iSound

She was born Barbara LeCocq; her musical heritage is traceable to a great uncle, Alexandre Charles LeCoq, an important nineteenth-century composer of French light opera. Born into a musical family in Detroit, she worked with small dance bands there before attending Wellesley College on scholarship and majoring in music theory. Boston was a hotbed of jazz in the late 40s and early 50s, allowing Barbara to sing with major instrumentalists such as Marian McPartland, Bobby Hackett, Vic Dickenson, Frankie Newton, Johnny Windhurst, and George Wein. At the same time, she sang in the college choir, worked on the campus radio station and newspaper, and arranged for and conducted the Madrigal Group and brass choir concerts. Her professional career started upon graduation. Her early recordings for Riverside and Prestige met with immediate critical acclaim and led to her winning the DownBeat International Critics' Poll as the Best New Singer of 1956. She appeared in small clubs in New York, i...