James Andrew Rushing was an American singer and pianist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, US, best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948.
25 Facts About Jimmy Rushing
2.
Jimmy Rushing was known as "Mr Five by Five" and was the subject of an eponymous 1942 popular song that was a hit for Harry James and others; the lyrics describe Jimmy Rushing's rotund build: "he's five feet tall and he's five feet wide".
3.
Jimmy Rushing joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927 and then joined Bennie Moten's band in 1929.
4.
Jimmy Rushing stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935.
5.
Jimmy Rushing said that his first time singing in front of an audience was in 1924.
6.
Jimmy Rushing was playing piano at a club when the featured singer, Carlyn Williams, invited him to do a vocal.
7.
Jimmy Rushing was a powerful singer who had a range from baritone to tenor.
8.
Jimmy Rushing has sometimes been classified as a blues shouter.
9.
Jimmy Rushing was born into a family with musical talent and accomplishments.
10.
Jimmy Rushing's father, Andrew Rushing, was a trumpeter, and his mother, Cora, and her brother were singers.
11.
Jimmy Rushing studied music theory with Zelia N Breaux at Frederick A Douglass High School in Oklahoma City and was unusual among his musical contemporaries for having attended college at Wilberforce University.
12.
Jimmy Rushing was inspired to pursue music and sing blues by his uncle Wesley Manning and George "Fathead" Thomas of McKinney's Cotton Pickers.
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Jimmy Rushing toured the Midwest and California as an itinerant blues singer in the early 1920s before moving to Los Angeles, where he played piano and sang with Jelly Roll Morton.
14.
Jimmy Rushing sang with Billy King before moving on to Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927.
15.
Moten died in 1935, and Jimmy Rushing joined Count Basie for what would be a 13-year job.
16.
Jimmy Rushing made a guest appearance with Duke Ellington for the 1959 album Jazz Party.
17.
Jimmy Rushing appeared in the 1957 television special Sound of Jazz, singing one of his signature songs, "I Left My Baby", backed by many of his former Basie band members.
18.
Jimmy Rushing toured the UK with Humphrey Lyttelton and his band.
19.
In 1969, Jimmy Rushing appeared in The Learning Tree, the first major studio feature film directed by an African-American, Gordon Parks.
20.
Jimmy Rushing died June 8,1972 at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City, and was buried at the Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York.
21.
Jimmy Rushing had two sons, Robert and William, with his second wife, Connie, to whom he was married from the 1940s until his death.
22.
Connie Jimmy Rushing is credited with two compositions on his 1968 solo album Livin' the Blues.
23.
Jimmy Rushing was one of eight jazz and blues legends honored in a set of United States Postal Service stamps issued in 1994.
24.
Jimmy Rushing was held in high critical esteem during his career and after his death.
25.
Jimmy Rushing was a four-time winner of Best Male Singer in the Critics' Poll of Melody Maker and a four-time winner of Best Male Singer in the International Critics' Poll in Down Beat.