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Helen Merrill (born Jelena Ana Milčetić, July 21, 1930) is an American jazz vocalist. Merrill's recording career has spanned six decades and she is popular with fans of jazz in Japan and Italy (where she lived for many years) as well as in her native United States. She has recorded and performed with some of the most notable figures in the American jazz scene. ==Youth and early career== Merrill was born in New York City in 1930, to Croatian immigrant parents. She began singing in jazz clubs in the Bronx at the age of fourteen. By the time she was sixteen, Merrill had taken up music full-time. In 1952, Merrill made her recording debut when she was asked to sing "A Cigarette For Company" with the Earl Hines Band; the song was released on the D'Oro label, created specifically to record Hines' band with Merrill. Etta Jones was in Hines' band at the time and she too sang on this session, which was reissued on the Xanadu label in 1985.〔Liner notes to Xanadu 203, Earl Hines Varieties〕 At this time she was married to musician Aaron Sachs. They divorced in 1956. As a result of the exposure she received from "A Cigarette for Company" and two subsequent singles recorded for the Roost record label, Merrill was signed by Mercury Records for their new Emarcy label. In 1954, Merrill recorded her first LP, an eponymous record featuring trumpeter Clifford Brown and bassist/cellist Oscar Pettiford, among others. The album was produced and arranged by Quincy Jones, who was then twenty-one years old. The success of ''Helen Merrill'' prompted Mercury to sign her for an additional four-album contract. Merrill's follow-up to ''Helen Merrill'' was the 1956 LP, ''Dream of You'', which was produced and arranged by bebop arranger and pianist Gil Evans. Evans' work on ''Dream of You'' was his first in many years. His arrangements on Merrill's laid the musical foundations for his work in following years with Miles Davis. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Helen Merrill」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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