Shirley Horn, the Grammy-winning singer and pianist whose richly expressive vocal style made her one of the most popular performers in jazz, died Thursday night in Washington, D.C. She was 71.
Horn died after a lengthy illness, the Verve Music Group, her record label, announced Friday.
Horn lost her right foot to diabetes in 2001 and later much of her right leg. She had also battled breast cancer and arthritis over the last few years.
"We've lost the last of the great ones from that generation," composer Johnny Mandel, who arranged her albums "Here's to Life" and "You're My Thrill," told The Times on Friday. "I think she was the best singer there was."
Horn brought a richly layered storytelling quality to everything she sang.
"She can swing, but slow songs are her specialty," Marian McPartland, the pianist and host of the NPR program "Piano Jazz," told The Times some years ago. "She makes everything count, and has an uncanny use of musical space -- she's not a busy player who has to fill every musical hole. She plays a single chord, and it becomes the basis for a spare, meditative quality. There's a sensuous, sexy quality to her music too."
Jazz critic Nat Hentoff said Friday that Horn was a favorite of her peers.
"Very few singers in my experience have been so admired by musicians," Hentoff said.
Born and raised in Washington, Horn was one of three children. Her father worked for the government and later drove a cab part time to help pay for her musical studies.
Her grandmother had a pipe organ and a piano in the parlor of her home. Years later, Horn recalled that she couldn't wait to get into that parlor.
"I had my first lesson when I was 4," she told The Times. "All I can remember is just wanting to play the piano. I didn't do the normal things teenagers do. All I wanted was music. I wanted it with a passion."
After years of private lessons, Horn studied music at Howard University's School for Gifted Children from ages 12 to 18. She was a devotee of Rachmaninoff and Debussy but also favored jazz greats Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson. She switched to jazz when she was 17 and won a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York City but had to decline for financial reasons. She went instead to Howard.
At 21, she married Shepherd Deering, an employee of Washington's Metropolitan Transit Agency. Her husband and their daughter, Rainy, survive her, as do several grandchildren.
