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’Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris reveals a great deal about an incredible singer
20 Nov 2008
This affectionate tribute to Jackie Paris, an Italian-American singer who worked with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Mingus, and who had a hit record (Skylark) in the Fifties, is subtitled The Greatest Voice You Never Heard.
His career faded in the Sixties and Seventies, largely because he never had a good agent and he certainly had a bad temper. But Raymond De Felitta pieces together his hit-and-miss life story after discovering that he didn’t die in 1977 as the reference books stated but was trying for a new start in 2004 at the age of 79.
The careers of comparative failures are at least as intriguing as those of successes and De Felitta discovers that the mild-seeming old man he interviews had a son he never acknowledged.
More importantly, he also discovers that many of the best in showbiz admired his voice and wondered how inferior singers like Frankie Laine made it while he did not. Not, perhaps, the greatest voice you never heard, but a performer who was unlucky to miss the boat.
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