Discover our list of the best jazz singers! You can compare them according to the criteria of your choice: period, jazz style, gender, activity and much more!
Peggy Lee
Chris Connor
Ray Charles
Etta James
Freddy Cole
Lee Wiley
Harry Connick Jr.
Natalie Cole
Michael Buble
Annie Ross
Jon Hendricks
Mel Torme
Mildred Bailey
Betty Roche
Rosemary Clooney
Jeri Southern
Diane Schuur
Helen Merril
Mark Murphy
Chaka Khan
Mary Stallings
Carol Sloane
Dee Dee Bridgewater
Lena Horne
Jimmy Rushing
Gloria Lynne
Ricki Lee Jones
Eartha Kitt
Al Jarreau
Alberta Hunter
Diane Reeves
George Benson
Norah Jones
Nneena Freelon
Jack Teagarden
Karrin Allyson
Stacey Kent
Ethel Waters
Ella Mae Morse
Sheila Jordan
Jo Stafford
Joe Williams
Eddie Jefferson
Oscar Brown Jr.
Jimmy Scott
Teddy Grace
Ernie Andrews
Leon Thomas
Cleo Laine
Maxine Sullivan
Lou Rawls
King Pleasure
Jimmy Witherspoon
Susannah Mccorkle
John Pizzarelli
Johnny Mercer
Lavern Butler
Madeleine Peyroux
Helen Humes
Jamie Cullum
Connee Boswell
Bob Dorough
Dr. John
Kevin Mahogany
Kurt Elling
Lavay Smith
Big Joe Turner
Sylvia Brooks
Arthur Prysock
Irene Ried
Oleta Adams
Della Griffin
Jazz is an American musical art form that originated in New Orleans. It became popular in the 1920s and has since developed into a worldwide phenomenon. Jazz singers are singers who perform jazz music by improvising, usually without accompaniment or solo instrumentalists. The best jazz singers have unique styles that set them apart from the rest. This blog post discusses some of the most famous jazz singers of all time, including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra! The best jazz singers are improvisers who sing with exceptional tone, phrasing and interpretation. They also have a unique style that sets them apart from the rest. This blog post presents the most famous jazz singers!
Kid Ory
Ory studied music at Louisiana State University, but left after three months to join the army. He went on to study at Tulane University in New Orleans, eventually graduating in dentistry in 1919.
Kid Ory’s career began when he joined King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band at the age of 17. In 1923, he founded his own group called “The Playboys”, which was not only influential but also popular enough for them to start performing on radio and TV programs broadcast from Chicago and New York. Kid Ory was not only an influential musician, but also an innovator who contributed to Dixieland jazz.Kid Ory was a jazz singer and trumpeter. He played with various jazz groups, such as the Spasm Band and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Ory had an adventurous life, which began when he was born in Louisiana. His family moved to Alabama when he was four and eventually settled in California during his teenage years.He was a true innovator in jazz and is best known for his contributions to the Dixieland style. In 1944, Kid Ory retired from music permanently due to treatment for throat cancer.
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday is an American jazz singer and songwriter. She was born in Philadelphia in 1915 and grew up in New Jersey. Billie Holiday’s musical career spanned her entire life. She recorded her first song in 1933, at the age of 18, and died at the age of 44 in 1959 after years of battling heroin addiction.
In 1928, when she was just 12, Billie Holiday began singing in a Baltimore nightclub with her mother’s accompaniment. In 1935, she briefly joined Fletcher Henderson’s big band before going solo. In 1939, she released her first album, containing many of the best-known songs of the year, such as “God Bless The Child” and “Strange Fruit”.
She is best known for her jazz vocal style known as “scatting”, a vocal improvisation technique popularized by jazz singers of the 30s and 40s. Scatting is vocal improvisation of nonsense syllables with the aim of adding texture to a musical performance or creating a rhythmic accompaniment for an instrumental soloist, such as a trumpeter or saxophonist.
“With her deep emotional power and artistic integrity, Billie Holiday was the quintessential jazz singer of her time.”
Billie Holiday was an iconic jazz singer of the 20th century. She is one of the most recognized jazz singers, with a career spanning more than four decades. Her profound impact on American culture can still be seen today in film, literature and pop culture.
Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole was born Nathaniel Adams Coles on March 17, 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama.
