Miscellaneous Info and Quotes

I remember my Grandma once telling me that she had read an article that had quoted Nat King Cole on Jeri's performance of 'When I Fall In Love': "She sings the song the way it was meant to be sung."

Jeri often visited her daughter in N.Y., and when she did, she would often make a visit to her sister and nephew's places in the state. A couple of years before she passed on, she made such a visit and played the piano at a local school function. My grandma told me that Jeri made that piano MOVE!

'An Affair to Remember':  Jeri's Love Story

From the book, "Singers & the Song," by Gene Lees, where he speaks of Jeri and film composer Hugo Friedhofer (who worked on the film "An Affair to Remember"):

"Toward the end of his life, Hugo lived in a two-room apartment on Bronson Avenue in Hollywood...If you walk along that balcony, around the U shape of the building, you come to the apartment of Jeri Southern, fine pianist and one of the great singers and influences. Jeri was the last love of Hugo's life and, though he was 25 years or more her senior, she loved him more than any of us and took care of him.

"Jeri remained incommunicado for a week after he died, sitting for long periods in her bedroom staring at the floor. Jeri is more musician than anybody knows. She orchestrated Hugo's last movie. In those late years, I was, aside from Jeri, with whom Hugo had breakfast every morning, one of the few persons who could pry him out of his apartment...."

Quotes from various sources (graciously provided by one of Jeri's fans, Jerry Kline):

From Louis' Children: American Jazz Singers, by Leslie Gourse. Publisher: William Morrow & Co. 1984

Jeri Southern felt the lure of Birdland, too. At home in Royal, Nebraska, she learned -- via records and radio -- from Nat Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Mary Ann McCall, Mel Torme and Frank Sinatra. "Sinatra above all," Jeri said recently in Hollywood, where she teaches piano and orchestrates films. "He considered a lyric above all, with a sensitivity to the individual words, phrases and the total song."

By the end of the forties, she had made her way to the Hi-Note Club in Chicago, where her warm, intimate style touched Anita O'Day. She called Jeri a "wonderful jazz singer." Monte Kay, Birdland's manager, stopped at the Hi- Note and asked Jeri: "Would you like to work at Birdland?"

"That excited me tremendously. I asked about money," she recalled. "He said, 'You'll be playing intermission. A hundred and fifty dollars.'

"I said, 'A hundred and fifty dollars isn't much on the road.'

"He said, 'You call New York the road?'

"Ha-ha. Birdland wasn't the road, of course."

The money barely covered her living expenses. But she stuck it out, meeting Fitzgerald, McRae, Vaughan, Sinatra and Peggy Lee. Then she recorded with Decca and had a hit with "When I Fall in Love." Eventually, the itinerant life of a singer palled; she settled in California, drifting away from her jazz influence.

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From Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret, by James Gavin. Grove Weidenfeld, publishers. 1991

The Den in the Duane, beneath the Duane Hotel on Madison Avenue and 37th Street, had the distinction of hiring Lenny Bruce in his first New York engagement in 1958, as well as Nichols and May and a number of other gifted comics and singers.

One of the latter was Jeri Southern, a large-boned, rueful blonde who usually performed at jazz clubs such as Birdland or the Village Vanguard. Southern began as a pianist, adding vocals in 1951 to make herself more marketable. As a singer, she recorded several best-selling singles, among them "When I Fall in Love" and "You Better Go Now," as well as a superb series of albums.

At the Den in the Duane, as elsewhere, she began with a slow love song -- a courageous practice that many attributed to Barbra Streisand years later. Her deep, velvety voice, serene style, and thoughtful, unforced musicality were matched by the sparest gestures and movements; most of the time she seemed lost in a private, bittersweet world that she longed to escape into. Indeed, friends report that she found singing painful. Beneath the surface of even her upbeat numbers lay a dark angst that gave her work an understated sadness. "It was as if she had looked into the heart of some American dream and seen the outlines of a nightmare," wrote Colin Butler in his annotations for a Southern collection.

But her insecurities were mostly personal, rooted perhaps in such trials as a 1956 Carnegie Hall concert in which she appeared with Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, and the Count Basie band. Scheduled to perform early in the show, Southern emerged in a strapless purple velvet gown trimmed with white ermine. Her opening ballad evoked immediate hostility from an audience eager for a night of powerhouse singing and playing. They began to hiss and gradually drowned her out. Southern's eyes filled with tears, and she walked off without finishing her song.

Southern performed and recorded sporadically until the early '60s, when, after Hollywood bookings at the Crescendo and the Losers, the emotional strain became too much for her and she never sang again. She now concentrates on coaching. Recalls a singer friend, "I would say, 'Jeri, sing this phrase. I want to hear how it should sound.' She never would."

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From Six Decades of Songwriters and Singers. The Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. 1984.

