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10 Cents A Dance
Nancy Anderson brings to you the quintessential New York Big Band experience singing 20's and 30's jazz and popular standards made famous by legendary greats Helen Forrest, Ruth Etting and Teddy Grace and accompanied by Ross Patterson and his Little Big Band. Swing and Sway to the hits of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, George Gerswhin, Cole Porter, Artie Shaw, Annette Hanshaw and Teddy Grace. Nancy and Ross's Little Big Band will transport you back in time to the glorious nights of New York's famed Roosevelt Ballroom with the sounds of Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and Bix Beiderbeck.
Reviews and Quotes
Review: CD release at Birdland, Aug. 14th, 2006
Nancy Anderson is no mere actress. She is no mere singer. Nancy Anderson is a living, breathing time machine, taking her audiences back to the days when songs and singers were pure class and style. Her debut album, Ten Cents A Dance, celebrates the great jazz standards of the 20's and 30's (indeed, the most recent song on the album is from 1940), and Ms. Anderson recreates the vocal stylings of that bygone era. To celebrate the album’s release, Ms. Anderson offered a concert of songs from it on August 14th at Birdland, and as soon as she began to sing, the packed crowd was transported to a different time, a time when jazz brightened spirits dampened by the Depression, and Rodgers, Hart, and Gershwin were the newest household names.
With the Ross Patterson's Little Big Band recreating the old-fashioned Big Band sound, Ms. Anderson performed such classics as “My Romance,” “True Blue Lou,” “But Not For Me” and the intense title song, both of which she performed in Scott Siegel’s 1930 edition of Broadway by the Year. Also memorable was a medley of Rodgers and Hart songs that beautifully displayed their growth as a songwriting team from 1935 to 1940. The joy in the uptempo songs was infectious, and Ms. Anderson frequently jumped energetically about the stage during instrumental solos. By contrast, she had tears in her voice when she performed an unusually intense “My Romance,” emphasizing the longing in the song’s lyrics.
Between songs, Ms. Anderson spoke happily about her love of classic jazz, and how she trained her voice to imitate the singers she heard on the old LPs she collected, beginning with Disney’s Snow White. Her research has certainly paid off: few singers today can so expertly recreate the intricacies and emotion of the early jazz age, making the music as fresh and exciting today as it was seventy-five years ago.
Nancy Anderson has been a hidden treasure in the theatre community for years now, using her skills to conjure the first half of the 20th century in shows like Jolson, Kiss Me Kate, and many of the Broadway by the Year concerts. With Ten Cents a Dance, she is now the jazz world’s treasure as well. May there be many more albums and many more concerts at venues like Birdland to bring new generations to these wonderful songs.
Album review:
"The wonderful Nancy Anderson's debut disc is a shimmering homage to the Depression-era songs of the 1930s, and with her porcelain skin and kewpie-doll sexiness, it's a match made in heaven. Standards such as "My Romance", "It Never Entered My Mind" and "But Not For Me" are delivered with throbbing passion and Anderson's lyric soprano is utterly perfect for this material. Couple that with the smart 10-piece combo backing her up and you'll find this Dance is worth every penny.' - David Hurst, Next Magazine
Song Titles
The Trouble With Me Is You
Have You Forgotten The You And Me That Used To Be
I'm So In Love With You
You're Giving Me A Song and A Dance
It Ain't Right
Darling, Not Without You
My Romance
I Didn't Know What Time It Was
It Never Entered My Mind
Alibi Baby
True Blue Lou
How'd Ya Like Ta Love Me?
Tale of the Oyster
Ten Cents A Dance
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Nancy Anderson
Nancy Anderson has made her mark on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in the West End, and across the country. In 2001 Nancy performed to rave reviews and recei...