There was a moment in 1965 when Ethel Ennis looked like the next big female vocalist in jazz. Ennis, who died Sunday (Feb. 17) at her Baltimore, Md., home of complications from a stroke, had a record contract with RCA, and she’d already performed with the likes of Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman. She had a lustrous soprano and a nimble way around a lyric and a scat solo. The stardom never came, and Ennis never regretted it. She gave up the international career and settled into her role as the jazz queen of her hometown, Baltimore. She continued to perform into her early eighties (she was 86 when she died). True, she never achieved the fame of fellow Baltimorean Billie Holiday, but she never suffered through drug addiction and bad marriages either. Who’s to say that’s a bad choice?

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Joni Mitchell is one of the most highly regarded and influential songwriters of the 20th century. Her melodious tunes support her poetic and often very personal lyrics to make her one of the most authentic artists of her time. As a performer she is widely hailed for her unique style of playing guitar. Mitchell's unflinching struggle for her own artistic independence has made her a role model for many other musicians, and somewhat of a bane to music industry executives. She is critical of the industry and of the shallowness that she sees in much of today's popular music. Mitchell is also a noted painter and has created the beautiful artwork that appears on the packaging of her music albums.

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Jazz singer Nancy Wilson, a three-time Grammy Award-winner, was born on February 20, 1937 in Chillicothe, Ohio to iron-worker Olden Wilson and the former Lillian Ryan, who worked as a domestic servant. Nancy was the first of six children. Her father's love of music and the records he played at home were a huge influence on Nancy as a young girl. She already knew she would be a singer by the time she was four years old, and developed her talent by singing in the church choir.

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Born in New York in 1917, Syms first became interested in jazz through radio broadcasts of live shows on New York's famed 52nd Street, then also known as "Swing Street." As a teenager, too young and too poor to be admitted to the city's jazz clubs, she hid in coatrooms to listen to such greats as Art Tatum, Lester Young, Mildred Bailey, and the woman who would become her mentor and role model: Billie Holiday. Syms made her own debut in 1941, at a 51st Street club called Kelly's Stable. In 1946, she made her first recording, "I'm In the Mood for Love."

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Internationally hailed as one of the greatest songstresses of our time, GRAMMY Award winning Roberta Flack remains unparalleled in her ability to tell a story through her music. Her songs bring insight into our lives, loves, culture and politics, while effortlessly traversing a broad musical landscape from pop to soul to folk to jazz. She was the first solo artist to win the GRAMMY Award Record of the Year for two (2) consecutive years: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face won the 1973 GRAMMY and Killing Me Softly with His Song won the 1974 GRAMMY.

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Ella Fitzgerald, known as “The First Lady of Song,” was a revolutionary American jazz singer who performed all over the world. Her signature style included her iconic vocal range, clear tone and ability to improvise with her hallmark scat singing. Her many awards and accolades are a reflection of the colossal inspiration she was to many.  

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Connee Boswell was an A-list female entertainer and one of the brightest stars of American popular music in the first half of the 20th century, but in this age of radio, few of her fans knew a childhood illness meant she used a wheelchair. Regarded by her musical peers and some of the world’s most famous singers, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr, as “the most widely imitated singer of all time”, Connee Boswell is a star who is little remembered now but in her day was one of the most recognisable singers.

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Best remembered today for her work with Bob Crosby in the late 1930s, Marion Mann also had an active and successful radio career. She worked regularly on the networks during the early 1940s before retiring from show business in 1946 and settling down into the domestic life.

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Definitely the most talented and arguably the all-around best jazz vocal group of all time, the Boswell Sisters parlayed their New Orleans upbringing into a swinging delivery that featured not only impossibly close harmonies, but countless maneuvers of vocal gymnastics rarely equaled on record. Connee (sometimes Connie), Helvetia (Vet), and Martha Boswell grew up singing together, soaking up Southern gospel and blues through close contact with the Black community. They first performed at vaudeville houses around the New Orleans area, and began appearing on local radio by 1925. At first, they played strictly instrumentals, with Connee on cello, saxophone, and guitar; Martha on piano, and Vet on violin, banjo, and guitar. The station began featuring them in a vocal setting as well, with Connee taking the lead on many songs (despite a childhood accident that had crippled her and left her in a wheelchair). Word of their incredible vocal talents led to appearances in Chicago and New York, and the Boswell Sisters began recording in 1930 for Victor. By the following year, they'd moved to Brunswick and reached the Hit Parade with "When I Take My Sugar to Tea," taken from the Marx Brothers' film Monkey Business and featuring the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra in support. The trio continued to work with many of the best jazzmen in the field (including Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, and Bunny Berigan), and appeared in the 1932 film extravaganza The Big Broadcast with Bing Crosby and Cab Calloway. The Boswell Sisters hit the top of the Hit Parade a second time in 1935 with "The Object of My Affection" from the film Times Square Lady.

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Billie Holiday, born April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a superstar of her day. She first rose to prominence in the 1930's with a unique style that reinvented the conventions of modern singing and performance. More than 80 years after making her first recording Billie's legacy continues to embody what is elegant and cool in contemporary music. Holiday's complicated life and her genre-defining autobiography “Lady Sings the Blues” made her a cultural icon. The evocative, soulful voice which she boldly put forth as a force for good, turned any song she sang into her own. Today, Billie Holiday is remembered for her musical masterpieces, her songwriting skills, creativity and courageous views on inequality and justice.

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