Sad news from San Francisco.
Faith Winthrop played a major role in Guaraldi's early career, working at his side for much of 1955 at the famed hungry i nightclub. She continued to perform during a long and successful career, and her memory was remarkably vivid when she graciously provided a lengthy interview during my book's research phase.
The San Francisco Chronicle honored her with a generous obituary, reprinted here in full:
***********
Faith Winthrop, jazz singer who founded Glide community choir, dies at 87
by Aidin Vaziri
July 10, 2019
Faith Winthrop, the jazz vocalist who founded Glide Memorial Church’s community gospel choir and mentored Bay Area luminaries such as Ledisi, Lavay Smith and Paula West, died on July 1 in San Francisco. She was 87.
Her death was confirmed by Erika Lenkert, her daughter, who said the cause was complications from what was expected to be a simple surgery.
Winthrop moved in the mid-1950s from her native Massachusetts to San Francisco, where the classically trained singer established herself on the city’s vibrant club scene. She worked as the house singer at the hungry i in North Beach, where she warmed up audiences for up-and-coming stars like Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand and Mort Sahl. Her backing band included pianist Vince Guaraldi, guitarist Eddie Duran and bassist Dean Reilly.
Known for her silky voice and dramatic vocal interpretations of the standards, Winthrop was dubbed “San Francisco’s grand dame of song” by Philip Elwood, the music critic for the Examiner. She performed at venerable jazz institutions like the London House and Mister Kelly’s in Chicago, and the Blue Angel and Village Vanguard in New York. She made her television debut on the Today Show, before deciding to settle down in San Francisco to start a family with Hans Lenkert, with whom she had a brief relationship.
Winthrop worked as a faculty member in the music department at Mills College in Oakland, the Jazz School in Berkeley and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She also taught private lessons out of her homes in the Haight and Cole Valley, tutoring everyone from pop singers like Al Jarreau and Romeo Void’s Debora Iyall to screen stars like Divine and Keanu Reeves.
In 1966, Winthrop became the founding director of the Glide Ensemble, the community choir at the Rev. Cecil Williams’ Glide Memorial Church in the Tenderloin.
In the 1970s, Winthrop joined the Sometime Sondheim Singers performance group. Erika Lenkert, an author and former writer for The Chronicle, recalled sitting under the piano at their Cannery performance space and singing along to her songs.
“My mother was a very spiritual person who lived in gratitude and wonder,” Lenkert said. “She had an incredible ability to help people find and embrace themselves just as they are. She passed away the same way she lived life: surrounded by loved ones, music and song.”
Faith Winthrop was born in Boston on Nov. 18, 1931, to Russian immigrants Sarah Kaplan and Maurice Winthrop.
In the early 1950s, she moved to the West Coast, where she lived in a cottage in Malibu, owned by Mickey Rooney, and scored a record deal. She eventually made her way to San Francisco, living for a brief spell on a houseboat in Sausalito.
Winthrop released a pair of albums featuring standards and original material, 1993’s A Leap of Faith and 2007’s Havin’ Myself a Time!
Winthrop often recounted the tale of meeting Billie Holiday at George Wein’s Storyville Club in Boston in her early years as a performer.
“I was singing ‘Lover Man’ while they adjusted the mikes and lights, and in walked Billie holding her two Chihuahuas,” Winthrop said. “I saw her, stumbled through the song, and she came up and said, ‘Sing the song, girl, sing it!’ and I nearly collapsed, but I did finish it.”
In 2016, Winthrop moved to a retirement community in Mill Valley, where she taught voice lessons to fellow residents and her 13-year-old granddaughter, Viva Wertz.
Until her death, Winthrop performed twice monthly at Fior d’Italia restaurant in the city.
Lenkert is planning a celebration of life event for September. Details will follow and will be posted on her Facebook page.
Winthrop is survived by her daughter, Erika Lenkert, and granddaughter, Viva Wertz.
My wife and I spent an enjoyable few hours Wednesday afternoon, at San Francisco's St. Francis Yacht Club. The occasion was a lunchtime presentation by Medea Isphording Bern, author of the just-released photo memoir, San Francisco Jazz. (I discussed this book at length in a previous post.) Medea included us on her guest list, and I must say that the club prepares an impressive lunch spread. Her talk covered the background and creation of her book, accompanied by nifty PowerPoint highlights of the photographs within.
Although we arrived with the expectation of enjoying Medea's presentation, the event delivered an unexpected bonus. We were seated next to veteran jazz chanteuse Pat Yankee, 87 years young, who has mischievous eyes and an impressive memory for details stretching back more than half a century. (That's Pat on the cover of Medea's book, by the way, in an award-winning 1962 publicity shot by photographer Emilie Romaine.)
Medea, who knows of my interest in All Things Guaraldi, had orchestrated the seating arrangement for a reason; this became obvious the moment we were introduced to Pat.
"I knew Vince quite well," she said, "and he accompanied me once."
Do tell, I encouraged her.
