Annie Ross

Posted July 21, 2020

Annie Ross of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross died today in New York City. She was 4 days shy of her 90th birthday. In a 1986 interview, Joni stated that "...friends of mine who were older than me and in college began talking about Lambert, Hendricks and Ross as the hottest new sound in jazz. Their record flipped me out, but it was already out of print. I had to finally buy it off somebody and pay a lot, maybe fifteen dollars, which was unheard of at that time. But you couldn't get the record anywhere. Lambert, Hendricks and Ross were my Beatles. In high school, theirs was the record I wore thin, the one I knew all the words to."

In 1952, Ross met Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock, who asked her to write lyrics to a jazz solo in a similar way to King Pleasure, a practice that would later be known as vocalese. The next day, she presented him with the song "Twisted", a treatment of saxophonist Wardell Gray's 1949 composition of the same name- a song Joni later recorded on the Court and Spark album.