A Record, Some Gigs Jazz Up Duo’s Career

Delayed reactions are not unusual in show business, but the case of Don and Alicia Cunningham is extraordinary.

This handsome pair, together as a team for almost 18 years and as a married couple for half that time, has had such an erratic career that from 1978 to 1982 he had to go to work as a graphic photographer, shooting album covers for Lena Horne and Dolly Parton, while she worked at a Los Angeles bank.

Discounting two obscure, undistributed efforts, the Cunninghams in 1988 finally have their first real release--on the aptly named Discovery Records.

Are they doing well? “As well as anybody we’ve ever had on the label,” says Discovery owner Albert Marx. “We have orders and reorders coming in from all over the country, and from Europe.”

A mixture of jazz and pop standards, vocalise (Ellington’s “Cottontail”), Latin, scatting, blues and originals, the album effectively traces the evolution of the duo from lounge acts (at one time Don was playing alto sax, congas and vibes and his wife played piano) into first-class jazz vocalists. The evidence can be observed Sunday, when they’ll be at the Alleycat Bistro under the auspices of the International Assn. of Jazz Appreciation. They’ll also be at the Biltmore on April 19.

Both are schooled musicians. Alicia Rodriguez, Los Angeles born, grew up strictly in the classical world, earning her bachelor’s in music from Mount St. Mary’s College, singing contralto and mezzo, playing organ, conducting a school choir.

“But I always listened to jazz,” she says. “I went to Shelly’s Mannehole, heard Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans; I loved Ella and Sarah, and Rosemary Clooney. I got into jazz and scat by copying Ella’s ‘How High the Moon,’ but it was later, through Don, that I got out there and began to invent things of my own.”

Don Cunningham, born in St. Louis, was the oldest of seven children. “My dad worked very hard and paid for me to take saxophone lessons. I played in the high school band. Then the Korean War broke out, and instead of going to college I joined the Army, where I played classical clarinet at a camp in Louisiana; but on weekends I checked out my tenor sax and jammed with a jazz combo.”

He took up the conga drums after his discharge and hooked on with Johnny Mathis for 3 1/2 years. After that came a succession of gigs with his own Afro-Cuban group: Playboy Clubs, lounges and, in 1969, a move to Los Angeles, where he lived for a while with the drummer Ed Thigpen, an old Army friend.

“I started a new quartet, and Mary Kaye of the Mary Kaye Trio got me a job at Whittinghill’s, where they kept booking us two or three times a year. By then I was getting into singing--mostly pop; I wasn’t heavily into jazz vocals.”

An agent suggested the act could make more money if it included a woman. “A friend of Thigpen’s brought this girl over, Alicia Rodriguez. She was very pretty, but I thought, ‘My act’s not geared for girls; besides, she’s Mexican, she probably does things like ‘La Paloma.’

“How wrong I was! I said to her, ‘Do you know any jazz tunes?’ She said ‘sure’ and sang ‘Lush Life’ and blew me away!”

So, for several years the Cunninghams worked steadily if obscurely, until disco came along, the Las Vegas lounges closed down and the couple took day jobs.

Suddenly everything turned around: A former agent, who had given up on them because they wouldn’t do disco, called with an offer from Japan.

“I was worried,” Don recalled. “The years were piling up; we’d gotten married, and I came home smelling of chemicals from the lab. I was in the darkroom eight hours a day and my eyes were bothering me. Alicia said, ‘Make up your mind now ! Either we go or forget it, and I don’t ever want another word about you wanting to go out as a percussionist.’ So we went.”

They were unknown in Japan and had been hired, the agent said, because they were not soul singers and had a unique act involving steel drums and congas.

“We went over on a two-month contract and stayed five months. Alicia played the piano; I had my sax along and sang a little,” Don said.

“The next year I told my agent that if we went back to Japan we had to go as a jazz act. So the second time we hired a pianist to cover bass and drums and stayed eight months. Every year since then we’ve spent six or seven months in Japan, with side trips to Okinawa, Malaysia, Singapore, all over. We will probably go back for the seventh time this fall, but now at last we have other considerations. We’re off to Switzerland April 22--our second European trip--and we can finally line up a really good tour of this country, thanks to the record.”