DESCRIPTION:
Lover, Come Back To Me, Slow-fox from the Musical Production "The New Moon" (S.Romberg /O.Hamerstein II) -- Pha Terrell with Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy, Decca 1937 (USA)

NOTE: Elmer "Pha" Terrell (b.1910, Kansas City, Missouri -- d. 1945, Los Angeles) was an American jazz singer, best known as a vocalist for the fabulous Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy. In the early 1930s, Terrell was working in the nightclubs in Kansas City as a singer, dancer, emcee and a semi-hustler when he was discovered by Andy Kirk, who hired him to be the vocalist for his group the Twelve Clouds of Joy. Terrell sang with Kirk for eight years, from 1933 to 1941, and recorded with him extensively for Decca Records, singing hits such as 1936's "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" and 1937's "Lover Come Back To Me". Yet, besides artistic success, Tarrell during his yers with Andy Kirk's orchestra also enjoyed achievements of a different sort; a "cute cat", as describes him in the web an elderly lady, who saw him on stage -- Taerrel was for some time young Bille Holliday's boyfriend, until he later became Mary Lou Williams' legal husband. Yet, in 1941 Terrell separates from Andy Kirk's band and - like just about any standup singer, decides to go alone. He headed for Indianapolis, at that time a thriving jazz center, where he worked for some time for the smoochy Clarence Love's Orchestra. Driven by insantiable desire to be more successful, he soon gave up and moved forward to LA - where a kidney failure took him down in 1945, when he was just getting started.