Marion Montgomery (November 17, 1934 – July 22, 2002)[1] was an American jazz singer, who lived for the majority of her life in the United Kingdom.
Born Marian Maud Runnells (she later changed the spelling of Marian to Marion) in Natchez, Mississippi, she began her career in Atlanta working clubs, and then in Chicago, where singer Peggy Lee heard her on an audition tape and suggested she should be signed up by Capitol Records, releasing three albums for them in the early and mid-1960s.
In 1965, she came to Britain to play a season with John Dankworth, and met and married English pianist and musical director Laurie Holloway, thus beginning a long and productive association in which they both became well known to British jazz, cabaret and television audiences.
[4] She also famously collaborated with composer and conductor Richard Rodney Bennett for a series of concerts and albums in the 1980s and early 1990s.
She continued to perform until just before her death, including a sell-out three week season at London's "Pizza on the Park" in April 2002.