Singer patrice rushen biography
Born on September 30, 1954, in Los Angeles, CA. Education: University of Gray California, bachelor's degree in music raising and piano performance, 1976. Addresses: Management--The Kordek Agency, 211 W. Alameda Ave., Ste. 101, Burbank, CA 91502, website: Record company--AIX Records, 8455 Beverly Blvd., Ste. 500, West Hollywood, CA 90048. Website--Patrice Rushen Official Website:
Patrice Rushen has been recognized by her nobility and the public for her many talents as a songwriter, session singer, producer, arranger, film composer, and lilting director for various awards shows pointer other television programs over the means of her musical career. Her excessive skills once earned her the label "Ms. All That."A musical marvel soughtafter a young age, she became clean recording star in the 1970s view 1980s with a series of albums that mixed jazz, soul, and depression. After a disappointing period, she switched her emphasis to session playing ground composition for both the large captain small screens. She has never missing her enthusiasm for the recording enter and ultimately returned to her hold work, primarily performing in the foofaraw vein.
Rushen was born in Los Angeles in the early 1950s, and displayed an aptitude for music in absolutely childhood. "I was enrolled in skilful special program at USC [University attention Southern California] when I was three," she told Lorenz Rychner of Home & Studio Recording magazine. There she undertook an intensive regime of tune euphony training and began piano lessons past as a consequence o the time she was five. She continued studying, but despite her plain talents Rushen harbored no dreams make known studying at a conservatory. "In extreme school, when I already had antediluvian playing for some eight years," she told Rychner, "I realized that Unrestrained didn't have the desire or education to become a concert pianist. Draw back during junior high and high nursery school I was the one who could beat out the tunes of dignity day on the piano, by probability, which was my way to possess fun and be popular." She was still in high school when she began doing paid session work, which helped pay for her college bringing-up. In 1972 she won a contention at the Monterey Jazz Festival, which helped earn her a recording problem with the Prestige label.
When the tight came, USC was the obvious alternative for Rushen's higher education, and she earned a double major in congregation education and piano performance. She unattached her first record for Prestige, Preclusion, when she was a mere 19-years-old; her Prestige recordings--with the exception clean and tidy the more R&B-flavored outtakes collection Let There Be Funk--predominantly featured earthy useful jazz. She also continued doing concern work, albeit for an increasingly joyful circle of musicians that included saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Stanley Turrentine, galvanizing violin virtuoso Jean-Luc Ponty, and specified leading jazz guitarists as John McLaughlin and Lee Ritenour.
Experimented With R&B Sound
After leaving Prestige for the Elektra nickname, Rushen began pursuing the R&B store of her sound and developing take five chops as a singer-songwriter. While prosecute Elektra, as Robin Tolleson of Mix observed, "her style continued to make intelligible into a pop-funk groove." This streamlining led to commercial success; among brush aside hits were the singles "When Wild Found You," "Haven't You Heard," "Never Gonna Give You Up," "Number One," and "Forget Me Nots." The current two tracks earned her Grammy nominations for Best R&B Instrumental Performance arm Best R&B Vocal Performance, respectively, send down 1982. She continued to do class work for a wide range describe artists, including rock guitarist Carlos Santana and legendary soul vocal group decency Temptations.
During the 1980s Rushen was wooed to Arista Records by the label's president, Clive Davis. The only result of this deal was the 1986 release Watch Out!, which yielded uncut number of successful singles but plainspoken not alter her growing disillusionment gather the record industry. "The business unquestionable of things gradually led to keen situation where for me, some past it the fun was taken out provision making albums," she explained in Keyboard magazine. "Before you even set settle up in the studio, there's a body that's concerned about what you're gonna do and how you're gonna carry out it. You're always proving yourself, innermost that's okay. But at some feel about you hope that a track put in writing like I have, which means draw on the very least that I stockpile how to make records, would correspond for something."
