Being a dance-band vocalist in the early 1950s meant sitting at the side of the stage in a pretty frock awaiting the call to perform, and the stylish singer Barbara Jay, who has died with dementia aged 94, described this as serving her “apprenticeship” in the business. Greater success and satisfaction followed when she sang with Ronnie Scott and Benny Goodman, and later with her husband, the jazz tenor-saxophonist Tommy Whittle.
It was 1953 when the saxophonist Pete King, then managing Ronnie Scott’s feisty nine-piece group, called Jay to offer her the job of singer with the band. Vying to make it the UK’s top jazz outfit, Scott and King had assembled the best upstart jazz musicians in the country. This was not an easy billet musically for a young vocalist, since Scott himself was never “very happy with girl singers anyway”. The band member Benny Green recalled: “She stayed longer than all the other girl singers put together and she certainly came to play an integral role in the band’s performance.” For all its many indignities on the road, with the ladies’ dressing room often doubling as a toilet or vice versa, Jay relished her time with Scott and company, remaining friends with King and Scott and appearing often at their famous London club in Frith Street.
After working with the pianist and entertainer Cab Kaye in Amsterdam for 18 months and then with a German big band, Jay returned home, and joined Billy Ternent’s orchestra, broadcasting frequently, until another game-changing moment. A vocalist rang to ask Jay to deputise for her with Whittle’s group at the Savoy dance hall in Catford, south-east London. This went so well that Jay joined the group, and in 1967 she and Whittle were married, their musical and marital partnership lasting until Tommy’s death in 2013.
She also took on his two young sons (their mother had died some time before) and ran the family unit. It was then at Tommy’s suggestion that she sent a tape to Goodman’s entourage in 1970 and was hired to tour Europe with the last of the King of Swing’s all-star British big bands as featured vocalist for six weeks, “earning more than I had ever done in my life”.
Thereafter she helped Tommy run their very successful jazz club at the Hop Bine pub in Wembley for 10 years, while appearing with his bands or with the Pizza Express All-Stars, which he led. There were albums, too, on the Spotlite label, but her greatest breakthrough came when a promoter challenged her in 1993 to devise a concert show. This became the wildly successful Ella Fitzgerald Songbook show, which starred the singers Maxine Daniels and Rosemary Squires alongside Barbara, with their neatly packaged tribute programme backed by Tommy’s jazz quartet. This eventually ran for some 400 performances in Britain and abroad, with Lee Gibson and Tina May joining Barbara in a further variant entitled Ladies in Jazz.
Born in Cardiff and raised in London, Barbara was the daughter of Barbara (nee Weyman) and Billy Jones. Her father was a professional trumpeter who toured (and recorded) with the Joe Daniels Hot Shots before playing with many top palais bands. “He was a lovely trumpet player,” Barbara said. “Well, all daughters would say that, wouldn’t they?” Evacuated during the second world war to Alnwick in Northumberland, she moved around while spending time with her father, then an RAF musician in a band led by the saxophonist Claude Cavalotti. Having attended 11 different schools during this period of upheaval, she always bemoaned her educational shortcomings.
Brought up to appreciate the great jazz singers and star trumpeters such as Louis Armstrong and Harry James, she tried out for her school choir in 1946 and liked it, so her parents paid for her to have proper vocal training. The war over, her father continued to play summer seasons with Cavalotti’s dance band and “of course we used to go along and spend a couple of days with him. My dad said, ‘why don’t you learn a song and come up and sing with us?’ I was so nervous! But that’s what got me started.”
Newly enthused, the 16-year-old Barbara Jay (taking the initial J of Jones to become Jay) began to sing with local musicians around south London until the bandleader Bill Collins hired her for occasional Saturday nights at the nearby Streatham Locarno Dance Hall. This, incidentally, was where her parents had first met, when her mother was a dance hostess and father Billy “the young tearaway” band trumpeter. Always pro-active, Barbara answered a Melody Maker small ad placed by the trombonist Geoff Love and headed “Wanted – Girl Singer”, auditioned successfully, and was booked with his jazzman-stuffed Octet to appear in summer 1951 at the Astoria, Charing Cross Road, for six afternoons and six evenings a week, this her first entry into the “name” band world.
After a season in Brighton with Love, Jay began a sequence of increasingly rewarding engagements, always honing her skills, first with the Joe Saye Trio, then with the Ken Mackintosh band at the Wimbledon Palais. She joined Tito Burns’ popular sextet in 1952 as maternity cover for his wife, the vocalist Terry Devon, on their German tour, the band including the brilliant bassist Coleridge Goode, whom Jay credited with “helping me relax”. Then came the call from Ronnie Scott’s band.
In the years after Tommy’s death, Barbara gave talks about the music business to social clubs and put together impromptu groups until her health began to fail. Always positive and adept at making connections, and glamorous too, Barbara was a trouper to the end. She is survived by her stepsons Martin and Sean; her sister Carol predeceased her.
• Barbara Jay (Whittle), singer, born 15 August 1932; died 15 October 2026
