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WE REMEMBER: Jazz pianist and singer Shirley Horn dies at 71.
*Shirley Horn, a noted ballad singer and a pianist whose career took off under Miles Davis in the 1960s, died Thursday of complications from diabetes, her record company said in a statement. She was 71.
Born in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1934, Horn learned how to play the piano at age four and went on to study classical piano at Howard University. She formed put her first trio in 1954, and achieved her first success in jazz during the early sixties with the encouragement of Miles Davis and Quincy Jones. She recorded three albums during 1963-1965 for Mercury and ABC/Paramount, but decided to stay in the Washington, D.C. are to raise a family instead of pursuing her career.
In the 1980s, she returned to the limelight on SteepleChase Records and put out a series of well-received albums. In 1986, she began recording for Verve and released such albums as “I Remember Miles,” a tribute album to Davis which won the Grammy for best jazz vocal album in 1998. Six of her albums during this period were nominated for Grammy awards.
The Kennedy Center honored Horn with a tribute in 2004, and she was awarded a Jazz Master Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts.
"I'm not a quitter, I'm a fighter," she told The Washington Post in late 2004, a few years after diabetes forced the amputation of her right foot. "I've tried to keep things as level as possible through this whole thing -- I'm cool. I know what I have to d I'm never going to give up the piano, I'm never going to stop singing till God says, 'I called your number.' I didn't panic, because I have so much love for what I do."
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