Rio Nido
Encyclopedia
Band history
Rio Nido was a jazz vocal trio that began as part of the Minneapolis West BankCedar-Riverside, Minneapolis
The Cedar-Riverside, also referred to as the West Bank, is a neighborhood within Minneapolis, Minnesota. The boundaries of the neighborhood are the Mississippi River to the north and east, Interstate 94 to the south, and Hiawatha Avenue and Interstate 35W to the west...
music scene in the early 1970s. The first incarnation of the group consisted of Prudence Johnson
Prudence Johnson
Prudence Johnson is an American jazz and folk vocalist.-Biography:Prudence Johnson grew up in a musical family in Moose Lake, Minnesota. In the early 1970s, Prudence was a co-founder with Tim Sparks of the vocal jazz group Rio Nido...
on vocals, Tim Sparks
Tim Sparks
Tim Sparks is an American acoustic guitar player, singer, arranger and composer.- Biography:Raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he was given his first guitar when a bout of encephalitis kept him out of school for a year...
on vocals and guitar, and Tom Lieberman on guitar and vocals. Rio Nido performed classic jazz and swing of the 1930s and '40s at many Minneapolis hot spots such as The Dakota, New Riverside Cafe and Extempore Coffeehouse. Their first recording was I Like to Riff, released on Shadow Records and featured arrangements of The Boswell Sisters, The Cats and the Fiddle, Stuff Smith
Stuff Smith
Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith , better known as Stuff Smith, was a jazz violinist. He is known well for the song "If You're a Viper".-Biography:...
, Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
and Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
.
When Tom Lieberman left the group in the late '70s he was replaced by Roger Hernandez on vocals and drums. Dave Maslow joined on bass and vocals. Rio Nido then focused on the vocalese
Vocalese
Vocalese is a style or genre of jazz singing wherein lyrics are written for melodies that were originally part of an all-instrumental composition or improvisation. Whereas scat singing uses improvised nonsense syllables, such as "bap ba dee dot bwee dee" in solos, vocalese uses lyrics, either...
style of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross and Eddie Jefferson
Eddie Jefferson
Eddie Jefferson was a celebrated jazz vocalist and lyricist. He is credited as an innovator of vocalese, a musical style in which lyrics are set to an instrumental composition or solo. Perhaps his best-known song is "Moody's Mood for Love", though it was first recorded by King Pleasure, who cited...
. They also included Doo-Wop
Doo-wop
The name Doo-wop is given to a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music that developed in African American communities in the 1940s and achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. It emerged from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and...
classics in their performances.
In 1983 they released Hi Fly on Red House Records
Red House Records
Red House Records is an American independent record label specializing in folk music and is based in St. Paul, Minnesota.The label was originally created in 1981 by Greg Brown as a method to distribute his own music, and is named for a farmhouse in Iowa where he was living...
and featured Dave Karr on flute and tenor sax and Jimmy Hamilton on piano. Rio Nido’s last recording was Voicings, recorded for the ProJazz label, one of the first early digital recordings released in CD format.
Johnson later became a semi-regular on A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor. The show runs on Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. Central Time, and usually originates from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, although it is frequently taken on the road...
and has a successful solo career. Sparks continued his successful musical career as a solo guitarist. Lieberman was the guitarist for A Prairie Home Companion for 10 years and continues to perform and produce for film and stage shows.
With the re-release on CD of Hi Fly and I Like to Riff in 2007 by the Japanese label Bittersweet America, Johnson, Sparks and Lieberman performed a number of reunion shows.
Rio Nido was inducted into the Minnesota Rock and Country Hall of Fame in April, 2007.
Discography
- I Like to RiffI Like to RiffI Like to Riff was the first recording by the Minneapolis jazz vocal trio Rio Nido. The original LP was long out-of-print until re-released on CD in 2007 by the Japanese label, Bittersweet America.-Track listing:...
(1978) - Hi FlyHi Fly (Rio Nido album)Hi Fly was the second recording by the Minneapolis jazz vocal group Rio Nido. The group changed from a trio to a quartet with the departure of Tom Lieberman and the addition of Roger Hernandez and Dave Maslow. With this release, Rio Nido focused on the vocalese style...
(1983) - VoicingsVoicingsVoicings was the last recording by the Minneapolis jazz vocal group Rio Nido. The album was one of the early recordings to feature live "direct to digital" recording techniques.-Track listing:# "Northern Lights"...
(1986)