Laid-back jazz from Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks & Annie Ross and the Count Basie Orchestra (check Basie concentrating at 3:18). Annie Ross was an emigre Brit with a colourful life. It included her hit Twisted, an affair with Lenny Bruce, heroin addiction, running a jazz club in London, and dozens of film roles. She was Britt Eckland's voice in The Wicker Man. She died aged almost 90 in 2020. Annie steps forward here for her solo verses at 1:43.
Jon Hendricks was a US soldier at D-Day, fighting against Nazis but in a segregated black unit. They got shot at by the US military for fraternising welcoming French girls, went on the run and were court-marshalled - he got three years. He visited Normandy again in 1995, and said:
"It was a step above slavery. To be put into a segregated army - in a nation that pretends to be a democracy - and pretends to be fighting Nazism - is a joke! It's bizarre. The officers were all white, and racist. If they said Good Morning to you, it was an insult. They just had hatred, which had been drummed into them since they were babies from the womb. White people in the South were well-taught."
In his singing career he sang with many jazz greats, and wrote the lyrics to Georgie Fame's no. 1 hit 'Yeh Yeh' amongst many other songs. He lived to the age of 96, in 2017.
Dave Lambert was, with Jon Hendricks, a pioneer of 'vocalese' - putting lyrics to jazz tunes (which is how the debut Lambert Hendricks & Ross album of Count Basie tunes came about). After LH&R split, he formed the Dave Lambert Singers, the subject of a film by D.A.Pennebaker - 'Dave Lambert - Audition at RCA' in 1964 (it's on KZread). They didn't get signed; by then such vocal groups were out of fashion. Sadly he died in a car accident two years later, in 1966 at age 49.
Filmed at Juan Les Pin, Jazz Festival d'Antibes in 1961.
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