How sad. I suppose I'd thought of her in the past tense for a long time, but sorry to hear that she's really gone. She was the best proof that style and musicality matters so much more than just having fantastic vocal cords (I read somewhere that her unusual vibrato was because some physical limitation in her throat prevented her from sustaining long notes in the usual way - and this was one of the things that made her so distinctive!). It's good to think of her in her glory days, scatting to Sweet Georgia Brown in that 'camp as a row of tents' outfit on Jazz on a Summer's Day.
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