Mary Stallings

Mary Stallings (born August 16, 1939 in San Francisco) is an American jazz vocalist. One of the gifted, swinging vocalists in jazz, spent decades as a local San Francisco legend before reestablishing her national profile in the mid-1990s. Her voice, sturdy and nonvirtuosic, has a rich low end; its clearest template is Dinah Washington. And above all it's a jazz voice, not an R&B voice; she's for real. Perhaps the best jazz singer singing today. -- New York Times