- Born
- Died
- Birth nameMarlina Burgess
- Marlena Shaw was born on September 22, 1939 in New Rochelle, New York, USA. She was a composer, known for The Italian Job (2003), The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) and Forces of Nature (1999). She died on January 19, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
- Shaw began to make singing appearances in jazz clubs whenever she could spare the time. The most notable of these appearances was in 1963 when she worked with jazz trumpeter Howard McGhee.
- Shaw continued to perform and record. In 1999, 2001 and again in 2007, Shaw was one of the performers at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands.
- Shaw enrolled in the New York State Teachers College in Potsdam (now known as the State University of New York at Potsdam) to study music but she later dropped out.
- In 1982 Marlena recorded the Gary Taylor ballad called "Without You in My Life" from the LP Let Me in Your Life that was jointly produced by Johnny Bristol and Webster Lewis on South Bay records. This had moderate chart success in the USA. In 1983 she recorded the vocals for "Could It Be You", a track by Phil Upchurch on his Name of the Game album.
- She was first introduced to music by her uncle Jimmy Burgess, a jazz trumpet player. In an interview with The New York Times, she told the reporter: "He [Jimmy Burgess] introduced me to good music through records - Dizzy [Gillespie], Miles [Davis], a lot of gospel things, and Al Hibbler, who really knows how to phrase a song.".
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content