Shelby Jean Davis

Shelby Jean Davis (December 4, 1926-March 30, 2010) was an American singer and recording artist.

Biography

The daughter of William Howk Davis and Janet Lusk Davis, she was born in Louisville, KY but grew up in Mount Vernon, KY. Her uncle Karl Davis was a member of the popular Country duo “Karl and Harty” and her brothers all were musicians: Bill played guitar, Bob the fiddle, and Jack, known as the "Yodeling Kid," was a singer. Karl Davis encouraged the family to move from Kentucky to Chicago, and by 1935, she and her parents settled in the Avondale area of the city's northwest side. Shelby attained a significant and lengthy career as a musician and singer, first in country music as a child prodigy, and later as a jazz chanteuse with extensive Florida and California careers.

Shelby began singing at Bethany Methodist Church and at age eight she was invited to make a guest appearance on WJJD Radio's popular Suppertime Frolic radio program. Les Atlas, one of the owners of WJJD invited her to be a permanent member of the show's company, so while still a student at Linne Elementary School, Shelby, now known as "The Little Mountain Sweetheart," began her professional career, singing regularly on popular Chicago area radio broadcasts, including Breakfast Frolics and Suppertime Frolics on WJJD-AM, the National Barn Dance on WLS-AM, and Don McNeill's Breakfast Club.. She appeared with Karl and Harty and, when vocalist Linda Parker suddenly died in 1935, Shelby was selected to join the Cumberland Ridge Runners performing songs such as her signature hit F. N. Vinard's "The Little Girl Dressed in Blue" and the sentimental English ballad "Babes in the Wood." She was also accompanied by the Kentucky Boys, a band composed of her brothers Bill and Bob, accordion player Louis Cetina and bass player George Parmeter. Shelby ceased performing on the radio briefly to make time for her studies at Carl Schurz High School, but her live performances continued and conflicted with her studies, so she left school before graduation. Eventually, she gained her high school diploma from the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. In 1945 Shelby, accompanied by Karl and Harty, recorded a series of transcriptions for Capitol's radio transcription service, including "If It's Wrong To Love You" and "Smiles Are Made of Sunshine" on transcription disc G-67and "There's a Blue Heart Tonight in the Mountain" and "Babes in the Wood" on Transcription disc G-68 The recordings reveal a voice that is mature and poised for a nineteen-year-old; the style is polished, and the lyrics are clearly articulated without a trace of "country" accent. That delivery style made it relatively easy for Shelby to shed her "Little Mountain Girl" sobriquet and begin performing popular music under the name Shelby Davis, dropping her middle name. By the mid-1940s she was recording with James C. Petrillo's orchestra on Chicago's CBS Radio. In 1946, Shelby met jazz musician and arranger William Russo at Lyon Healy Music Store in downtown Chicago. Russo and Shelby fell in love while listening to Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite in one of the store's listening booths and were married one year later in Chicago on March 13, 1947. Their romantic and professional association yielded a daughter, Camille (1951-) and produced several June 1951 "third stream" jazz concerts at Kimball Hall featuring 19 musicians, arrangements by Russo, and vocal solos by Davis. She also recorded various cuts with Russo's orchestra and several sides under her name backed by a quartet on Dee Gee Records. Shelby and Russo divorced, and in 1953 she married a musician in Russo's band, Maurice Lathouwers. The couple moved to Florida where Shelby performed on a Mutual Broadcasting Service radio program Florida Calling with Tom Moore from 1954-1955. In 1966 Shelby and Maurice (Mauri) moved to Los Angeles where he served as Vice President for Artists and Repertoire at Capitol Records while she raised her family that now included a son, Maurice Lathouwers, Jr. (1955-), and a daughter Germaine Lathouwer (1961-2017). Living in an assisted living home at the end of her life, Shelby contracted pneumonia and died at Los Angeles on March 30, 2010.

References

This article "Shelby Jean Davis" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Shelby Jean Davis. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---