Being a dance-band vocalist in the early 1950s meant sitting at the side of the stage in a pretty frock awaiting the call to perform, and the stylish singer Barbara Jay, who has died with dementia aged 94, described this as serving her “apprenticeship” in the business. Greater success and satisfaction followed when she sang with Ronnie Scott and Benny Goodman, and later with her husband, the jazz tenor-saxophonist Tommy Whittle.
It was 1953 when the saxophonist Pete King, then managing Scott’s feisty nine-piece group, called Jay to offer her the job of singer with the band. Vying to make it the UK’s top jazz outfit, Scott and King had assembled the best upstart jazz musicians in the country. This was not an easy billet musically for a young vocalist, since Scott himself was “never very happy with girl singers anyway”. The band member Benny Green recalled: “She stayed longer than all the other girl singers put together and she certainly came to play an integral role in the band’s performance.” For all its many indignities on the road, with the ladies’ dressing room often doubling as a toilet or vice versa, Barbara relished her time with Scott and company, remaining friends with King and Scott and appearing often at their famous London club in Frith Street.
