By an extraordinary coincidence, following yesterday's commemoration of Billie Holiday's birthday, today's birthday features a close disciple and contemporary of Billie's who, although not quite such an iconic figure, was nevertheless one of the best female jazz vocalists of her era. Carmen McRae was born in Harlem in 1920, five years after Holiday, to Jamaican immigrant parents. She learnt piano and by the time she was a teenager, her idol was well established as a top performer in New York's clubs. She met Holiday when she was 17, and soon came to the attention of the great pianist Teddy Wilson, with whom Billie was performing and recording regularly. During tghe late '40s she worked as a pianist in new York both solo and with bands like Benny Carter and Count Basie, before moving to Chicago, where she worked for 4 years, honing her skills before moving back to Brooklyn, where she secured a recording contract with Milt Gabler at Decca, for whom she made 12 albums over the next five years. She had developed a distinctive vocal style, and became a fixture in clubs and at jazz festivals around the world for the next 40 years, working constantly with some of the great jazz musicians, both 'live' and in the studio. She made no less than 7 performances at the Monterey Jazz Festival. She refused to give up smoking, and succumbed in the end to emphysema and a stroke in 1994, afetr a long and successful career. Acrobat has on catalogue a 'live' album recorded at the Montreux Festival in 1989 - for details click here.