Evelyn McGee Stone doesn’t have nearly as many fans as any of the fresh pop divas being ballyhooed into stardom by orchestrated media campaigns. This should not surprise nor trouble anyone with a sense for the finer sounds. There is hope for those who can find their way past the heap of hype. Try as they might, the major labels of the music industry have not yet found a way to corner the internet market, which presently serves as a world-wide department store for every musical taste on the planet. For the discriminating few who are stimulated by the sound of classic jazz singing, there is the isle marked www.evelynmcgeestone.com

Jazz, in its day, was the popular music. Now, its fans comprise a small but avid proportion of the record-buying public. And right from the start of her career in the jazz heyday of 1939, Evelyn’s fans were among the most avid. At 18 years old, Evelyn was recruited out of her hometown of Anderson, South Carolina, by the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, and installed as the lead vocalist of the band. One fan was so taken by one of Evelyn’s first performances that he bought her a gold watch and left it at her school in Piney Woods, Mississippi, home of the Sweethearts. The Sweethearts toured extensively, including a tour of Europe sponsored by the State Department, and went on to become the greatest female jazz band in history.

In 1940, the band played in the auditorium of Elisa Miller High School in Helena, Arkansas. In attendance was a 16 year old girl who is now a highly successful songwriter named Rosemarie McCoy. Ms. McCoy was so inspired by Evelyn’s performance with the Sweethearts that she immediately resolved to seek a career in the music business. She moved to New York in 1943, and was signed as an artist by the Cat and Decca labels. In the course of her long career as artist and songwriter, she has had over 800 of her songs recorded by a Who’s Who list of artists, including everyone from Louis Jordan through Nat King Cole, Patty Page, Big Joe Turner, Big Joe Williams, Ruth Brown, Sarah Vaughan, Jackie Wilson and Jimmy Rushing, to Bette Midler, Pearl Bailey, Elvis Presley, Faith Hill, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. Yet, with all her accomplishments, Rosemarie McCoy is still to this day a die-hard fan of Evelyn McGee Stone, and literally sings her praises. In a recent phone interview, Ms. McCoy sang several lines of Right Here, her favorite song on Evelyn’s album, Jump Back, released in 1998.

As for Jump Back, though its fans were few in comparison with major pop releases of the time, they were nonetheless worldwide, and tended to launch into panegyrics on the subject of the album. A translation of the review of the CD which appeared in the September 1998 issue of the French music magazine, Jazz Classique, illustrates the enthusiasm of the typical fan: “Evelyn McGee Stone is an ex-singer of the famous International Sweethearts of Rhythm. She knew the famous arranger, Jesse Stone, when he was musical director of that band, and twenty years later she married him. In 1998 Jesse Stone composed and arranged Jump Back. This CD offers a large musical display: Spirituals, Rhythm and Blues, Blues, ballads … Only a great singer in full possession of her talent (dynamism, youthful voice, diction, range, timing, accuracy, richness of nuances, genuineness…) could, in such a sovereign manner, so successfully master such a musical challenge. Evelyn has too much character to follow the fashion or to be drawn out of sorts by a repertory embossed with the personal stamps of Helen Hume or Billie Holiday. Don’t Explain is a trump card of this amazing CD. It is deeply moving and true …”. Speaking of Billie Holiday, though she was not exactly a fan of Evelyn, the far more famous chanteuse once paid a young Evelyn McGee the ultimate, if unintended, back-stage compliment, in refusing to sing after witnessing Evelyn’s prodigious performance.

It must be mentioned in passing that due to space and time constraints, the purpose of this profile is merely to introduce Evelyn to the readers of ONYX who are not already her fans. It will one day require a book-length biography to encompass such a storied life, so overflowing with rich anecdotes and details. But any would-be biographer will first have to catch up with Evelyn McGee Stone, whose octogenarian energy level is not much diminished. That Evelyn took a long respite to marry, raise two children, and divorce before resuming her career, perhaps can account for the fact that she is still going strong while her contemporaries from back in the day are mostly long gone or retired. Whatever the reason, the jazz world is becoming increasingly interested in Evelyn McGee Stone, who today stands as one of the very few surviving jazz era singers of any standing who still regularly perform.

The last few years have been studded with high-profile performances and appearances by Evelyn. Former President George Bush presented Evelyn with an Ageless Hero Award at an awards reception in Chicago in May of 1999, at which event Evelyn reciprocated by presenting the former President with an autographed copy of Jump Back.
She also accepted the posthumous presentation of an Ageless Hero Award on behalf of her recently deceased second husband, the great Jazz, R&B, and Rock and Roll pioneer, Jesse Stone, who died in April of 1999 at age 97 near Orlando, Florida, where he and Evelyn had lived since the 1980s. Evelyn and her daughter, Nancy Bolin, were also seated at the table of President and Mrs. Bush at the reception. In June of 2000, Evelyn performed at the Points of Light Foundation ceremony at the Orlando Convention Center, where Colin Powell was among the audience who gave Evelyn a standing ovation.

Moreover, Evelyn’s January 2001 performance for the Jazz Club of Sarasota, as documented in a letter from Bill Webb, a member of its Board of Directors, elicited “many, many calls, E-Mails, and letters thanking us for including that show in our concert season. Many have said that it was the best program they have seen and heard in a long time. … We were all delighted with your singing and it certainly was a highlight of the evening.” In March of 2001, Evelyn was a guest speaker at the Women in Jazz Symposium at The American Jazz Museum at the historic jazz crossroad of 18th and Vine in Kansas City, Missouri. Evelyn is now represented in the museum collections and in the newly established Ford Motor Company Research Institute for Women in Jazz.

Those inclined to join Evelyn’s steadily increasing fan base can look forward to the release of her new CD, When I Grow Too Old To Dream, on July 30, 2002, her 82nd Birthday. The CD will be available on her website. A CD release party is being planned at a location to be announced in Orlando or Manhattan.


Daniel R. Fallon, Esquire, is an entertainment lawyer based near Philadelphia, who is proud to have Evelyn McGee Stone as a friend and client.