Jazz singer Jackie Paris dies at 79

Jackie Paris, a jazz vocalist who toured with Charlie Parker and was said to be one of the favorite singers of Ella Fitzgerald and comedian Lenny Bruce, has died. He was 79.
Paris died on Thursday in Manhattan of complications of bone cancer, according to David Grausman, a friend.
Born Carlo Jackie Paris in Nutley, N.J., he got his start as a child in vaudeville and worked as a singer and guitarist in the jazz clubs of 52nd Street in the 1940s. He served two years in the Army.
Paris worked with Lionel Hampton and Charles Mingus and was the first to sing the lyrics to Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight."
Later, he taught master classes and gave private lessons while continuing to record and perform, singing as recently as March at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan.
"Paris cooks to a boiling point, and he long ago mastered the art of scatting when the wordless form and bop vocal was still a new musical jazz form that was largely Ella Fitzgerald's terrain," Robert L. Daniels wrote in a review of the show at published in Variety.