Horn, Shirley

Horn, Shirley, American jazz singer; b. Washington, D.C., May 1, 1934. She is also a fine pianist who is among the very best self-accompanying vocalists. She can swing powerfully as both a singer and a player, but it is her understated gift for interpreting the emotional implications of a lyric that makes her so effective on slow numbers. Though her languid ballad approach and lithe, harmonically rich piano style remain essentially unchanged since she began recording in the early 1960s, her popular breakthrough did not take place until the late 1980s, when she signed with Verve, her current label.

She began playing piano at age four, and quickly proved to be a gifted and single-mindedly devoted student. She studied composition at Howard Univ. at age 12 and later attended the school as an undergraduate, and began working in Washington, D.C., nightspots. Her first album, Embers and Ashes, in 1960, caught the attention of Miles Davis, who recruited her to open for him at the Village Vanguard. During the early 1960s she worked major jazz clubs, recorded albums with Quincy Jones and Jimmy Jones for Mercury and ABC /Paramount and sang on the soundtracks of the movies For the Love of Ivy and A Dandy in Aspic.By the mid-1960s, she dropped out of the national jazz scene and moved back to Washington to raise her daughter, playing enough around the city to sustain her reputation as a local legend. Her comeback started with an appearance at the 1981 North Sea Jazz Festival, which resulted in the best of her four SteepleChase albums. By the late 1980s, she was well on her way to her present jazz-star status. Her skill as an accompanist has been utilized by Carmen McRae on her Novus album Sarah—ated to You and Toots Thielemans on his EmArcy album For My Lady. She also appears in the 1990 movie Tune in Tomorrow and sings two songs on Wynton Marsalis’s excellent soundtrack.

Discography

Loads of Love/Shirley Horn with Horns (1963); Travelin’ Light (1965); Violets for Your Furs (1981); I Thought About You (1987); Softly (1988); Close Enough for Love (1989); You Won’t Forget Me (1991); Here’s to Life (1992); Light Out of Darkness (1993); I Love You, Paris (1994); The Main Ingredient (1996); Loving You (1997); I Remember Miles (1998); Ultimate S. H. (1999).

—Andrew Gilbert