"This was when I was working at Goman's Gay '90s, which would have been from about 1952 to '56," she continued, settling into the story.
[Goman's Gay '90s operated from 1941 to 1967, initially at 555 Pacific Avenue, in the old Barbary Coast. In 1956, the club moved to 345 Broadway, where it remained until it closed.]
"Everybody knew everybody back then. Enrico Banducci — he owned the hungry i, you know — he had a television show at the time. This was when the Keanes had all their paintings up in the little gallery room. Vince had his piano there, and he'd be playing when people came out of the big room."
[That would be Margaret and Walter Keane, who became famous in the late 1950s and '60s for her wildly popular paintings of wide-eyed, often gloomy-faced children; they're the subjects of Tim Burton's recent film Big Eyes.]
"Enrico used this space for his television show. He'd interview people, before they performed something; he was quite a character. So he said, 'Come on over, and be on my television show.' So I did. And Vince played for me.
"Now, it wasn't Vince's thing to play something like 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find,' but he did, and he was just wonderful.
Hang onto your hats, kids; this one's huge.
Guaraldi backed a number of female singers during the early stages of his career. He memorably accompanied Faith Winthrop when both were house musicians during 1954 and '55 at the hungry i. Several years later, after fresh stints with Cal Tjader and Woody Herman, Guaraldi once again commanded his own trio and became the house band at Palo Alto's new club, Outside at the Inside. From the spring of 1960 through early '61, Guaraldi and his trio would play their own sets and also back headlining singers such as Helen Humes, Toni Harper and his former hungry i colleague, Faith Winthrop.
For two weeks during the summer of 1960, Guaraldi flew to New York and backed June Christie at the famed Basin Street East.
None of these sessions was recorded, nor did Guaraldi hit the studio with any of these singers. Indeed, until just a few weeks ago, I would have said — with confidence — that Guaraldi never had been recorded while backing a female vocalist.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Imagine my surprise, boys and girls, when a recent eBay auction featured an item that rocked my world: a Galaxy Records 45 starring vocalist Ella Jamerson, back by none other than the Vince Guaraldi Trio.
The single — Galaxy Records #724 — features Buddy Johnson's blues ballad "Since I Fell for You" on the A-side, and is backed by Victor Young and Edward Heyman's "When I Fall in Love" on the flip side. (Doris Day made the latter a pop hit in 1952.)
Okay ... so who's Ella Jamerson? How did she encounter Guaraldi, and where has this disc been all my life?
She was born November 13, 1931, in Rome, Georgia; she and her family moved to San Francisco's Daly City district when she was 9. She grew up singing in gospel choirs and choruses; as a young adult, she joined groups such as the Angelairs and the Inspirational Tones. The latter ensemble split up in 1961, at which point Ella put together her own group, with an eye toward performing in San Francisco-area nightclubs. This new group — The Apollos (note the final vowel) — became a fixture at the Sugar Hill, on Broadway; later, and quite notably, they shared billing and sang back-up for young Barbra Streisand, during a gig at the hungry i.
Considerable more detail about Jamerson and The Apollo(a)s can be found in this 2005 essay by Opal Louis Nations.
For our purposes, however, I'll note that Fantasy Records' Sol Weiss caught The Apollos during their hungry i appearance, and clearly was captivated by what he heard. At that point, the group was a quartet: Jamerson, Joanna Bosley, Hiram Walker and Ron Brown. As of the early 1960s, Fantasy's subsidiary Galaxy label had been moribund for a bit, having stalled after putting our four singles featuring Cal Tjader, and one featuring Vido Musso (Galaxy 701-705). As reported in Billboard on July 21, 1962, Weiss "reactivated its Galaxy subsid to showcase pop, folk, R&B and gospel talent." Artists signed included Saunders King, Johnny Lewis, the Holidays, the Playgirls and, yes, The Apollos. The latter were first out of the gate, cutting two singles: Galaxy 707, featuring "I Can't Believe It" and "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"; and Galaxy 708, with "Say a Prayer" and "Lord, Lord, Lord." Sadly, despite a live stage delivery that was known to be electrifying, those 45s didn't do a thing for Fantasy/Galaxy or The Apollos.
But they eventually came to Guaraldi's attention, and he clearly liked what he heard. As for what came next ... well, let's allow Jamerson to continue the story, in her own words. Because yes; she's still with us, and I was overjoyed to chat with her on the phone a week ago.
"I was at Fantasy one day, and Sol told me that Vince was interested in me," she began, in a sparkling voice that remains crystal-clear, all these years later. "Sol said, 'You understand that this won't be a group thing, right? It's just you he's interested in.' That was so surprising, but what the heck? I didn't know Vince from Adam, and I'd never recorded as a soloist. But I said okay. So Sol introduced me to Vince, and I went to his home and met his mom, his wife and his two children. They were all very nice.
Faith Winthrop, the jazz vocalist who founded Glide Memorial Church’s community gospel choir and mentored Bay Area luminaries such as Ledisi, Lavay Smith and Paula West, died on July 1 in San Francisco. She was 87.
