SHURE, DIANE

Homebase: Auburn, WA.
Stats: (born December 12,1953)
Misc Notes: Diane Joan Schuur is an American jazz singer and pianist. She was born in Tacoma, two months premature and weighing less than three pounds. Complications of prematurity resulted in her total loss of vision. Schuur grew up in Auburn and started singing when she was about three years old. Her mother, who died when Schuur was 13, loved jazz and had a Duke Ellington record collection. Her father, a police captain, was an amateur musician who often played piano with his daughter sitting by his side. Schuur stated, "As far back as I can remember, singing was in my blood. My parents loved music, and I loved to sing.” Schuur listened to the radio avidly in her youth and first learned to play the piano by ear. Though she later learned to read braille-written music, she found its use frustrating and impractical since it took away use of one of her hands while playing the piano; however, she frequently used braille-transcribed lyrics in performances and during recording sessions. One of her first public performances was at age ten, singing country music at Tacoma's Holiday Inn; a booking arranged by her aunt. Even when she was a student at the Washington School for the Blind, she would come home on weekends, perform on Friday and Saturday nights and take a train back to school for Monday classes.

At age 15, she was taken by her father to Lake Tahoe to audition as a lounge singer at Harrah's hotel and casino. She got the job, but her widowed father found it impossible to leave his job at the police force to chaperone her, and the offer had to be declined. Schuur was noticed by country music singer/actor Jimmy Wakely, who met her in an Elks Club in 1971 when she was eighteen. After auditioning for him, Wakely arranged a recording session in California. Accompanied by her sister, Schuur took her first airplane trip to the session in Burbank, and made a 45 rpm record of a song called "Dear Mommy and Daddy" that was issued as a single credited to "Diane Shure."

Schuur's next big break came in 1975 at the age of 21, when she did an informal backstage audition for Doc Severinsen during one of The Tonight Show bandleader's tour stops at the Seattle Opera House. Band member and drummer Ed Shaughnessy was so moved by Diane's talent, he invited her to sing a gospel suite at the famed Monterey Jazz Festival the same year.

In the decades hence her career as a jazz icon skyrocketed. Schuur has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and the White House, and has performed with many artists including Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, and Stevie Wonder. As of 2019, Schuur had released 24 albums, and had extended her jazz repertoire to include essences of Latin, gospel, pop and country music. Her most successful album is Diane Schuur & the Count Basie Orchestra, which remained number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts for 33 weeks. Her album with B.B. King Heart To Heart was number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts. She won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations. [1968 photo of Schuur at Steve's Gay '90s restaurant courtesy Tacoma Public Library.]

See Also:  Schuur, Diane

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