Blossom Dearie - The Complete Recordings 1952-1962 (4CD Box set) (2014)

Jazz Vocalist and Pianist Blossom Dearie, her real name, was born in the little village of East Durham, in the Catskill Mountains of New York state. Her older brothers heralded her arrival by filling the house with pear blossoms, and she was named Blossom Margrethe(after her mother)Dearie. She was proudly of Scottish(Dearie) and Norwegian ancestry. At the age of two she was able to pick out songs on the family piano, and spent most of her young years finding laps to sit on at the piano to do just that. Debussy's Afternoon of the Faun was a favorite. Her mother remarked that unlike most children who would bang at the keys when in front of a piano, Blossom thoughtfully played songs from ear and memory. Lessons began around age five and she studied classical music until her teens. She was encouraged to enter the Peabody Conservatory but switched to jazz and, influenced by what she called, “the wonderful music of the time,” played throughout high school.

In the late 1940s, Blossom traveled to New York City where she spent time in vocal groups with bandleaders like Alvino Rey's Blue Reys, and Woody Herman's Blue Flames, and also accompanied other singers as well as played in between headlining acts at New York clubs. She was there for the Birth of the Cool, hanging in Gil Evans apartment with Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Her first recordings were playing piano on an Annie Ross record. Blossom marked the starting point of her career as 1950 when she sat down and paired piano, with voice, in a little club called the Chantilly in Greenwich Village. Her friend Tony Bennett stopped in often.