Nat King Cole’s father, Edward James Cole, was a highly respected pianist and conductor. He encouraged his son to pursue a career in music, and had him take classical piano lessons from an early age. Nat King Cole traveled extensively with his family during his childhood and adolescence, and their travels gave him many opportunities to pursue jazz.
Nat King Cole is an American singer who first achieved success as a jazz pianist. Although he went on to become one of the most famous singers in jazz and music as a whole. He had a deep, rich voice and sang with great skill. His recordings were not only popular in America, but also enjoyed enormous success in Latin America and Europe.
Cole wanted to bring jazz to the American public. His first singles were mainly covers of other people’s songs, but he soon began singing more jazz-oriented numbers, often with a Latin rhythm.
Nat King Cole’s first album, Jazz At The Philharmonic, was recorded live at Carnegie Hall, New York, on November 13, 1944.
Nat King Cole has over 50 albums spanning his career from 1946 to 1965.
Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington was born as Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on March 29, 1924. Dinah Washington was an American singer and pianist. She was nicknamed “the queen of rhythm and blues”. She is famous for her vocal style, her power to convey deep emotion. She has recorded many hit songs, including “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes”, “This Bitter Earth”, “Unforgettable” and her signature song, “Mad About the Boy”. She began singing at the age of four, and sang gospel music while her father was a preacher. Dinah Washington’s life was full of tragedy. She lost her mother to cancer when she was just 8, and her father abandoned them shortly afterwards. She lived with her grandparents from the age of five to fourteen. When Dinah was just 14, her brother Johnny died after being locked in the family home during an attempted burglary.
In 1938, she began singing with a gospel group called The Songfellows. In 1941, she married saxophonist Jimmy Monroe and had a daughter, Shirley. It is reported that Dinah left home to tour the country with the Lionel Hampton Band in 1944 after being convinced by Hampton drummer Danny Madrid to leave her abusive husband Jimmy Monroe.
In 1953, Dinah recorded her landmark song “What A Difference A Day”.
Tragically, just two years before her death, one of her sons died after being involved in an accident with his babysitter. So she never got to see him grow up or have children of her own.
Johnny Hartman
Johnny Hartman was a jazz singer and musician. He was very popular in the 50s and 60s. Johnny Hartman’s career spanned five decades. Johnny Hartman had a smooth baritone voice that made him one of the finest singers of his time. He was also famous for being able to sing any song from the Great American Songbook, no matter how difficult it was.
He was born on September 8, 1923 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother Stella was a singer and his father Henry a jazz drummer. Johnny grew up around jazz music and began singing at an early age. He sang on stage with such eminent jazz musicians as Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway when he was just 14. He is considered one of the most influential jazz singers in history for his impeccable sense of timing and interpretation.
In the late ’40s, he began singing with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, both as lead vocalist and as one of his soloists. In 1959, he joined Quincy Jones’ band for a series of recordings that became known as The Birth of the Cool sessions because he pioneered a new sound for jazz music at the time that was different. Johnny Hartman was often compared to Frank Sinatra because he had the same kind of romantic sound in his voice.
He played with some of the most influential names in music, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Quincy Jones. One of his most famous recordings is “You Are So Beautiful”.
He died of lung cancer on December 2, 1983.
Ernestine Anderson
Ernestine Anderson is an American jazz singer. She is also a composer, pianist and organist. She was born in Oakland in 1935. Ernestine Anderson’s father was a Baptist minister who played piano and sang at home. As a child, Ernestine Anderson spent many hours singing with her father before taking classical piano lessons at the age of ten. She began singing in her church choir at the age of 3. She studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and became an accomplished jazz singer even though she had no formal training or experience in performing jazz music before this period.
She was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1935. Her parents were originally from Louisiana, and when she was a child her parents would take her south to visit them when they couldn’t travel because of work. She began singing in church, then later for talent shows.
Later, she began singing professionally in the 1950s with the bands of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Roy Eldridge. In 1952, she auditioned for the Frances Faye group in Las Vegas and became a member until 1954, when they split up. She continued to make numerous albums under the name Ernestine Anderson with her own groups or as a solo artist.
She was a jazz singer and musician who performed all over the world. In particular, she released albums in the USA and Japan. She performed in many different venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall. Ernestine Anderson sang at the White House in honor of President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson is an American singer, songwriter, composer, producer and performer. She is one of the world’s most respected jazz singers. Cassandra Wilson was born on December 3, 1957 in Memphis, Tennessee. She has been singing since childhood. Indeed, her father was a preacher and her mother sang in her church choir. Cassandra began singing with them when she was just five years old.
