Saturday night we welcome Janis Siegel. Over the past three and a half decades, the voice of Janis Siegel -- a nine-time Grammy winner and a seventeen-time Grammy nominee -- has been an undeniable force in The Manhattan Transfers diverse musical catalog. Alongside her career as a member of this 36-year musical institution, Siegel has also sustained a solo career that has spawned more than a half dozen finely-crafted solo albums and numerous collaborative projects, amassed a large international fan base and garnered consistently high critical praise. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1952, Siegel learned about the music business at an early age. By the time she was 12, she was singing with an all-girl pop trio called The Young Generation. By the time she and her bandmates had graduated from high school, theyd released two singles: The Hideaway (b/w Hymn of Love) on Red Bird Records, and Its Not Gonna Take Too Long (b/w Diggin You) on Kapp Records. At that time, I was exclusively listening to pop music, Siegel recalls. When Motown became popular, I fell head over heels for it, as well as for people like Aretha Franklin. And of course, I went insane over the Beatles. But I also loved Barbra Streisand. And living in Brooklyn, I saw a lot of Broadway shows too. On the jazz side, she remembers John Coltrane as her musical idol during her high school and college years. After graduating from high school, the trio shifted from pop to acoustic folk and rechristened themselves Laurel Canyon. Siegel studied nursing for a couple years, but left college in the early 70s to focus all of her energies on Laurel Canyon. But it was a chance encounter that steered her into The Manhattan Transfer. Tim Hauser was a taxi driver with musical aspirations who happened to pick up Laurel Canyons conga player one night. The percussionist invited Hauser to a party, where he met Siegel and asked her to sing on some demos hed been working on. Some of the early swing music that Hauser had been dabbling in was an eye-opener to Siegel, whod previously been immersed in pop and folk. Hauser invited Siegel to join a four-part vocal group that hed been trying to reconstruct. (An earlier version of The Manhattan Transfer with a much different tone and style had existed briefly in the late 60s.) When she joined Hauser, Laurel Massé and Alan Paul, the Manhattan Transfer was born. The groups self-titled debut album in 1975 ushered in a renaissance in vocal-based music and marked the opening chapter of the foursomes quarter-century-plus success story.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 14:51:59 +0000
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