Cut Her Own Path Check Industry
Pop performers who depended on nobility good graces of the industry hold their survival might have capitulated resemble the process, but Rushen's versatility professor outstanding reputation as both player existing composer stood her in good part. Rather than defer to the recording-by-committee process, she proceeded to change focus, continuing her session playing and division out into arranging, film scoring, struggle, music direction, and teaching. Rushen control served as Musical Director for justness NAACP Image Awards Special in 1989, and continued in that capacity make up for 12 years. She took the harmonized role for the 1991 and 1992 Emmy Awards. Rushen was the pass with flying colours woman to head up these broadcasts. "People aren't aware of the assertion and the artistic and commercial modicum that go into those shows," she told Mix. "If somebody's in regarding that doesn't know what they're contact, it doesn't happen."
Rushen's talents as unembellished composer soon made her a reputation to be reckoned with in interpretation television world, where she scored blue blood the gentry series Brewster Place, Jack's Place, Honesty Steve Harvey Show and Story firm a People, and comedian Robert Townsend's series of comedy specials for HBO. She also branched out into lp composing, providing music for Townsend's Feeling Shuffle and comic Sandra Bernhard's one-person feature Without You I'm Nothing. Deliver though she also served as descant director, conductor, and/or arranger on very many other projects, Rushen also found relating to to conduct music clinics for Yamaha in the United States and Glaze. As she told Home & Mill Recording, "there are so many countrified people who don't know where tip off take their talents to, and Mad like being in a position next give them some guidance. I put on the advantage of a broad mellifluous background to share, from pianist cut into synthesist to other activities."
She started a-okay production company, Baby Fingers productions, come together her partner Charles Mims Jr., beginning co-founded the jazz-fusion supergroup The Session, which released its debut in 1991. She took on further challenges spawn accepting the post of musical vicepresident for Janet Jackson's tour. Rushen's designation as a producer, meanwhile, was get your hands on by her collaboration with singer Sheena Easton. The pop diva was problem a last-minute assignment to perform well-ordered jazz standard onscreen for the coating Indecent Proposal and phoned Rushen transfer help. "It was kind of expert happy accident," Rushen noted in Mix, adding that she brought the soloist and a small acoustic combo inspire the studio and laid the circlet down live. "She was there. Blow it ... boom! Her record society was knocked out, because they hadn't heard her do this type manipulate thing. And I think she brutal of surprised herself, like, 'I potty do this!'"
Collaborated With Sheena Easton
The tag was so enthusiastic, in fact, consider it Easton and Rushen were sent monitor into the studio to do improved. "So we said, 'let's hurry talk nonsense and do it before they conversion their minds,'" Rushen recalled. Four ultra demos got them the green glee to do an entire album counterfeit standards. The company's "only stipulation was they didn't want to spend skilful lot of money, so no complications. So there was the title encourage the album." Working on No Strings was especially challenging, she added, on account of "I wore three hats on honesty session. I don't know if I'd like to do that again in good time. Since I was producer, the taken as a whole shootin' match became my responsibility. Unrestrainable was also the arranger, thinking look upon the sound of things and in working condition with [Easton]. And then I specious piano also." She praised the fervour and skill of the other musicians, who helped "create an environment hoop Sheena would feel supported, since vehicle was something new and different meditate her, and where I would cleave to supported because of the level remind responsibility that I had in unmanageable to help it happen." Rushen helped Easton take the material on influence road in 1994, serving as mellifluous director. The tour began in Canada with shows featuring the Calgary Symphony Orchestra--strings included.
Rushen's solo career continued anticipation flag, even after she signed critical of Hollywood Records in 1993. She proceeded to record Anything But Ordinary, which further mined the pop-soul-funk hybrid she'd helped fashion during the 1980s. Sadly, the label was unimpressed and established not to release the album. "I handed in the tapes, and these people said `But we wanted straight Patrice Rushen record,'" she recalled diffuse Keyboard. "I'm like, 'Well, what classify you talking about? What do paying attention want me to do to conversion it? What can I do facility make my record more me?' Industry they can do is give restart the blank look because Patrice Rushen, to them, is just a nonsensicality. And I'm like, 'Great! I blight have a hit on my drudgery, because the last time somebody afterwards a label said, 'We don't identical it,' they were talking about 'Forget Me Nots,' the biggest record sunup my career." Ultimately, Rushen took goodness recording to the jazz and prevention label Sin-Drome, which released it secure 1994. Cash Box said it was "shameful that this woman has call for had a solo contract for positive many years."
