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Originally from Detroit, Barbara
Morrison's twenty-year career as a performer and recording artist
includes appearances worldwide with some of the greatest names in jazz: Ray
Brown, Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy
Collette, Joe Williams, Gerald Wiggins, Jimmy Witherspoon, Hank Crawford,
Eddie Harris, Nancy Wilson, David T. Walker and Jimmy Smith. She has
performed in such highly regarded venues as Carnegie Hall, the North Sea
Jazz Festival, the Bern Jazz Festival and the Playboy Jazz Festival.
Morrison also toured Europe with Ray Charles. Morrison seems equally at
home in a broad range of idioms, from pop to R&B to the blues, but the blues
is unquestionably her forte. Morrison has been compared to some
of the greatest female jazz and blues singers. Her singing has been
described as "soul stirring, sizzling," her style, "graceful," her pacing,
"flawless." The New York Times stated, "A joy, at Carnegie Hall, Barbara
Morrison delivered one song a la Esther Phillips and another with Ella
Fitzgerald's blithe scat singing."
In addition to teaching at UCLA,
Morrison is teacher, founder and director of her own school of music in
Inglewood, California, teaching beginning to advanced music, jazz/blues
interpretation and history, acting and concert performing techniques.
She has also worked closely with the late Dr. Beverly Robinson of the UCLA Theater
Department, on productions of "For Colored Girls" and "Ain't Misbehavin'."
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