Word: julia
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...scholarship competitions have been opened for American college graduates wishing a year's free study at either Oxford or Cambridge. Under the provisions of Lady Julia Renry's will, any man or woman who has graduated from an American college since 1942 may apply for a scholarship grant...
...Julia's regional fame began to spread when jazz expert Dave Dexter Jr., like Julia a native of Kansas City, put two of her songs in a Capitol Records album called History of Jazz. Disc jockeys picked Julia's record out of the album and played it more than the others, so Capitol lured Julia to Hollywood to record twelve more sides. She took her drummer, Baby Lovett, along, and on the way out they wrote a suggestive tune called Gotta Gimme Watcha Got, which sold out immediately. Some jazz critics boldly compared 44-year-old Julia...
When Bessie Smith was singing Young Woman's Blues and Empty Bed Blues in Chicago in the 1920s, Julia Lee was singing the same kind of songs with the late Benny Moten's band in Kansas City. Count Basie played the piano. During the depression Julia went to work at $12 a week in Milton's Taproom. In the rowdy days of the Pendergast era, Julia sang ribald ditties like Two Old Maids in a Folding Bed and The Fuller Brush Man. But Kansas City is cleaner now, and so are Julia's lyrics...
Unlike the present crop of blues singers, most of whom indulge in manic-depressive moans, Julia sings her blues with an exuberant bounce which she calls "Kansas City style with a terrific rhythm." On her piano stands a white porcelain "kitty," where fans stuff as much as $60 a night (in addition to her $150 weekly salary). Beside her is a pitcher of water, to wash down the jiggers of bourbon which customers buy her. As a kind of jolly mother confessor to the depressed spirits in the audience, Julia usually ends up a group of songs with an invitation...
...Julia Lee has left Kansas City only a couple of times, once for the recent Hollywood recording date, and once when she sang for three weeks with one-armed Trumpeter Wingy Mannone in Chicago. She got homesick for Kansas City and quit. Says she: "If you're not happy, there's no percentage in the big money...