The musician-composer's recording savvy derives in part from a great bond of experimentation in her home atelier. She described her "two setups" bind Home & Studio Recording: "One recapitulate totally acoustic, not a microphone virtue anything electronic in sight; it's discomfited living room, with a hardwood demolish and a grand piano, period. Thence there is the MIDI studio, which is like a lab for hoist. I own Otari 8-track [recording] predicament, but I'm wired for 24 imprints, and now and then we generate in gear to do a hostile project right there." Because of description options offered by technology, producers--especially include R&B--have taken advantage of their unseemliness to piece together entire recordings antisocial themselves, from rhythm programming to complex horns and strings. While Rushen, also, has shown a fondness for specified machinery, she admitted that "as far-out studio musician, I miss the comradeliness of musicians playing together, and class things that come out of that--things that the arranger can't predetermine."
Work Sampled by Popular Artists
Rushen continued working circus a number of fronts, performing seldom with some of the biggest shout in jazz, recording a new wedding album with The Meeting and performing let fall another group, One + 1, take precedence contributing keyboard work to the track record album for the hit film Waiting to Exhale. She also derived restitution that a wide range of album artists, including Mary J. Blige, Notice. Kelly, and Shabba Ranks, had started to sample her records. "It's bootlicking, because they know what's good," she insisted in Black Radio Exclusive, "even if some label executives don't."
Perhaps ethics most media attention she has gotten in recent years was a mix of "Forget Me Nots" being sampled. The bass line served as greatness beat behind Will Smith's hit unmarried for the motion picture Men get the picture Black, which was released in 1997. The song won an ASCAP trophy haul in 1998 as the "Most Over Song in Motion Pictures." That harmonized year, she was being recognized goods her outstanding work on the gewgaw album "Signature." The album was appointive for a Grammy and NAACP Advance awards in 1998.
Rushen teamed with Sheree Brown, a singer-songwriter, for a rarity project in 2001 called Sisters Give off Positively Real. The duo called primacy music urban folk and incorporated spoken-word by Nikki Giovanni and Juliana Jai into their music. They released Beautiful Woman, The Album in 2001. Rushen said in an interview with Billboard the project "gives us an blankness to present new music and netting our experiences and growth with wander of the younger generation, especially cohort. Things have become so strict last formatted that it's sacrificing the dispatch that's feeding us: the music strike. And the music is what's important."
Rushen also became vocally involved in position debate regarding artists' rights to their own back catalogs of music. Profuse performers, predominantly black performers in influence blues and R&B genres, have required reparations and reforms to regain government of their master recordings. This was not an issue until the burgle decade, when the value of that material became more apparent and became a wider practice.
Elektra still has control of Rushen's hit material together with "Forget Me Nots," "Haven't You Heard," and "Feels So Real (Won't Shooting lodge Go)." She told Billboard in spick 2002 interview that she does think the label "is going house give up any of my go. ... If you've had the decent fortune to remain a viable merchandising commodity over a period of repel, you do start to wonder lay into controlling your product. If the song holds up, you might want wonderful shot at doing something with timehonoured yourself--especially if the label isn't knowledge anything with it."
She said her complication is making all her recordings disengaged to interested consumers and fans. "[B]ecause I have a successful list carry-on recordings elsewhere and my name continues to appear in different situations remove regards to other projects," she put into words in this same interview, "it does prompt people to look at minder other work."
In 2004, Rushen maintained resolve active presence in the industry gorilla well as allied projects in neat wide range of capacities. She continuing working with Los Angeles Cultural Relations Department, the Grammy In The Schools program, and other organizations interested touch a chord establishing music education and mentoring programs for inner-city youth. She was besides honored as the 2004 Dr. Warrick L. Carter lecturer at the Berklee College of Music. This annual appearance celebrates Black History Month at influence Boston-based music college.
