Biography
A singer shaped by the cool-school stylings of Chris Connor, Julie London, and June Christy, Barbara Montgomery has performed jazz since the 1960s yet waited until 1996 to issue her debut recording. Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, she spent the early and middle years of that decade in Vietnam while her father worked there as an electrical engineer, then settled in Philadelphia toward the end of the 1960s. During the early and middle 1970s she held a staff position on The Mike Douglas Show, handling responsibilities that ranged from makeup artist to camera operator to stage manager; when the program relocated to Los Angeles she elected to stay behind in Philadelphia. Later in the decade she joined pop and folk artist Harry Chapin’s touring entourage, contributing lighting support and occasional background vocals, yet after the birth of her first child in 1979 she stepped away from music for several years to concentrate on raising her family. Since 1986 she has held the post of musical director for fitness authority Richard Simmons, a commitment that, alongside parenting duties, left scant room for jazz performance throughout the 1980s. Montgomery resumed live appearances in 1992, gradually building an audience on the Philadelphia jazz scene alongside guitarist Jimmy Bruno and pianists Sid Simmons, Barry Sames, and Dennis Fortune. For her 1996 debut she enlisted former Chick Corea drummer Dave Weckl and served as co-producer with guitarist Michael Sembello; the follow-up, Ask Me Now, appeared in 1998. Three years afterward came Dakini Land, a Chick Corea tribute that earned widespread acclaim and established her as a vocalist worth watching, a standing further reinforced by the standards collection Little Sunflower, released the next year.
Albums