One of the most remarkable piano players in jazz celebrates her 94th birthday today — Marian McPartland. Born in England, she married Chicago jazz cornetist Jimmy McPartland after the two met while performing at USO shows in World War II. Coming to the U.S., McPartland played a long engagement at the New York nightclub, the Hickory House. In the ’60s, she began a series of radio shows highlighting guest pianists, which led to her decades long program on NPR called “Piano Jazz.” Marian McPartland has received many prestigious awards, including a Grammy and the Peabody award. Across the U.S., there are 182,000 musicians and singers, about a third of them women. You can find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at www.census.gov.
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