Jeri Southern (b. 1926) began her performing career in 1944 as a pianist. In the late forties she performed extensively in the Chicago area as a singer and a pianist, developing a loyal regional following. In 1950 she began to attract national attention, which led to a recording contract and radio and television appearances. Her first hit record was "You Better Go Now," and she subsequently recorded numerous songs before retiring in the 1960s to teach singing in California.

Southern's rendition of "Dancing on the Ceiling" is carefully calculated in its music and lyrical values, and the architecture of the melodic phrases is outlined with considerable skill. On the final phrase she sings a descending octave where [Richard] Rodgers wrote a more satisfying seventh ("just for my love"), but as a whole this recording is a good example of the graceful intimacy she brought to song performance.

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From The NEW Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, by Leonard Feather. Horizon Press. 1960

SOUTHERN, JERI, singer, piano; b. Royal, Neb., 8/5/26. Fifteen years of classical piano study from age five. Prof. debut 1944 in Omaha hotel. After several years as intermission pianist in Chicago night clubs she began to attract attention as vocalist around 1950. She sings in a languid, casual style in which understatement is the keynote. Scored her first record hit with You'd Better Go Now, her initial Decca release. Tied for New Star Award, DB [Down Beat] critics poll 1953. Own LPs: Decca, Roulette, Capitol.

Addr: c/o Premiere Attractions, 1046 North Carol Drive, Hollywood, Calif.

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From The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties, by Leonard Feather. Horizon Press. 1966

SOUTHERN, JERI, singer, piano; b. Royal, Neb. 8/5/26. Best known for her hit record, You Better Go Now, in early 1950s. Living in Hollywood, she appeared at the Sands and other local clubs in early '60s, then gave up public performances to become a voice teacher. LPs: Dec, Roul. Cap.

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From The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz 1900-1950, by Roger D. Kinkle. Arlington House Publishers. 1974.

Southern, Jeri. vo, p [vocalist, pianist]. Born August 5, 1926, Royal, Neb. Jazz-influenced pop singer, good pianist. Began in Omaha 1944. Later 40s pianist-singer in Chicago. Attracted attention 1950. Active on radio, TV and records in 50s. Hit record You Better Go Now. After working on west coast in early 60s, quit to become voice teacher.

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By Bentley Stegner, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, in liner notes for the LP "Jeri Gently Jumps," Decca DL 8472

Before she left her native Royal, Neb. (Population 157), Jeri was a student and teacher of concert piano. As she rose through Chicago's jazz joints to national recognition, she remained a thorough professional, a disciplined technician.

She's still sticking to her artistic guns, refusing to compromise her taste. The delicate restraint, the elegant simplicity, and the deep yet quiet personal coloring of her performance steep her listeners in a warm bath of vibrant emotion.

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By Jazz critic Ralph Gleason, in liner notes for the LP "Jeri Southern at the Crescendo," Capitol T1278

Jeri Southern gets across a very unique and individual vocal effect. Her phrasing has all the naturalness of a jazz soloist, and jazz is a natural art. Her good taste in songs is proverbial and the Jeri Southern endorsement of a new song is a seal of approval that almost certifies that the song will become a standard...

She can evoke an aura of bitter-sweet romance, of lost love, and late night, one-for-the-road scotch and soda. She has the special gift of making her version of a song assume a symbolic position in the lives of young lovers and old ones, too. Part of this may be attributed to the fact that her singing voice is her speaking voice -- she was originally a soprano -- but mostly it is because of her understanding of and total involvement with the lyric.

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By Columnist Robert Sylvester, in liner notes for the LP "Jeri Southern Meets Johnny Smith," Forum Records F-9030

There is hardly a thing to be said of Jeri Southern which other and more knowledgeable critics than this one haven't already said. Her taste in a lyric is superb. She makes the words be part of a song and tells a story that the music alone must tell inarticulately. She is one of the rare singers extant who knows when a verse ought to be sung and how it should be sung, if sung.

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By Colin Butler, in liner notes for the LP "When I Fall in Love," MCA Records MCL 1791

She was born (her original name Genevieve Hering) in the tiny town of Royal, Nebraska, in 1926. Her musical talent appeared early and at first at the piano. It wasn't easy, in the grip of the depression, to consider a career as a professional musician. Jeri was determined, graduating from Notre Dame Academy in Omaha, to embark on three years of advanced piano studies. Fortunately for us -- there is no dearth of concert pianists and only one Jeri Southern -- she began working as a cocktail pianist in local nightclubs and hotels. Gradually, she began to experiment as a singer and, as her style formed to growing applause, it became clear where her future lay. A post-war Navy recruitment tour took her throughout the Midwest and out of Omaha for good. In 1949 she turned up at the Hi Note Club in Chicago where the headliner was Anita O'Day.

"Our first intermission pianist and singer," recalled Anita, "was a girl named Jeri Southern, whose warm intimate style went over big with our customers. When a recording company signed her, she moved on to bigger and better things."

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© Daisy Witherell Déry
Last update: Feb. 2001