Beverly Kenney - Biography
By Eric Brightwell
Beverly Kenney was an American jazz singer who established herself in the 1950s as a singular talent with considerable promise. Her bittersweet girlish voices belied her expertly controlled and musical phrasing was on display on a series of critically-lauded records. Then, suddenly, at the age of 28 and at the peak of success, she lamentably committed suicide.
Beverly Kenney was born January 29, 1932, Harrison, New Jersey, a suburb of Newark. Kenney’s first professional music gig was as an operator at Western Union, a position that at the time involved singing greetings over the phone. After moving to New York City in 1954, Kenney recorded her first recordings; a spare, unembellished and intimate set of standards recorded with pianist Tony Tamburello which years later was released as Snuggled on Your Shoulder (2006-Cellar Door Records). Although probably intended as a demo, no completed album materialized and Kenney relocated to Miami, Florida where she began performing at the Black Magic Room. It was there that she was discovered by The Dorsey Brothers with whom she subsequently toured with for several months.
After parting ways, Kenney moved to New York where she often performing in clubs accompanied by Don Elliott, George Shearing and Kai Winding. During this period she also toured the Midwest with Larry Sonn Band. Kenney was amaxophobic and ended up taking the train home. Back home, she performed at Matty’s Towncrest Restaurant with Larry Sonn bandmate, trumpeter Ralph Pratt, who observed that Kenney seemed depressed and unstable. Nonetheless, Kenney sounds pretty comfortable on her debut, Beverly Kenney Sings for Johnny Smith (1956-Roost). The cool jazz set was cut with guitarist Johnny Smith, pianist Bob Pancoast, bassist Knobby Totah, and drummer Mousie Alexander and featured Kenney sounding vixenish and confident. Kenney’s second album, Come Swing with Me (1956-Roost), paired her with arranger Ralph Burns and came out the same year and was lighter, looser and snappier than the debut.
In the spring of 1957, Kenney released her final album with Roost, Sings with Jimmy Jones & the Basie-Ites (1957-Roost). The band backing her included pianist Jimmy Jones and several veterans from Count Basie’s Orchestra; trumpeter Joe Newman, tenor saxophonist and flautist Frank Wess, rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Eddie, and drummer Jones Jo Jones. The results are lively and gently swinging.
Sings for Playboys (1958) found Kenney making the move to Decca. The album marks a return to a sparser sound with only Ellis Larkins (on piano and celeste) and Joe Benjamin on bass). Kenney swings and sways expressively between ballads and jazzier numbers. Kenney made no concessions to rock ‘n’ rolls considerable contemporaneous popularity and on a May 18th, appearance on NBC's The Steve Allen Show; she unveiled an original composition titled “I Hate Rock and Roll.”
By 1959, Kenney was a fixture of the Greenwich Village beat scene, where she kept company with essayist/critic Seymour Krim, Anatole Broyard and she briefly dated poet Milton Klonsky. Born to Be Blue (1959-Decca) was a collaboration with arrangers Charles Albertine and Hal Mooney and featured Kenney at her most emotionally expressive.
Like Yesterday (1960-Decca) proved to be Kenney’s swansong. Her small backing band included guitarist Chuck Wayne and reedist Jerome Richardson. As with much of her work, the music avoids unnecessary embellishment and relies primarily on Kenney’s intelligent, confident singing.
On April 13th, 1960, Beverly Kenney was found dead in her residence at the University Residence Club from an overdose of alcohol and Seconal at the age of 28. She spent her final hours writing long letters to the parents she seemed to those who knew her so disconnected from. Although most who knew her described her as melancholic, most were nonetheless surprised by her suicide. As is true in most cases, people have attempted to conclusively explain the reasons for her killing herself, usually attributing it to a single factor including the break-up of her brief relationship with Klonsky a year earlier, clinical depression and, most unlikely, her unhappiness with the rise in popularity of rock ‘n’ roll. To even her closest friends, Kenney was described as lovely, likeable and kind, but also remote, secretive and inscrutable. When her friend, actress Millie Perkins moved to Los Angeles to star in Anne Frank, Kenney’s sister claimed Beverly felt abandoned. Though a singular talent who won critical adulation during her brief career, today she’s mostly forgotten outside of Japan, where she’s treated with adulation.
