Barbara Jay

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Barbara Jay (born 15 August 1932) is a British jazz singer. She grew up in a musical family, with her father playing trumpet in many leading bands. By the 1960s she was working with top British jazz musicians such as Ronnie Scott and Don Lusher. As a solo artist she shared the stage at Ronnie Scott’s with Horace Silver, Pharoah Sanders, George Chisholm and Dave Holland. She later performed with Jon Hendricks on the Saga Ruby cruise ship and on the P&O Oriana.

In 1970 she was chosen to sing with Benny Goodman and his orchestra on a European tour, appearing in cities like Paris, Milan, Copenhagen and Zurich, and at the Carnegie Tavern in New York with Ellis Larkins accompanying her.

In 1993 she created the Ella Fitzgerald Songbook Show, which has been performed at major venues and festivals across Britain, and she has also performed with her quartet at Pizza on the Park in Knightsbridge, London. She frequently sang with her saxophonist husband, Tommy Whittle, who died in October 2013, and has appeared often on British television and radio. She has performed at European festivals in Nice and Cork.

In December 2012, she contributed to the BBC Four documentary Len Goodman’s Dancing Feet: the British Ballroom Story, sharing her experiences singing for dance bands in the 1950s.