Bryson, Jeanie

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Bryson, Jeanie

Bryson, Jeanie, jazz singer, daughter of Dizzy Gillespie; b. N.Y., March 10, 1958. Her mother was Connie Bryson, a songwriter and pianist; her father was the famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (her parents were never married). She was raised in East Brunswick, N.J., and began playing piano while in the first grade. She attended Livingston Coll. (Rutgers Univ.), where she studied harmony with Kenny Barron but focused primarily on ethnomusicology. From 1981 to 1987 she was a postal worker by day and singer by night. She went full-time as a vocalist in the late 1980s, and toured Europe in 1992-93. She made her solo recording debut in 1993, and continues to record and perform.

Discography

I Love Being Here with You (1993); Tonight I Need You So (1994); Some Cats Know (1996).

—Lewis Porter