Even before Nancy Harrow recorded her first album, Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues, she had been sitting in at jazz clubs in New York City – Minton’s and the Five Spot, where she sang with Kenny Burrell’s group; and at the Half Note, where she sang with Bob Brookmeyer & Clark Terry’s small group. The first album put her in with three Count Basie veterans, headed by Buck Clayton, and was released on the Candid label. (This same album, 40 years later, was selected by the British Jazz Awards as one of the best reissues of the year.) Nancy went on to perform in New York clubs and throughout Europe and most recently in Japan, and to record fifteen more jazz albums with many stellar jazz musicians – John Lewis, Roland Hanna, Phil Woods, Jim Hall, Bob Brookmeyer, Dick Katz, Clark Terry, Grady Tate, Ray Drummond, Kenny Barron, to mention a few – before she turned to writing the songs on her own.

Recent CDs Nancy has recorded were all her own inventions based on literary subjects, including a Willa Cather novel (L