Judy at Carnegie Hall is the second live album by the American actress and singer Judy Garland. It was released on July 10, 1961, by Capitol Records. The album is a live recording of a concert by Garland held at Carnegie Hall in New York City, with backing orchestra conducted by Mort Lindsey. It was recorded on the night of Sunday April 23, 1961 and re-released decades later as an extended, two-disc CD. Garland's live performances were a big success at the time and her record company wanted to capture that energy onto a recording. The double album became a smash, both critically and commercially. The album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, making Garland the first woman to win the award, and spent thirteen weeks at #1 on the Billboard album chart.

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Anita Kert was born in Montreal, Quebec, the eldest of four children born to Orthodox Jewish parents, Harry and Lillian "Libbie" Kert (née Pearson; originally Peretz). She had a younger sister and two younger brothers, one of whom, Larry Kert (1930–1991), became an actor and singer best known for originating the role of Tony in the Broadway musical West Side Story. The family moved to Hollywood when she was nine years old. She graduated from Hollywood High School in 1938, and attended the College of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1941, she joined WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a singer. Billed as Anita Kurt, she was a regular on The Ona Munson Show, The New Jack Carson Show, and the Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou Show. Billed as Anita Ellis, she was also a regular on The Charlie McCarthy Show and The Red Skelton Show. Ellis dubbed the singing voices of such actresses as Rita Hayworth (notably in Gilda, 1946), Vera-Ellen and Jeanne Crain.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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Connie Francis is the prototype for the female pop singer of today. At the height of her chart popularity in the late '50s and early '60s, Francis was unique as a female recording artist, amassing record sales equal to or surpassing those of many of her male contemporaries. Ultimately, she branched into other styles of music -- big band, country, ethnic, and more. She still challenges Madonna as the biggest-selling female recording artist of all time.

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The 1957 LP Dinah Washington Sings Fats Waller appropriately brings together Waller's vivacious songs and Washington's demonstrative vocal talents. The jazz diva effortlessly handles Waller classics like "Keeping out of Mischief Now," "Just Squeeze Me," and "Ain't Mibehavin'," while turning in particularly emotive renditions of "'Tain't Noboby's Biz-Ness If I Do" (actually a Clarence Williams tune), and "Jitterbug Waltz" (this last cut featuring Washington's keen and signature blend of blues vocal power and streamlined diction). Adding nice variety to the already strong set, Washington's husband at the time, saxophonist Eddie Chamblee, joins the singer for playful duets on "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Everybody Loves My Baby" (ironically, the love sentiments of both songs were not to stick, as the couple called it quits after just a year of marriage). In addition to "Everybody Loves My Baby" and "'Tain't Noboby's Biz-Ness If I Do," Washington covers other songs associated with Waller, but not penned by him, including "Christopher Columbus" and the highlight of the set, "Somebody's Rocking My Dreamboat." Topped off with solidly swinging charts by Ernie Wilkins and fine backing by an all-star band, the date registers as one of Dinah Washington's best and most enjoyable records. [Reissued in the '90s by Verve as The Fats Waller Songbook.]

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June Christy (1925-1990) was one of many female vocalists, like Peggy Lee and Doris Day, who emerged from the rigors of the Big Band era of the 1930s and ‘40s to become major recording artists in their own right. Today, Christy is best known as an innovator in the Cool Jazz genre of the 1950s; her voice—a smoky, slow vibrato, originating deep in the chest—will forever be an important part of The Great American Songbook.

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Eartha Kitt was born in the cotton fields of South Carolina. Kitt's mother was a sharecropper of African-American and Cherokee Native American descent. Her father's identity is unknown. Given away by her mother, she arrived in Harlem at age nine. At 15, she quit high school to work in a Brooklyn factory. As a teenager, Kitt lived in friends' homes and in the subways. However, by the 1950s, she had sung and danced her way out of poverty and into the spotlight: performing with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe on a European tour, soloing at a Paris nightclub and becoming the toast of the Continent. Orson Welles called her "the most exciting girl in the world". She also spoke out on hard issues. She took over the role of Catwoman for the third and final season of the television series Batman (1966), replacing Julie Newmar. Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer in her home in Weston, Connecticut, on Christmas Day 2008.

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