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Sally Doherty began exploring different musical styles when she was at university. She was studying fine art with the intention of becoming a film maker. She had her own band the whole time, for which she wrote songs. Inspired by unusual vocal performers, like Yma Sumac and Diamanda Galás, she began experimenting with performance art and with singing and composing as part of a visual film-based media. In complete contrast, when at home she was listening to jazz and latin music and gaining a lifelong passion for the recordings of Chet Baker, João Gilberto and Astrud Gilberto performing Jobim songs, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan and Julie London as well as admiring the songwriting and voices of Scott Walker, Jacques Brel, Tom Waits, Sandy Denny and Nick Drake to name just a few. Whilst at college she began work on her self-titled debut album and was invited to collaborate with a few alternative bands. Her first album was released in 1996 and her second, ‘Sleepy Memory’ in 1998. She was then invited to compose some music for BBC TV and later, on numerous occasions, for BBC Radio 4 drama. In 2000 she released two albums, ‘On the Outside’ and ‘Empire of Death’ (BBC TV music).
While busy writing her own songs she also found the time to start learning the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim (in their original Portuguese). Having absorbed so much material through listening it was now time to start singing it. She began performing in jazz clubs trying out carefully chosen standards and different Latin American songs to suit her style. The repertoire eventually expanded to take in some dramatic and melancholic boleros of Mexico and Cuba and other Brazilian songs. She performs regularly with her latin jazz band Sally Doherty Quartet (see collaborations) and released an album with them in 2005. Another facet to Sally’s musical explorations came to fruition in 2001 when she began working on a new album, ‘Black is the Colour’. She took folk songs from Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Mexico and France and recorded her own versions of them, focusing on acoustic instruments to create minimal filmic backdrops for these ancient songs.
It was around this time that the Italian band ‘Planet Funk’ discovered her releases through her website and invited her to go to Italy and write some songs with them. Through this collaboration Sally wrote songs for their albums ‘Non Zero Sumness’ and ‘The Illogical Consequence’ and toured extensively with them. Following the release of ‘Edge of Spring’,
which is a ‘best of’album featuring some songs from
each of the solo albums dating from 1996–2006, Sally developed
Electric Butterfly. She took her songs to producer Colin Elliot
(long-time co-producer with Richard Hawley) and began this
collaborative project. This haunting and uplifting collection is
now available on their debut album as a digital download from After singing on Richard Hawley’s version of the Johnny Cash classic ‘Long Black Veil’ she was then invited to sing on two songs on his album ‘Lady’s Bridge’ which went straight in at number 6 in the UK album charts. Autumn 2007 saw the release of another latin jazz album, ‘Second Time Around’… more info about that on the collaborations page. |
