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Audrey Morris R.I.P.


Larry Kart

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  • 2 weeks later...

Many great, local singer/pianists/guitarists never get the recognition of a wider audience, because they stayed local, never got the big break (or in AM's case, turned it down), or other reasons.

Frank D'Rone was another one that was an incredible talent (especially his version of 'Joey,Joey,Joey' on the Hefner Show).but never reached a wider audience. I just received word that Sal Casper,a singer/pianist I used to work with a lot just passed at the age of 81. The best way I can describe him is that he had a voice like Mark Murphy, but without the affectations of MM. I played on the one LP that he released, but was disappointed that he decided to sing only commercially oriented originals that he thought went over with the 'crowd', rather than the great standards we'd play on gigs. He said he used me because I sounded like Phil Woods on the guitar, which is still the greatest compliment I've ever received. RIP, Sal

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Yes, Frank was something else. He came along a little too late in the game, as did another excellent and somewhat more obscure Chicago-based singer-guitarist Johnny Janis. He, like D'Rone, was a Hefner favorite, and Hefner in the mid-1960s bankrolled a gorgeous album, with Don Costa charts, of Janis singing ballads, "Once in a Blue Moon." A few years earlier Janis recorded a date, unissued at the time, with Ira Sullivan, Dodo Marmarosa, drummer Guy Viveros, and bassist Jerry Friedman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DhjpCrSjrE
 

 

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From Janis' first album:
 

Accompanying Images include some from Janis' later days in the Nashville area. I suspect that he's no longer with us; his website has been inactive for some time.

P.S. Yes, he passed in 2017 at age 89.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/tennessean/obituary.aspx?n=johnny-janis&pid=185016926&fhid=17194

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