After earning a degree in classical flute and music from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she graduated summa cum laude and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Terry Blaine reached jazz through an indirect path. During the 1970s she played in Top 40 bands and recorded in studios throughout the New York City region, later joining pop group Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons as a backup singer on a worldwide tour. She recalls that nothing compares to the experience of hearing 10,000 fans sing back one of Valli’s signature hits, “Big Girls Don’t Cry-Yi-Yi.” In the mid-’80s she encountered pianist Mark Shane and began collaborating with him, appearing together at several prominent New York City venues including a four-year engagement at Café Society that ended in 1991. Her debut album, Whose Honey Are You?, arrived in 1993 and was named a Jazz Journal International Record of the Year. The following year she recorded her second release, Terry Blaine in Concert, captured live in Cleveland. These successes led to performances at jazz festivals and on jazz cruises, headline appearances with her group at New York’s Fat Tuesdays, and a revue of Irving Berlin songs featuring Shane and guitarist Frank Vignola. A subsequent tour of Germany produced the album With Thee I Swing. In 1999 she issued Too Hot for Words-Great Ladies of Swing, a tribute to the leading female vocalists of earlier eras. While her recordings frequently explore the vocal approaches of the 1920s through the 1940s, they are not limited to those styles. She has also joined Shane on two of his projects, Blue Room for KamaDisc and On Treasure Island for JukeBox Jazz. Blaine and her husband, jazz guitarist Tom Desisto, reside in Woodstock, New York, where they create music for commercial clients as well as children’s videos and television. She continues to perform at jazz venues nationwide and serves as the featured vocalist with cornetist and trumpeter Ed Polcer’s Jazz All-Stars. Through her work Terry Blaine has established herself as one of today’s foremost interpreters of the Great American songbook while upholding the vocal excellence of the legendary songstresses who preceded her.
