Marian McPartland

On the surface it wouldn't seem as if Marian McPartland fit into smoky jazz clubs. After all, she's an upstanding, refined English woman with a gentle manner that suggests Mary Poppins hanging out on 52nd Street. To be sure, her music is always tasteful, but McPartland always swings and she had to be one tough bird to survive and prosper in the American jazz scene of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. While she's recorded prolifically, many people know McPartland from her radio show, Piano Jazz. A weekly delight, this show gives her the opportunity to talk and jam with the best jazz musicians and vocalists around. (The series is so good that many programs have since been released on CD.) She may be of British origin, but McPartland has long been an American treasure.