Famed Ernestine Anderson Jazz Vocalist Faces Foreclosure

Famed Ernestine Anderson Jazz Vocalist Faces Foreclosure

By MANUEL VALDES,

AP

Posted: 2008-06-25 12:33:00

SEATTLE (June 25) - Jazz vocalist Ernestine Anderson is facing foreclosure on her home in Seattle in yet another sign that the mortgage loan crisis is hitting traditional working-class neighborhoods hard.

 

Big Names Hit by Foreclosures

Jonathan Ferrey, Getty Images

Ernestine Anderson
The jazz vocalist sings the National Anthem at a Seattle Seahawks game. But Jackson may not be singing now as she faces a foreclosure on her Seattle home. Public records show that she is more than $30,000 in arrears in payments and penalties.

 

 

 

Anderson, who once sang with the likes of Quincy Jones and Ray Charles, is more than $30,000 in arrears in payments and penalties, public records show.

Friends and family have started a last-ditch effort to save her Central District home by pleading for donations. They hope to raise $45,000 for the 79-year-old in less than a week to cover the back payments and taxes, said Carmen Gayton, a friend of Anderson's family.

After that, Gayton said, they hope to buy enough time to figure out a way for Anderson to sustain herself.

James Kelly, president of the Urban League of Seattle, said counselors will try to find out how Anderson got a loan that now asks for a monthly payments of $5,000. Gayton said Anderson's monthly income is $1,000 from Social Security, and at her age, her performances are limited.

"She never should have gotten that loan," Gayton said. "It's a difficult issue for her. The house is her mom's and father's home, since 1946."

Public records show a principal balance of more than $450,000 on the house. Details of the loan were not immediately clear.

The home is slated for public auction July 11.

"Since 1946, I have been going out on the road, but this is home base," Anderson told KING5 television in Seattle. "I can't tell you how wonderful people have been to me. People I don't know."

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Associated Press efforts to reach Anderson by phone Tuesday were not successful.

After 30albums and four Grammy nominations, Anderson is one of Seattle's most respected names in music, part of a jazz scene the flourished in the city well before grunge and alternative rock took the stage.

Anderson is one of dozens of people facing foreclosure in her neighborhood, an area of Seattle that has been traditionally African American. More than 200 houses face foreclosure in Anderson's zip code, according to Realty Trac, a Web site that tracks foreclosures.

Seattle Jazz Icon Facing Foreclosure

POSTED: 3:15 pm PDT June 24, 2008

UPDATED: 8:23 am PDT June 25, 2008

SEATTLE, Wash. -- A local organization is heading up a fundraising effort to help Seattle jazz icon and four-time Grammy nominee Ernestine Anderson avoid the foreclosure of her family home, reported KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

Anderson's family has lived in their home in the Central District since 1946 and has until June 30 to raise at least $45,000 or the home will be put up for auction on July 11.

"My whole family was in this house, you know -- my mother, my father, my sister and my children," Anderson said in an interview with KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Essex Porter.

Anderson said she hasn't been able to keep up with the mortgage payments of $5,000 a month.

Family and friends sounded the alarm last week, and donations are beginning to come in.

"It's just been wonderful, it's been an eye-opener, you know, and it restores your belief in people," she said.

The Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, which is helping hundreds of families with foreclosure issues, said an account has been set up for Anderson at Bank Of America, where a donation can be made at any branch under The Ernestine Anderson Fund.

"We have a long, rich history of helping families out regardless of their race. But in this case, Miss Anderson is special; she is a living legend, she is a four-time Grammy nominee and not only that, she is an elderly individual, and to us, we need to make sure that we continue to reach out," said league president and CEO James Kelly.

Born in Texas, the 79-year-old jazz legend has recorded more than 30 albums and is still performing. She moved with her family to Seattle in 1944 when she was 16 years old and graduated from Seattle's Garfield High School.

 

Ernestine Anderson (born November 11, 1928) is an American jazz and blues singer. In a career spanning more than five decades, has recorded over 30 albums. In the early 1990s she joined Qwest Records, the label of fellow Garfield High School grad Quincy Jones. She was nominated four times for a Grammy Award. She has sung at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center,[1] the Monterey Jazz Festival (six times over a 33-year span), as well as at jazz festivals all over the world.

