Today we celebrate the 89th birthday of a true giant of the music industry, Mr George Shearing OBE.
I have been a longtime fan of George's beautiful piano skills, and his contribution to many of the greatest jazz/swing songs of the last century are legend, but there are things many people don't know about this genius of a man.
Although he is lauded as one of the finest of all jazz musicians - a truly all-American musical genre - George was actually born into humble beginnings in Battersea, south London.
Despite being the composer of, or key player in, classic Blues songs such as Lullaby of Birdland (a standard adopted by artistes of the calibre of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Eartha Kitt as a staple of their own repertoire) and September in the Rain, George is in fact a blind white man.
George worked with many of the greats over the years - in his teens he was a regular performer in jazz bands with Stephane Grappelli, and in his heyday of the 1950s and 1960s he worked with artists such as Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson and Mel Tormé, among others.
Words cannot really express the contribution this man has made to the musical world!
About George Shearing
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