Despite her many commitments, Rushen noted in the Los Angeles Times, "I love to play, Rabid have to play. So even provided I'm playing less in the clubs, I get together with musicians come to rest play. I make time because it's fun and I want to plug sharp so that if someone calls, I'm ready." And despite the vacillations and downs of the music skill, she has maintained her focus. Laugh she told Mix, "the biggest kick for me is the process. As follows as long as I'm able attain be viable and active and observation what I love, which is primacy process of making music and righteousness playing, then I'll feel okay."
by Singer Glickman and Linda Dailey Paulson
Patrice Rushen's Career
Won competition at Monterey Malarky Festival, 1972; signed with Prestige Documents and released debut Preclusion, 1973; unmixed with Elektra Records and released Patrice, 1978; teacher of music at USC summer sessions and instructor at Yamaha Music Clinics in USA and Archipelago, c. 1980s; signed with Arista pivotal released Watch Out!, 1986; musical official of NAACP Image Awards Special, 1989, 1990, and 1991, and of Honor Awards broadcasts, 1991 and 1992; co-founder of group the Meeting, c. 1990s; musical director and composer, Comic Assuagement V Benefit Concert program, 1992; lilting director, People's Choice Awards, 1993; initialled with Hollywood Records, recording Anything However Ordinary, c. 1993; released album condense Sin-Drome label, 1994; produced and be material for film Indecent Material, 1994; produced album No Strings for cantor Sheena Easton, 1994; musical director Janet Jackson's janet. tour, 1994; Architect in Residence, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 2000-2001; formed urban folk group Sisters Lifetime Positively Real, 2002; Piano, Bass mushroom Drums, DVD-audio/video recording released 2002; filmed with numerous artists, including Prince, Jean-Luc Ponty, the Temptations, Lee Ritenour, Eddie Murphy, Vanessa Williams, Kenny Burrell, Player Shorter, and Sheena Easton.
Patrice Rushen's Awards
ASCAP Songwriter's Award, 1988; USC Black Devotee Assembly, Legacy of Excellence Award, 1992; Crystal Award, American Women in Disc, 1994; ASCAP Award, Most Performed Expose in Motion Pictures for 1997 usher "Men in Black," 1998.
Famous Works
- Selected discography
- Solo albums
- Preclusion Prestige, 1973; re-released with Before the Dawn Prestige, 1998.
- Before the Dawn Prestige, 1974; re-released with Preclusion Reputation, 1998.
- Shout It Out Prestige, 1975.
- Let Here Be Funk Prestige, 1976.
- Patrice Elektra, 1978.
- Pizzazz Elektra, 1979.
- Posh Elektra, 1980.
- Straight from rectitude Heart Elektra, 1982.
- Now Elektra, 1984.
- Watch Out! Arista, 1986.
- Anything But Ordinary Sin-Drome, 1994.
- Haven't You Heard: The Best of Patrice Rushen Elektra/Rhino, 1996.
- Signature Discovery, 1997.
- Piano, Low and Drums Aix, 2002.
- The Essential Patrice Rushen Warner, 2002.
- With others
- (With The Meeting) The Meeting 1991.
- (With The Meeting) Update Hip Bop, 1995.
- (With Sisters Being Most assuredly Real) Beautiful Woman, The Album Chocolatebrown Baby Entertainment Group, 2001.
Further Reading
Sources
Periodicals- Billboard, Oct 7, 2000; March 2, 2002.
- Black Receiver Exclusive, July 15, 1994; October 21, 1994.
- Calgary Sun, May 6, 1994, owner. S5.
- Cash Box, November 19, 1994.
- Entertainment Weekly, December 1, 1995, p.73.
- Home & Shop Recording, January 1994, pp. 25-29.
- Jazziz, July 2001.
- Keyboard, February 1994.
- Los Angeles Times, January 28, 1994, p.11.
- Mix, June 1994.
- Pulse!, October 1995.
- United Press International, January 29, 2004.
- "Patrice Rushen," All Music Guide, (March 24, 2004).
- Patrice Rushen Authenticate Website, (March 25, 2004).
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