Diane Schuur

Diane Joan Schuur (born December 10, 1953), nicknamed "Deedles", is an American jazz singer and pianist.

Schuur was born on December 10, 1953, in Tacoma, Washington, two months premature and weighing less than three pounds.

Complications of prematurity resulted in her total loss of vision.

Her twin brother, David, had normal vision at birth but some hearing loss.

She also has a younger sister.

Schuur grew up in Auburn, Washington, a southern suburb of Seattle.

She attended the Washington School for the Blind in Vancouver from age four to eleven.

She lived at school but was able to commute home 150 miles on the train by herself.

She later transferred to public school where teachers' aides helped her keep up in class.

Schuur started singing when she was about four 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. I was scatting at an early age".

She has absolute pitch memory.

Unlike the average person, in Schuur's mind every sound – musical or not – has a note value; for example, if she hears a humming motor, she knows the name that note has on a musical instrument.

Schuur listened to the radio avidly in her youth; her early musical idols were Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington.

She said that as a small child she would often retreat to a closet to sing.

Schuur 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".

Schuur performed locally a great deal in her late teens, and had started to develop a distinctive musical voice.

Entertainment writer Stewart Weiner called it a "crystal-clear vocal tone hitting every note in the center of the bull's eye."

In 1975, at age 22, Schuur auditioned for drummer/bandleader Ed Shaughnessy.

She won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations.

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, Frank Sinatra, Quincy Jones, and Stevie Wonder.

Co-performers on Schuur's albums have included Barry Manilow, José Feliciano, Maynard Ferguson, Stan Getz, Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, and B.B. King.

Her album with B.B. King was number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts.

She was Johnny Carson's guest on NBC's The Tonight Show eleven times.

Schuur has been blind from birth due to retinopathy of prematurity.

She has absolute pitch memory and a clear vocal tone.

In 1996, she was a guest performer on Sesame Street, where she was interviewed by Elmo and described to him how a blind person can learn to use other senses to adapt in the world.

In 2000 she was awarded the Helen Keller Achievement Award by the American Foundation for the Blind.

As of 2015, Schuur had released 23 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.