Marlena Shaw RIP
Marlena Shaw, who has died in January 2024 aged 81, was a jazz and soul singer whose version of the song California Soul has been sampled dozens of times by artists including Drake, Deee-Lite and Shaun Ryder’s band Black Grape, as well as being used in television ads; she thoroughly approved of her work being recycled, she said: “It kinda makes me feel like the sun, and I shine on all kinds of things."
She began studying music at the New York State Teachers College, but dropped out and began playing jazz clubs, while also bringing up five children. An audition with Columbia Records in 1963 was scuppered by nerves, and it was not until 1966 that her career began to fly, thanks to a gig at a Playboy Club in Chicago that led to a contract with Chess Records.
She made two albums for the label, including The Spice of Life, and toured Europe with Count Basie, then in 1972 she became Blue Note’s first female vocalist, for whom she made a series of smooth jazz albums, including one recorded live at Montreux. The title of her 1974 album for the label, Who Is this Bitch Anyway?, was reportedly a reference to the rise of the singer who became known as “the mother of hip-hop”, Millie Jackson.
In 1977 she joined Columbia and surfed the disco wave; she recalled a night in 1980 in New York when she played a set at the Savoy Ballroom with her jazz trio and a set with the Count Basie Band. “Then I changed clothes, was picked up in a limo, and was driven to a disco place and sang my latest records there. And I made three times as much at the disco than I’d made at the Savoy.” She released 17 albums across eight labels and kept up a hectic touring schedule into her seventies, often playing 200 dates a year, spending her downtime at her home in Las Vegas.