King Pleasure (March 24, 1922 - March 21, 1981) was a jazz vocalist and an early master of vocalese, where a singer sings words to a famous instrumental solo.
Born as Clarence Beeks in Oakdale, Tennessee, he moved to New York City in the mid-1940s and became a fan of bebop music. King Pleasure first achieved popularity by singing the Eddie Jefferson vocalese classic "Moody's Mood for Love," based on a James Moody saxophone solo to "I'm in the Mood for Love" in 1949. Pleasure's recording in 1952 is considered a jazz classic. He and Betty Carter also recorded a famous vocalese version of "Red Top," a jazz classic penned by Kansas Citian Ben Kynard and recorded by Gene Ammons and others. Other notable recordings include a presciently elegiac version of "Parker's Mood", the year before Charlie Parker died in 1955, and Pleasure's take on Ammons's "Hittin' the Jug", retitled as "Swan Blues".
Pleasure has been cited as a significant influence by Van Morrison, especially on his album Astral Weeks. Genya Ravan, drawing big inspiration for her singing from King Pleasure, recorded "Moody's Mood For Love" with James Moody on her 1972 CBS album Genya Ravan.
Read more about King Pleasure: Discography
Famous quotes containing the words king and/or pleasure:
“The children won’t leave without me; I won’t leave without the King; and the King will never leave.”
—Elizabeth (b. 1900)
“Our books are false by being fragmentary: their sentences are bon mots, and not parts of natural discourse; childish expressions of surprise or pleasure in nature; or, worse, owing a brief notoriety to their petulance, or aversion from the order of nature,—being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not in harmony with nature, and purposely framed to excite surprise, as jugglers do by concealing their means.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)