![]() ![]() Small world, isn't it? In turn, he encouraged Hines to sign up Charlie "Bird" Parker and Sarah Vaughan. On the recommendation of composer and tenor saxophonist Buddy Johnson, he joined Duquesne, PA native Earl "Fatha" Hines’ band in Chicago as a singer and occasional trumpet player in 1939. Eckstine sang briefly with drummer Tommy Myles’ band in DC after that, launching his career. He attended Howard University in the nation's capitol, and after a year at college he won a talent contest in 1930 by imitating Cab Calloway. ![]() He had originally planned on a football career (what Western PA kid doesn't?), but after breaking his collar bone, he put all his energy into his music. (He changed the spelling of his name because a club owner thought it was too Jewish!) Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down musical and racial barriers throughout the 1940s as the leader of the first bop big band and then as the vanguard of romantic black male vocalists in popular music.īorn in Pittsburgh but raised in Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the age of seven and entered every talent show he could find. Billy Eckstine was born William Clarence Eckstein in the East Liberty in 1914.
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