Nancy Wilson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRKeQOuzIxo

Though she embodies the record industry term crossover, and prefers to be referred to by the more general term "song stylist," Nancy Wilson is most assuredly a master jazz song stylist in addition to her other vocal and entertaining skills. She's a versatile artist, in the tradition of other song stylists who excelled in jazz, such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Nat Cole. Her most enduring influences are the passionate song stylings of Jimmy Scott and the vocal timbres of the "Queen of the Blues", Dinah Washington. Other influences included Cole, Louis Jordan, LaVern Baker, and Billy Eckstine.
After her family moved from Chillicothe to nearby Columbus, Ohio, young Nancy won a talent show at age 15, where the prize was a television show called Skyline Melodies. Soon she joined tenor saxophonist Rusty Bryant's band at the Carolyn Club, which led to her first recording for Dot Records. Eager to learn her craft, young Nancy sat in at clubs around town, including a fortuitous encounter with the great Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. Nancy so impressed the sax master that he urged her to come to New York and look him up when she arrived. In 1959 she did just that, whereupon she met her longtime manager John Levy. So excited was Levy that he arranged for Capitol Records A&R man Dave Cavanaugh to hear his new client, the results of which were a long, rich association with the label.
Nancy's first record for Capitol was Like in Love. In 1961 she dropped the hit single Guess Who I Saw Today, an ironically unfolding cheatin' husband tale that became her lifelong signature song. In 1962 she collaborated with Adderley's popular quintet, a record which yielded such gems as Save Your Love for Me, which proved to be another big hit for Nancy, as well as exceptional versions of Nat Adderley's The Old Country and the standard A Sleepin' Bee.
Since then Ms. Wilson has been a major star, with numerous television appearances, as both guest and host. She copped an Emmy Award for her NBC series The Nancy Wilson Show, which ran during the 1967-68 seasons. Her stardom was duly cemented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nancy Wilson has been a tireless champion of various charities and altruistic causes and is the voice of the syndicated National Public Radio series Jazz Profiles, where she always speaks with great conviction, authority and love on the subject of jazz.
http://www.wbgo.org/ontheair/artists/nancyWilson.php