Lambert Hendricks & Ross + Count Basie ’Lil Darling’ live 1961

Laid-back jazz from Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks & Annie Ross and the Count Basie Orchestra (check Basie concentrating at 3:18). Annie Ross was an emigre Brit with a colourful life. It included her hit Twisted, an affair with Lenny Bruce, heroin addiction, running a jazz club in London, and dozens of film roles. She was Britt Eckland’s voice in The Wicker Man. She died aged almost 90 in 2020. Annie steps forward here for her solo verses at 1:43. Jon Hendricks was a US soldier at D-Day, fighting against Nazis but in a segregated black unit. They got shot at by the US military for fraternising welcoming French girls, went on the run and were court-marshalled - he got three years. He visited Normandy again in 1995, and said: “It was a step above slavery. To be put into a segregated army - in a nation that pretends to be a democracy - and pretends to be fighting Nazism - is a joke! It’s bizarre. The officers were all white, and racist. If they said Good Morning to you, it was an ins