Meredith d’Ambrosio is one of the finest and most distinctive jazz singer-songwriters around today. And she’s a terrific pianist and a superb traditionalist painter. Her artwork is on the covers of all but one of her 17 albums. [Photo above of Meredith d'Ambrosio in 1981]
Most of all, Meredith’s playing and singing style are all her own and deeply intimate. She never mirrored anyone, choosing instead to create a completely new approach to songwriting and singing that emanates from her heart. I first heard her on It’s Your Dance, an album I bought in Boston in 1985 on a trip back to the city following college graduation a few years earlier. Giant Steps knocked me out.
In the years following my 2012 interview with her, we became close friends, often exchanging emails or talking by phone. During one of our chats recently following my post on Horace Silver, we shared our mutual love for the pianist and his compositions. As we spoke, Meredith mentioned that she had known him personally and that he was of great comfort to her at a difficult period in her life. I asked Meredith if she would send along her recollections for JazzWax readers.
Here's her email:
My mom, Sarah Esther Kleiman, was born in Boston in 1916. In 1934, she became a well-known singer, accompanying herself on the piano in a swing vein, though not completely jazz. Throughout her playing career, she favored standards from the late 30's and 40's, but never pop. She was more sophisticated than that.
Some might have thought of her as one of the last red-hot mamas given the risque songs she chose to sing. Mostly, though, she stuck to Gershwin, Porter, Kern and Berlin, to name a few—songs that Dick Haymes, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee sang. She had a wonderful voice that had a haunting quality.
My mom began her professional career at 17, performing at Boston's Fife & Drum Room at the Hotel Vendome. The Boston hotel would burn down twice before she finally found other venues. Her stage name was Sherry Linden. I was not aware of any reviews or interviews with her, but there was something about her style of singing that never failed to make fans weep.
Her voice was close to Mildred Bailey's, but not intentionally. Her timbre was similar, but she had an original sound and great taste in songs. She knew thousands of standards. I learned a a large number of them thanks to her collection of sheet music kept in two thick three-leaf booklets, and from her collection of 78s.
I also learned sensitivity from my mom, and her singing had an influence on my singing style. My father taught her some secrets about the voice. He had trained at the New England Conservatory of Music and was a bass-baritone singer with a dreamy voice that would make anyone swoon. So strong and deep, with an unusual tone. And haunting, like my mother's.
But I digress...
As I recall, when I was 3, my parents ceased talking to each other. I later learned that she had discovered that my father had been unfaithful. Despite all of that, Mom took care of all house matters, despite the fact that she performed nightly and that arriving at work on time was a difficult task.
I guess my parents somehow worked out their differences and managed to concentrate on my upbringing. They made sure I was educated with classical piano lessons, art lessons and dance lessons. They made sure I had a well-rounded education from age five.
I look back on this time and realize how grateful I am. In those days I think they were troubled by my wild side and tomboy-hood. I must have been a worry for them, so they tried to keep me as occupied as possible to distract me from climbing trees and doing every unladylike thing. My mom and dad were great parents in that way. I was fortunate to have their attention.
They must have realized that they should be responsible for the obvious talents within me from an early age. This task placed pressure on them, but they co-existed. She was a superb cook and homemaker, and my father was never angry with her since they mostly were silent. I think he was more angry with himself for being unfaithful.
I was their first-born. My brother was born three years after me. Ten years later, another brother was born and two years after that, my sister arrived. My mother must have believed that having children would save their marriage, fearing my father would try to leave. None of it worked.
In the mid-1960s, my mother learned that my dad wanted to leave the marriage to marry someone else. One year later, in 1967, my father divorced her. Then she took her own life. My father was her knight in shining armor, despite her disappointments with him. At the time, I was 27 and out of the house. My 12-year-old sister, Elaine, discovered my mother in her car in the garage behind the house with the engine running all night.
I lived in an apartment one town over. My father came by to let me know that Mom was gone. She left a note in the car, but no explanation why she did what she did. [Photo above of Meredith d'Ambrosio, courtesy of Meredith d'Ambrosio]
In the years that followed, I sobbed daily. My sister is still deeply affected by my mom's suicide. Yes, she was the youngest. After my mother's death, she and our brother, Stanley, went to live with our father and his new wife. The rest is too complicated to explain.
In 1972, I was singing and playing at the Inner Circle, located upstairs from Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop in Boston’s Copley Square. My photo was in the window next to Horace Silver's and appeared again before you went down the staircase to the Jazz Workshop and Paul's Mall. Horace was appearing at the Jazz Workshop that week. [Photo above of Meredith d'Ambrosio, courtesy of Meredith d'Ambrosio]
One night, Horace Silver walked into the Inner Circle on his break. He sat right in front of me, facing the back of the short upright piano disguised to look like a baby grand. After I sang and played a couple of tunes, he asked if I knew Some Other Spring. I said I did but felt very intimidated.