Contents[hide] 1 Biography 2 Selected discography 3 Grammy history 4 Recognitions 5 Footnotes 6 External links

[edit] Biography

Anderson was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of a construction worker. At age three, she could sing along with the raw tunes of the legendary Bessie Smith -- she soon moved on to the more refined environs of her local church, singing solos in its gospel choir.

Anderson tells of her early life in the book, The Jazz Scene (1998):

"My parents used to play blues records all the time," Ernestine Anderson told me. "John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, all the blues greats. In Houston, where I grew up, you turned on the radio and what you got was country and western and gospel. I don't even remember what my first experience with music was. I sort of grew into it. My father sang in a gospel quartet and I used to follow him around, and both my grandparents sang in the Baptist church choir. And they had big bands coming through Houston like Jimmie Lunceford, Billy Eckstine, Erskine Hawkins, and Count Basie." Ernestine's godmother entered her in a local talent contest when she was twelve years old. "I only knew two songs," she admitted, On the Sunny Side of the Street and So Long. The piano player asked me what key did I do these songs in and I just said "C" for some reason and it was the wrong key. In order to save face I sang around the melody, improvised among the melody, and when I finished one of the musicians told me I was a jazz singer."[2]

Her family moved to Seattle, Washington in 1944, when she was sixteen. Anderson graduated from Garfield High School. When she was eighteen, she left Seattle, to tour for a year with the Johnny Otis band. In 1952, she went on tour with Lionel Hampton's orchestra. After a year with the legendary band, she settled in New York, determined to make her way as a singer. Her appearance on Gigi Gryce's 1955 album Nica's Tempo (Savoy)[3] led to a partnership with trumpeter Rolf Ericson for a three-month Scandinavian tour. Ernestine's first album in the United States was made after her debut album, recorded in Sweden and released here by Mercury Records under the title Hot Cargo (1958), which created a huge sensation. In 1959 Anderson won the Down Beat "New Star" Award and recorded for Mercury to more acclaim, before dividing her time from the mid-60's between America and Europe.

"I don't think jazz ever died. It suffered a setback during the sixties. I had to move to London in order to work because a jazz person couldn't work in the United States when rock 'n' roll became the music. I didn't think it would last this long, and I don't think the rock 'n' roll people thought it would last this long, but it had."[4]

Her re-emergence in the mid-1970's (at which time Ray Brown was her manager) came as a result of a sensational appearance at the 1976 Concord Jazz Festival, a string of albums for Concord Records followed. Anderson has continued her career revival into the 1990s, working with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, amongst others.[5]

[edit] Selected discography

• 1958: The Toast of the Nation's Critics - (Mercury Records)
• 1963: The New Sound of Ernestine Anderson Collectable Jazz Classic - (Sue Records)
• 1977: Hello Like Before - (Concord Records)
• 1978: Live From Concord To London - (Concord Records)
• 1980: Sunshine - (Concord Records)
• 1981: Never Make Your Move Too Soon - (Concord Records)
• 1983: Big City - (Concord Records)
• 1985: When the Sun Goes Down - (Concord Records)
• 1987: Live at the Alley Cat: With the Frank Capp/Nat Pierce Juggernaut - (Bellaphon Records)
• 1987: Be Mine Tonight - (Concord Records)
• 1988: A Perfect Match With George Shearing - (Concord Records)
• 1990: Boogie Down - (Concord Records)
• 1990: Live at the 1990 Concord Jazz Festival Third Set - (Concord Records)
• 1991: Boogie Down With the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra - (Concord Records)
• 1993: Great Moments With Ernestine Anderson - (Concord Records)
• 1994: Now and Then - (Qwest Records)
• 1996: Blues, Dues & Love News - (Qwest Records)
• 1998: Isn't It Romantic - (Koch International Records)
• 2000: Ballad Essentials - (Concord Records)
• 2002: I Love Being Here With You - (Concord Records)
• 2002: Free Soul: The Classic of Ernestine Anderson - (Jvc Japan Records)
• 2003: Love Makes the Changes - (High Note Records)
• 2004: Hello Like Before - (Jvc Victor Records)