Looking for piano jazz artist and singers?

First and foremost, there were Fats Waller and Nat "King" Cole. Too often people forget that Cole started out as a pianist and started singing later. His trio sessions from the 1940's find him still working as a pianist/vocalist. Blossom Dearie Bob Dorough Dave Frishberg These three are all excellent, although some people seem to take them for granted because some of their work is humorous. Dorough was the musical director for and wrote many of the songs used on the "Schoolhouse Rock" series. If you've ever sung along to"Conjunction Junction" or "Three Is a Magic Number", then you have sung some of his work. Dearie is the singer heard the "Figure Eight" song on that series. Frishberg might be best known as the composer of "I'm Just a Bill" for that series, but he has written many, many outstanding songs such as "Peel Me a Grape" (a song made famous by Dearie and also recorded by Diana Krall), "Sweet Kentucky Ham", and "You Are There". Nina Simone Rose Murphy Barbara Carroll Hildegarde Bobby Short Diane Schuur Tania Maria Holly Cole Dr. John Jamie Cullum Les McCann (mostly a pianist, but his biggest hit, "Compared To What" featured him as a vocalist as well) Jay McShann (mostly a pianist, but he was known to sing on his recordings as well) Hadda Brooks Charles Brown These two it might be argued, were more blues performers rather than jazz performers. Jazz was clearly one of their influences however and each was a marvelous pianist. Brown, in fact, was one of the influences on another great pianist/vocalist, Ray Charles. And several great singers also accompanied themselves on piano occassionally, since they had actually started out as pianists -- Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Karrin Allyson all fall in that category

Shirley Horn - a very elegant woman who has a beautiful voice and excellent piano player. Later in her career, she had to quit piano due to loss of her leg to diabetes-related issues. When she died recently, the jazz world lost one of its most valued treasures.