LIVE AT PHOENICIA

Clarence Big Miller

Big Miller...Live From Calgary

Black Bear Record ‎– BBR 1006, Canada, 1982

It always makes my day when I find records in the most unexpected places.  I found this album last year when strolling thu’ the souks in Rabat's old medina.  Probably left behind by a Canadian expat’ years ago.  I don’t think this album was distributed outside of Canada.

It was pretty dusty but in good condition and played well after a good cleanup.

Clarence “Big” Miller ((December 18, 1922, Sioux City, Iowa - June 9, 1992, Edmonton, Alberta) was a US born, Canadian Blues Shouter / Jazz singer and actor who started as a teenaged blues shouter in Kansas City with Jay McShann during the years 1949-54.  The following year he sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.  He started performing in Canada in the early 60s, travelled to Australia and and toured briefly with the Jo Hendricks’s revue The Evolution of the Blues which left him stranded in Vancouver.

Instead of returning to the USA, Miller began to perform on an itinerant basis in western Canada, settling in 1970 in Edmonton. There he emerged in the mid-1970s as a popular figure on the local jazz scene and, under the aegis of the provincial government, performed in many small Alberta communities and on a promotional tour in Japan. In 1978 Miller sang with the Tommy Banks Big Band at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland; a recording of the performance (Jazz Canada Montreux 1978, RCI 485) received the Juno Award in 1979 for best jazz album. (More here.)

Big Miller (courtesy Edmonton Jazz Society Photos Archives)

Tracklist

A1       Shuckin'

A2       After My Laughter Came Tears

A3       Ain't Nobody's Business But Our Own         

A4       Lullaby

A5       I'll Always Love You So

B1       For All We Know

B2       I Got That Feeling

B3       Sermon

B4       Find Out Yourself

Credits

Vocals – Clarence "BIG" Miller*

Saxophone / Flute – Eric Friedenberg

Piano [Fender Rhodes] – Bob Erlendson

Piano [Yamaha Grand] – Wayne Feschuk

Acoustic Bass / Electric Bass – George Koller

Drums  – Ken Searcy