Rebecca Parris — R.I.P.

[Ron Thorne]

Rebecca Parris, Jazz Singer, Is Dead at 66


Rebecca Parris performing in 2007 at Birdland in New York with the bassist Dean Johnson. Credit Richard Termine for The New York Times

By Andrew R. Chow

June 22, 2018

Rebecca Parris, a husky-voiced jazz singer known for both her blistering scat runs and her deeply affecting interpretations of ballads, died on Sunday in South Yarmouth, Mass. She was 66.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Marla Kleman, who said Ms. Parris had collapsed after a performance and was taken to Cape Cod Hospital, where she died. No cause was given, but Ms. Kleman said Ms. Parris’s health had been declining since 2004, when she had a heart attack and developed severe osteoporosis.

Ms. Parris was hailed by local journalists as “Boston’s first lady of jazz,” but over a four-decade career she also earned the respect of the jazz world at large, playing with luminaries like Dizzy Gillespie, Gary Burton and Buddy Rich. She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Blue Note in Greenwich Village, the Apollo Theater in Harlem and Tanglewood. She recorded 10 albums and was praised by some of her vocal heroes, including Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae.

“Her voice, a rich contralto with a baritone resonance, is so commanding that when a song’s attitude is combative, she can scare you,” Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times in 2007, reviewing her performance at Birdland. “But when the mood is playful, she can also enfold you in a musical bear hug.”

It took Ms. Parris many years to find her footing as a jazz singer. She attended the Boston Conservatory to study opera, but dropped out and went to New York to pursue a career in musical theater. When she failed to land any significant parts, she went back to Boston and sang in a Top 40 cover band for a decade.

She saw a new path forward after sitting in on a few jazz gigs in Boston.

“It was like manna from heaven for me: lyrics and chord changes and sensible whole thoughts and beautiful ideas,” she said in 2008 when she appeared on the NPR show “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz.”



Her wrenching ballad performances and suave renditions of bossa nova standards earned her glowing reviews, increasingly prestigious bookings and the admiration of her colleagues. Her performance at the 1992 Floating Jazz Festival, a cruise across the Caribbean, caught the eye of Mr. Burton, the acclaimed vibraphonist. They recorded an album together, “It’s Another Day,” in 1993.

“She was very musical and had excellent taste in songs,” Mr. Burton said in a telephone interview. “She was underappreciated and underacknowledged.”