Martha Tilton

In the period from the 1930s to the 1950s when jazz was pop music, singers were to play a bigger part in the genre than at any other time. A few were effectively jazz improvisers whose instrument happened to be the voice - like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan, with Louis Armstrong the father figure of the movement.

Many more performed as deliverers of catchy songs, from which a band might end up with a hit or a signature tune. Martha Tilton, whose most high-profile exposure came with Benny Goodman's orchestra, was one of the latter, but if she was (she) also ran in jazz vocal history, she was a skilful one who often did far more with a song than was apparent to purists.

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In the period from the 1930s to the 1950s when jazz was pop music, singers were to play a bigger part in the genre than at any other time. A few were effectively jazz improvisers whose instrument happened to be the voice - like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan, with Louis Armstrong the father figure of the movement.

Many more performed as deliverers of catchy songs, from which a band might end up with a hit or a signature tune. Martha Tilton, whose most high-profile exposure came with Benny Goodman's orchestra, was one of the latter, but if she was (she) also ran in jazz vocal history, she was a skilful one who often did far more with a song than was apparent to purists.

"Liltin' Miss Tilton", who has died aged 91, was no mere canary, hired to trill perfunctorily and look fetching during the solos. Tilton was naturally gifted with a pure tone and vivacious personality, who let the virtues of good songs shine.

That avoidance of mannerism or the improviser's pursuit of idiosyncratic adornment led some to contend that Tilton was not a jazz singer at all, but a classy pop singer who worked with jazz players. But her ear was sharp, her technique disguised by the modesty of her method. Her hit song, And The Angels Sing, recorded with the Goodman band, was one of the defining vocal successes of the swing era.

Tilton also entered the history books as the first non- classical vocalist to work at Carnegie Hall, when she appeared with Goodman in the 1938 jazz concert that became one of the notable landmarks in the evolution of 20th-century American musical culture.

Tilton was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, and, following the family's move to California, began singing on Los Angeles radio when she was at high school. The exposure brought attention from agents and bandleaders: she dropped out of school in the 11th grade to join Hal Grayson's band, worked briefly with bandleader Jimmy Dorsey, appeared in the Cary Grant movie Topper (1937), and joined the vocal group Three Hits and a Miss.

Goodman hired Tilton in 1937 after hearing her with that group on his own CBS radio show, The Camel Caravan. The singer was thus joining America's most successful swing orchestra in the year in which the Goodman bandwagon really picked up speed.

Goodman believed he had finally found a singer of genuine class in Tilton - only Peggy Lee, who arrived in the band four years later, was in a significantly different league - and his orchestra recorded considerably more vocal material after she joined. But in 1939 - despite scoring her biggest hit with an adapted Hebrew melody, And The Angels Sing, introduced to Goodman by his trumpeter Ziggy Elman with lyrics by Johnny Mercer - Tilton fell victim to a typically Goodmanesque night of the long knives that drastically reshuffled the orchestra's personnel.

She found work in Hollywood dubbing songs for stars - including Barbara Stanwyck in the 1941 Howard Hawks/Billy Wilder comedy Ball of Fire. The singer also had screen roles in Sunny (1940), You'll Never Get Rich (1941), and as a band singer in Swing Hostess (1944) and Crime Inc (1945).

The nickname "Liltin' Miss Tilton" was acquired when the singer had her own NBC radio show Liltin' Martha Tilton Time, in the early 1940s. A founder signing to her friend Johnny Mercer's new Capitol records label in 1942, Tilton then had a string of solo hits including A Stranger in Town, I Should Care, and I'll Walk Alone.

She also joined forces entertainment tours with comedian Jack Benny, and worked on Benny's and Bob Hope's TV shows in the early 1950s. She withdrew from a full-time career in 1955 to raise a daughter. Tilton is survived by her third husband, James Brooks, her son and daughter, and five grandchildren.

From swingmusic.net

"...Although her most popular recording with Goodman was “And The Angels Sing” her first session with the bandleader produced a recording of “Bob White” (What ‘Cha Gonna Swing Tonight) that has a little more zip to it. However, her short vocal on a Goodman Quartet recording of “Bie Mir Bist Du Schoen” was her greatest Goodman jazz record. Although many jazz discographies do not list the session, the recording was waxed in December of 1937 in two parts, taking up 2 sides of a 78-RPM record. Trumpeter Ziggy Elman was added to the Quartet on side 2 along with Tilton’s vocal..."

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