I explained I wasn't a great pianist and was more of a singer. It must have been a favorite of his. He was my very favorite jazz pianist. For many years before this meeting, I had collected and knew by heart every LP he had recorded. [Photo above of Meredith d'Ambrosio, courtesy of Meredith d'Ambrosio]
I dove into Some Other Spring, and when I finished he seemed impressed. We talked on my break as if we'd known each other forever. He learned that evening that my mother had committed suicide five years earlier and that I had not missed one day of sobbing since. He took an immediate interest in my problem and told me about a woman he believed would be helpful.
That woman was a spiritual leader named Reverend Brown who lived near Horace in Harlem. Horace insisted I travel there as soon as I was able. When I finally came to meet her, she helped me understand that my sobbing was not allowing my mother to continue her journey to another spiritual plane. She said I needed to release her from the pressure of not letting her go.
Everything she told me made sense. The assignment she gave me to help move things along included lighting a candle and telling my mom to continue on her journey. Reverend Brown also told me it was OK not to keep Mom with me on this earth-plane anymore. It made sense and must have worked. From that point on, my daily sobbing ceased.
Through this experience, I learned not only that Horace was a very kind and spiritual man but also one with great wisdom. Somehow, he knew the solution to my trouble, and I trusted him. I wasn't overly surprised, because it made sense. I felt this given the astounding way he played and wrote music and presented his magic to the world.
After I visited with Horace and Reverend Brown, I immediately returned to Boston by train. l had a six-month contract with the Inner Circle and a young daughter at home to take care of. During that time, I learned that Horace had been suffering from painful arthritis. He was eating healthy foods, but I feared his painful hands would keep him from playing.
When I first discovered Horace's LPs, I wanted to understand the way he played his chords. I tried to emulate them on the piano to figure out his funky rhythms and sounds that came from using fifths as his method to produce his hip chords.
I realized that simplicity was the key. It didn't take a lot of notes to realize that his chord voicings were deliberate and uncomplicated. I also eventually realized that the balance he captured in his phrasing had a similar feeling to the balance of design in my paintings. His knowledge of balance in artistic rhythm and spatial relationships came from a spiritual understanding of the universe.
I also believe he was instinctively aware of balance given the way he composed and arranged his music. The relationship between his notes and timing showed his understanding. This made me think he understood something I learned at art college—that proper balance in true art could be thought of as “dynamic symmetry,” a term that leads to understanding what makes a masterpiece.
Horace probably never heard the term, but he must have had an inner-understanding of it. Every arrangement of Horace's music shows that awareness. I believed that we were connected in that way.
I now recall that when I was preparing to record an album in 1990, entitled Love Is Not a Game, I wanted to include Horace's song Peace. I was hoping to write the lyrics, so I called him to ask his permission. He told me he had already written lyrics. I also learned he had written words to other songs he composed. But Peace was a special one for me. He gave me permission to record it.
When Horace died on June 18, 2014, his passing was a great shock. I'd lost a special friend. [Photo above of Meredith d'Ambrosio, courtesy of Meredith d'Ambrosio]
Meredith's favorite Horace Silver tracks...
My favorite album is the first LP I heard by Horace entitled Further Explorations by the Horace Silver Quintet. These tunes on that album are favorites...
- The Outlaw
- Pyramid
- Moon Rays
- Safari
Other songs that I love:
- Ecaroh
- Safari
- Opus De Funk
- Message From Kenya
- Nica's Dream
- Room 608
- Doodlin'
- Cookin' At The Continental
- Horoscope
- Cool Eyes
- Peace
- Home Cookin'
- The Baghdad Blues
- Metamorphis
- Strollin'
JazzWax note: To read my multi-part interview from 2012 with Meredith, start here (the link to subsequent parts will appear at the top of each post, above the red date).
JazzWax clips: Here's the track that first introduced me to Meredith. It's John Coltrane's Giant Steps, from her first Sunnyside album, It's Your Dance (1985). Meredith is singing, with Harold Danko on piano and Kevin Eubanks on guitar...
Here's Love Is a Simple Thing, from Another Time (1981), with Meredith on piano and singing...
Here's You've Changed/You've Altered Your Attitude (the latter with an original lyric based on You've Changed) from her Shadowland (1993) album, with husband Eddie Higgins on piano...
Here's Horace Silver's Peace, from Meredith's Love Is Not a Game (1991), with Eddie Higgins on piano...
And here's one of my favorite Meredith originals, with Meredith singing and playing. Her chords get me every time...
Bonus: Here's a documentary on Meredith from 1988...
A special thanks to François Zalacain, founder of Sunnyside Records, who heard Meredith's qualities early on and recorded a majority of her albums.
