Beegie Adair

Beegie Adair stood out as a prolific, award-winning jazz pianist and arranger whose readings of jazz standards, popular songs, and show tunes reached listeners worldwide, with sales surpassing two million recordings. Her melodic lines and nimble touch echoed the playing of key influences George Shearing, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, and Erroll Garner.

She spent her childhood in Cave City, Kentucky, beginning piano lessons at age five and continuing her studies through college at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, where she earned a B.S. in music education. While in school and afterward she performed with jazz groups, then spent three years teaching music to children before relocating to Nashville. There she worked as a session musician for WSM-TV and The Johnny Cash Show (1969-1971); she and her husband also established a jingle company to create music for commercials.

In 1982 Adair and saxophonist Denis Solee launched the Adair-Solee Quartet, which later became the jazz sextet Be-Bop Co-Op. Her first trio recording, Escape to New York, appeared in 1998 and featured bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. She moved to the fledgling Hillsboro label for 2001’s Dream Dancing: The Songs of Cole Porter, with bassist Roger Spencer and drummer Chris Brown, initiating a long series of themed albums centered on songwriters and singers. In 2002 she received the designation of Steinway Artist.

The independent jazz label Green Hill Productions issued most of her recordings, among them 2008’s Yesterday: A Solo Piano Tribute to the Music of the Beatles, 2010’s Swingin’ with Sinatra, and 2012’s The Real Thing, which spent 20 weeks on the jazz charts and was selected one of the year’s best 100 jazz albums. In 2015 her trio joined saxophonist Don Aliquo for Too Marvelous for Words.

Beginning in 2011 Adair and her trio performed regularly at Birdland in New York, often collaborating there with vocalist Monica Ramey; the partnership resulted in the spring 2016 album Some Enchanted Evening. The following year she released the compilation By Request, spotlighting her most requested and personally favored pieces. Beegie Adair died at her home in Franklin, Tennessee, on January 23, 2022; she was 84 years old.