* En anglais uniquement
One of the great unsung heroes of jazz singing,
Andy Bey is a commanding interpreter of lyrics who has a wide vocal range and a big, rich, full voice.
Bey enjoys a small following that swears by him; nonetheless, he isn't nearly as well known as he should be. Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, not far from New York,
Bey was exposed to jazz as a child and started singing in front of local audiences as early as age eight. At some gigs, an eight-year-old
Bey was accompanied by tenor sax great
Hank Mobley.
Bey was 13 when, in 1952, he recorded his first solo album, Mama's Little Boy's Got the Blues, and he was 17 when he formed
Andy & the Bey Sisters with his siblings
Salome and Geraldine in 1956. The group did a 16-month tour of Europe and recorded three albums (one for RCA Victor in 1961, two for Prestige in 1964 and 1965) before breaking up in 1967.
In the 1960s and 1970s,
Bey's vocals were featured by
Max Roach,
Duke Pearson, and
Gary Bartz (for whom he delivered very sociopolitical lyrics, including some searing condemnations of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War). The 1970s also found
Bey recording
Experience and Judgment for Atlantic and beginning a long association with pianist
Horace Silver, who featured him prominently on many of the religious-themed albums he put out own his own Silveto label in the 1970s and 1980s. The LPs contained what
Silver termed "metaphysical self-help music" and preached a sort of religious self-help philosophy that wasn't unlike Reverend Ike's message -- unfortunately for
Silver and
Bey, this approach meant limited distribution and little commercial appeal.
Bey continued to work with
Silver into the 1990s, when he was featured on
Silver's 1993
Columbia date It's Got to Be Funky (which marked a return to hard bop's mainstream and did much better commercially than his "self-help music").
Labels
Bey recorded for as a leader in the 1980s and 1990s included Jazzette, Zagreb, and Evidence, which, in 1996, released the superb Ballads, Blues & Bey. The success of Ballads, Blues & Bey set up a position for the pianist to stretch out a little and explore his more intimate side.
Bey followed with
Shades of Bey in 1998 and
Tuesdays in Chinatown in 2001, choosing to explore outside the world of jazz with covers of
Nick Drake,
Milton Nascimento, and others.
American Song followed in early 2004. The Grammy-nominated
The World According to Andy Bey appeared from Highnote Records in 2013, followed by another journey into American popular song,
Pages from an Imaginary Life, in 2014, also on Highnote. ~ Alex Henderson