She went on to study at the University of California at Los Angeles, graduating in 1979 with a degree in music education. After graduating from UCLA, she moved to New York and became involved in the New York jazz scene. Cassandra Wilson made her first recording for Columbia Records in 1983 with “Blue Prelude”. Her second album, “New Moon Daughter”, was released in 1985. It was at this point that she began singing jazz songs she had written or co-written herself. Wilson’s first album was released in 1987, entitled “Blue Lights ‘Til Dawn”, which went platinum and made her one of the most successful jazz artists of all time.
As she grew older, she became more interested in jazz as well as blues music, which were popular among black Americans at the time. Cassandra moved to New York after high school to study at the Jazzmobile program for young people interested in the arts…
Cassandra Wilson is a singer, songwriter and jazz musician. Her latest album is entitled “Thunderbird”.
Blossom Dearie
Blossom Dearie was an American jazz singer known for her delicate voice and witty lyrics. Her work earned her the nickname “The Beautiful Singer of Belle Harbour”. She was also dubbed the “First Lady of Jazz”, as she was the first woman to have her own TV show on a major American network. Blossom Dearie stands out as one of the most positive and prolific singers in the jazz genre. She’s known for her impressionistic interpretations of standards, lush vocals and stylized delivery.
She was born in Yonkers, New York, on April 6, 1923. She came from a very musical family, with her father a conductor, her mother an opera singer and her sister a dance teacher. She was the youngest of three sisters. Dearie’s first public performance was at a school show when she was just six years old. She went on to study singing with Madame Gertrude Lawrence in London, England. Her family moved to the Bronx in her late teens. She attended the Juilliard School of Music in 1939, where she studied piano and voice.
She began singing in nightclubs at the age of 17 because she needed money to pay her tuition. She began singing in 1940 at the age of 18 when she was hired to sing with Danny Kaye’s group, The Kaye Trio.
In 1942, Dearie joined a trio formed by Dorothy Collins called The Ladybirds. They sang in concerts but also recorded for Capitol Records from 1944. The trio’s membership changed several times over the years, Dearie being one of its longest-serving members.
In 1943, she toured the country on stage with comedian Jack Pearl for three years before deciding to return to New York to pursue a career as a jazz singer.
In 1944, she dropped out of school because she wanted to pursue her singing career.
In 1945, after an appearance on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on CBS Radio, Dearie became known as a major artist.
In 1949, she met Harry James at an audition at his nightclub in New York’s Lexington Hotel, and he invited her to perform with his band at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.
Her career spanned several decades, beginning in the mid-1940s and ending in 2008, when she passed away at the age of 84.
Astrud Gilberto
Astrud Gilberto is a Brazilian singer-songwriter. Astrud Gilberto is often considered Brazil’s first pop idol. She is known for her soft, sensual voice and her ability to sing jazz and bossa nova standards with an almost ethereal feel. She became famous for her performance of the song “The Girl from Ipanema” on João Gilberto’s The Astrud Gilberto Album. She is best known for her English-language covers of popular bossa nova songs and for her close, long-standing association with American jazz pianist and composer George Shearing.
Astrud’s voice was light, sweet and sensual. Her jazz-pop albums in French and Portuguese were subsequently released with English singers such as Julie London, Astrud Gilberto, Carmen McRae and Dionne Warwick. Astrud was also a soloist in several films, including Black Orpheus (1959) and Bossa Nova (1962).
She was born of Brazilian parents on April 3, 1940 in Tres Coracoes, Minas Gerais, Brazil, under the name Astrud Evangelina Weinert. She arrived in the United States in the early 1960s. Her father was a German immigrant who worked as a building contractor, and her mother came from an upper-middle-class family in Sao Paulo. Astrud showed an early interest in singing, and at the age of 11 joined a local amateur group of children from Tres Coracoes.
Gilberto’s first professional singing job was at the age of 16 with an orchestra directed by Jair Amorim at the Hotel Brescia in Niterói near Rio de Janeiro. In 1959, she joined the cast of “Jamaica”, singing both Brazilian folk songs and Broadway tunes.
In 1962, she recorded her first solo album with John Pisano on guitar and Laurindo Almeida on guitar and flute. She subsequently became popular in the U.S. after singing on Walter Wanderley’s “Wanderley Plays Bossa Nova” album. She was introduced to the American public through this release.
