My wife, Barbara Underwood, who has died aged 78, had a full and colourful life, the two main strands of which were her career as a jazz vocalist and her love of philosophy.
She performed in public from the age of five, singing Shine on Harvest Moon with her father in local pubs and also doing Lonnie Donegan covers for her cousin Ray’s skiffle band.
In the 1970s and 80s, under her stage name Barbie Benson, she sang in many of the main London jazz venues, including the Dover Street Wine Bar where she had a residency: Barbie was sad that all the places she performed in are now long gone. She also had a successful portfolio as a singing teacher. In later life she produced four CDs, ranging from jazz standards to bossa nova to versions of Bob Dylan’s religious songs. Her last album, Just Friends, came out in December.
In the mid-80s she discovered an interest in academic study and, especially, in philosophy. This was in spite of having been expelled from school at the age of 14 without qualifications.
Born in Hackney, London, to Gladys (nee Steed), a seamstress, and Ted Cooper, a railway worker and then a postman, Barbie went to Tollington Park secondary school in Islington.
After leaving school, and while working as a musician, she had a daughter, Paula, in 1966. Barbie went on to have three marriages, all ending in divorce, before she and I met in 1989 at York University, where she was a mature student and I was working in administration. We got married in 1991 and eventually settled in Barnes, south-west London.
Barbie had got the academic bug through the Open University Arts Foundation Course in 1986. From there, under an accelerated admissions scheme, she went to York, where she gained a philosophy degree aged 44, and then to Manchester University for her PhD (2001).
Despite all her musical and academic achievements, Barbie was possibly most proud of creating the Barnes Philosophy Club. Its first event, in 2011, attracted eight people to a room at the local Methodist church. By the time she gave it up 10 years later, the meetings, now at the OSO arts centre in the village, attracted 60 to 70 people each time and the mailing list had more than 300 names.
Barbie ran the club single-handedly and chaired all its meetings. It was one of the most successful clubs of its kind in Britain, and one of the very few outside university departments to gain funding from the Royal Institute of Philosophy. Illness and the pandemic forced Barbie to give it up, but it was taken on by others and is still flourishing.
Barbie is survived by me, by Paula, and by three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
