June Hutton (née June Marvel Cowan; August 11, 1919 Bloomington, Illinois – May 2, 1973 Encino, Los Angeles) was an American actress and vocalist, popular with big bands during the 1940s. She was the younger sister of vocalist Ina Ray Hutton.
Hutton's parents were Marvel Svea Williams and Odie Daniel Cowan. June and her older sister, Ina Ray Hutton, both grew up to be entertainers and performers during the Big Band era.
Growing up in Chicago, Hutton attended Hyde Park High School, as did her older sister, Ina. While attending high school, she worked in the dress department at Marshall Fields department store. After graduating, she quit her job and pursued her singing career.
Sallie Blair was a sultry jazz singer from the 1950's-60's. Blair got her start with Johnny Otis, who featured her in his band. She went on to sing with aggregations of Illinois Jacquet and Duke Ellington. Her solo career developed pursuant to her winning sequential prizes on "The Chance Of A Lifetime" TV program, which landed her a booking at the Vanity Fair club in Miami. Following engagements at a variety of nightclubs, Cab Calloway signed her for his "Cotton Club Revue" in 1956. Described by Miles Davis as the "brown Marilyn Monroe", Blair's barefoot dancing and whispered songs interspersed with screaming notes made for a dramatic stage presence. She left the revue in 1957 citing poor treatment of colored artists, and performed extensively in South American clubs. Her lack of chart success led to fading popularity and eventual withdrawal from the industry.
A constant visitor to the charts in the first half of the 1950s, Georgia Gibbs failed to leave as strong an imprint as many of her fellow stars, at least in part because of her versatility. She did ballads, straight pop, novelties, pop-jazz, cha-cha-chas - whatever the marketplace might take, she could adapt. In the mid-'50s she, like many other White pop singers, covered R&B hits for the pop audience. Today's she's most remembered for outselling Etta James (with a cover of "The Wallflower," renamed "Dance with Me Henry") and LaVern Baker (on "Tweedle Dee"), although this phase of her career was pretty brief. Gibbs began singing in Boston ballrooms as a teenager, and made her recording debut in 1938 under her given name, Freida Gibbons. She made some recordings in the early '40s with Artie Shaw's band, and by the early '50s had waxed some hits for the Coral label. She enjoyed her commercial prime, though, on Mercury, for whom she recorded hit after hit from 1951 to 1956. The tango-tinged "Kiss of Fire," which went all the way to number one in 1952, was the biggest and best of these.
Cleo Laine (born October 28, 1927, Southall, Middlesex, England—died July 24, 2025, Wavendon, Buckinghamshire, England) was a British singer and actress with a four-octave range who mastered a variety of styles but was best known as the “Queen of Jazz.”