Lorraine Feather

Lorraine Feather was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles as the child of jazz writer Leonard Feather and his spouse Jane, herself a working vocalist, with Billie Holiday serving as her godmother. A broad range of sounds filled the household during her childhood, making a life in music feel almost inevitable even though her parents offered neither encouragement nor resistance. Once her education ended, she headed back to Manhattan intending to act and took on occasional singing jobs, among them cabaret work, simply to cover expenses. She appeared in both the Broadway production and the road company of Jesus Christ Superstar, then supplied background vocals for Grand Funk Railroad and Petula Clark.

In the late 1970s her interests narrowed toward jazz; she made her first recorded appearance on a Joanne Grauer date and issued her own debut album for Concord, Sweet Lorraine, in 1978. During the 1990s membership in the vocal ensemble Full Swing established her as a leading jazz interpreter, allowing her rich contralto to convey the full character of each piece. While she already supplied original words to numbers performed by the group, her songwriting truly expanded once she began releasing projects under her own name. Jazz observers have repeatedly noted her skill at fitting lyrics to difficult, lesser-known instrumentals by Fats Waller and Duke Ellington as well as her partnerships with several prominent contemporary composers. Her comic material stands out in particular, as evidenced by “Imaginary Guy,” “You’re Outa Here,” “Antarctica,” and “Indiana Lana,” yet her ballads, swing numbers, and pop-oriented songs have likewise drawn consistent acclaim.

She has produced a substantial body of work for television, collecting seven Emmy nominations in the process, and has also contributed to film scores such as The Jungle Book 2 and the return to singing by Julie Andrews in The Princess Diaries 2. Opera singer Jessye Norman included one of her compositions, “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” in the program that opened the 1996 Olympic Games.