One of the first female singers to make a name for herself in the American pantheon of jazz, Mildred Bailey (1907-1951) managed to capture the subtleties of the era's African American blues and ragtime music. Bailey early on developed her own unique way to underline the meaning of the words she sang. She performed with some of the finest musicians of the swing era--including Benny Goodman, Paul Whiteman, Coleman Hawkins, and Red Norvo, her husband for most of the 1930s. Plagued by health problems for much of her life, she died when she was only 44 years old in 1951.

Many jazz lovers had a hard time reconciling Bailey's high, dulcet tones with her rather corpulent body. During the hey-days of the Swing Era, she and Norvo, her husband at the time, were dubbed "Mr. and Mrs. Swing." Influenced by the stylings of Ethel Waters, Connie Boswell, and Bessie Smith...