird sessions with the band throughout the '30s, taking over the leadership of the Ramblers' by-then skeleton crew in 1945, when the only original member left was guitarist Harry Blair. 

Cecil Campbell & the Tennessee Ramblers gained a contract with RCA Victor in 1946 and recorded throughout the late '40s. Campbell's steel guitar wizardry was emphasized, and the Ramblers gradually became more Campbell's backing group than an original entity themselves. Campbell remained popular, not only in the Carolinas but also in other parts of the United States, through tours and appearances on such WBT shows as the Dixie Jamboree and the Carolina Hayride (which was broadcasted coast to coast over CBS from 1946 onwards). 

He sold nearly a Million copies of his 1947 recording of "Tryon Street Boogie." Carolina themes wound through many of Cecil Campbell's 100 or so songs, including (Catawbay River Blues," "My Little Hut in Carolina" and "North Carolina Skies." Campbell also wrote and recorded Hawaiian tunes such as "Little Hula Shack in Hawaii" and” Neath Hawaiian Palms." He wrote country music back when it was called "hillbilly music" and appeared on WBT's Briarhopper radio show in the 1930s and '40s. During his RCA tenure, "Steel Guitar Ramble" became Campbell's only hit when it reached the country Top Ten in May 1949. Many of his 1940s RCA sides showcase his skills on the steel guitar, as Campbell and the Ramblers included many instrumentals in its repertoire.

In the early 1950s, the Western Ramblers did an unusual number called "Spooky Boogie". Cecil was looking for an "...unusual hollow type of rattling sound designed to send cold chills rushing down the spine." He couldn't find that sound on the musical instruments. But as fate would have it, one of the members of the Tennessee Ramblers had false teeth and that mysterious sound that appears on the tune "Spooky Boogie" was made by a pair of chattering false teeth. The flip side of that disk was another unusual tune called "Steel Guitar Dig." That record was the follow up to his "Proud Papa Polka" and "Serenade To The Winds." 

By 1951, Cecil was living in Charlotte, NC with his wife, Katherine and their daughters, Joretta Kay, and Linda Lee. From there, he traveled to New York for his recording sessions usually. Campbell also recorded for Disc and Palmetto Records during the early '50s, but signed with MGM in 1955, mixing some rockabilly material in with his traditional swing. After his stint with MGM, Campbell took a break from recording but continued to do personal appearances. However, his popularity had waned since the beginning of the decade. Although he tried his hand at rock'n'roll to refresh his sound, his age and dated western swing sounds were not pleasing the young audiences anymore. In 1958, he went into the real estate business and remained active in this field until the 1970s. 

Campbell recorded for Starday in the 60’s and in 1965 he founded his own Winston label, on which he occasionally released recordings. He continued to perform live with the Tennessee Ramblers, often appearing at the annual Western Film Fair in Raleigh, North Carolina, well into the 1980s.  He also appeared often at the Western Film Fair (held in Raleigh, NC) until his death at the Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 18, 1989. He was 78. 

(Edited from Rocky 52, Mellows Log Cabin, Discogs & Hillbilly Music.com)