Nokie Edwards born 9 May 1935

 

Nole Floyd "Nokie" Edwards (May 9, 1935 – March 12, 2018) was an American musician and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was primarily a guitarist, best known for his work with The Ventures, and was known in Japan as the 'King of Guitars'. Edwards was also an actor, who appeared briefly on Deadwood, an American Western drama television series.

Edwards was born in Lahoma, Oklahoma, the son of Elbert Edwards and Nannie Mae Quinton Edwards, an original enrollee of the Western Cherokee. Edwards came from a family of accomplished musicians, and by age five he had begun playing a variety of string instruments, including the steel guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, and bass. His family relocated from Oklahoma to Puyallup, Washington. During Edwards' late teen years he joined the United States Army Reserve. After traveling to Texas and California for training, he returned home and began playing regularly for pay in numerous country bands in the area.

In January 1958, country songwriter and guitarist Buck Owens relocated from California to Tacoma, Washington, as the owner of radio station KAYE. Prior to the formation of The Buckaroos with Don Rich, Edwards played guitar with Owens in the new band he formed in the area, and also played in the house band of television station KTNT, located in the same building as KAYE. In 1960 Edwards recorded a single, "Night Run" b/w "Scratch", on Blue Horizon Records with a band called The Marksmen.

The Ventures, an instrumental musical quartet, were founded in Tacoma, Washington, in 1958. Original members included Don Wilson on rhythm guitar, Bob Bogle on lead guitar (who later became the bass player), and drummer George Babbitt, who went on to become a 4-star general in the U.S. Air Force. When Babbitt left, Howie Johnson took his place and was later replaced by Mel Taylor. Edwards met Wilson and Bogle when they performed on KTNT. Edwards originally played bass for The Ventures, but he took over the lead guitar position from Bogle. 

                                       

The Ventures released a series of best-selling albums throughout the 1960s, and Edwards left towards the end of this period in 1968. He returned full-time as the Ventures' lead guitarist in 1972 and stayed with the band until 1984. In subsequent years, he would occasionally reunite with the band, and starting in the early 2000s, he once again toured with The Ventures until 2012. During his last stint with the Ventures, Edwards primarily played during the annual winter Japan tour, along with several dates in the United States.

In 1971, Edwards began a solo career with the release of Nokie!. While he released an album each year through 1974, his solo attempt was unsuccessful in America, and he suspended his solo efforts to concentrate on further recordings with the Ventures. Upon leaving the Ventures a second time in 1984, Edwards pursued a music career in Nashville, Tennessee. He played lead guitar for Lefty Frizzell, on what would become Frizzell's final recording sessions. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he was involved with numerous country-influenced recording projects and relaunched his solo career with the release of several albums starting in 1988.

Edwards performed occasionally in the United States as both a soloist and member of various bands, including AdVenture, Art Greenhaw, and Texas Western swing outfit The Light Crust Doughboys. The fruitful and critically acclaimed collaboration of Edwards and artist-producer Greenhaw, resulted in a number of albums in several music genres including Edwards' two nominations for "Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album of the Year", album titles 20th Century Gospel (2005) and Southern Meets Soul (2006). AllMusic noted about the 20th Century Gospel album that the "former Ventures member Nokie Edwards guests on several tracks ("Ode to Joy," "The Great Speckled Bird") and his sound has never been twangier". 

After accepting an offer to pursue an acting career in 2007, Edwards landed a role on Deadwood, an American Western drama television series. Edwards played the mysterious friend of Wild Bill Hickok and a local citizen, who serves as a bridge between the villains and heroes of the show. During production, Edwards temporarily relocated to Santa Clarita, California and lived on the set's location with his wife Judy.

In 2008, Edwards was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with The Ventures. The award was presented by John Fogerty. The band performed their biggest hits, "Walk Don't Run" and "Hawaii Five-0", augmented on the latter by Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame musical director Paul Shaffer and his band. In July 2010, Deke Dickerson announced on his Facebook page that he was currently working on a new studio album with Nokie Edwards. Dickerson and his band backed Edwards for several shows, including Deke's yearly Guitar Geek Festival held in Anaheim, California. In 2011, Nokie Edwards, of Cherokee heritage, was inducted into the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame.

On March 12, 2018, Edwards died in Yuma, Arizona, following an infection he’d been fighting since undergoing hip surgery in December. He was 82.

(Edited from Wikipedia)

Nan Wynn born 8 May 1918

Nan Wynn (May 8, 1918* – March 21, 1971) was an American big-band singer, and Broadway and film actress. She sang and recorded throughout the 1930s and 1940s with the Emery Deutsch, Rudy Vallee, Eddie Duchin, Richard Himber, Hal Kemp, Hudson-DeLange, Raymond Scott, Teddy Wilson and Freddie Rich orchestras.

Of Russian descent, Wynn was born Masha Vatz in York, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, where she attended high school, and sang in the school choir. Her father, Abe Vatz, owned a department store in Wheeling, and travelled often to New York. During February 1935 while spending a weekend in New York City with her mother, Wynn's singing came to the attention of a retired producer who was a guest at the same place. He booked Wynn at a Peekskill vaudeville house, the owner of which engaged her to sing at his two other New York State properties, in Kingston and Newburgh. After working the vaudeville circuit, the late 1930s saw Wynn landing at radio station WNEW in New York for a 13-show-per-week stint and honing her talent under the mentorship of Jimmy Rich, the singing coach to Dinah Shore, Bea Wain, and Barry Wood, among others. In 1936, she appeared in a musical short with Vincent Lopez for Warner Bros.

                                     

In early 1937, Wynn became vocalist for the Hudson-DeLange Orchestra, with whom she made her first recordings. She soon began to attract attention, and by January 1938 she had left Hudson-DeLange for CBS radio, where she appeared regularly with her own fifteen-minute sustainer and on other programs, including Musical Gazette. 

In March and June 1938, Wynn recorded with Emery Deutsch on Brunswick, and in July she began a series of recordings with Teddy Wilson on the same label. She also signed with Vocalion in mid-1938, releasing solo recordings over the next year billed as “Nan Wynn and her Orchestra,” though it was only a studio band. Wynn’s vocal style fooled many into thinking she was black, and the press often went out of their way to clarify that she was actually white. One reviewer compared her voice to a cross between Mildred Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald.

Wynn substituted for Durelle Alexander in Eddy Duchin’s band in mid-September 1938 when Alexander had to return home for a family emergency, and on October 1 she made her night club debut as a solo artist at the Belmont Plaza Hotel. On October 9 she began a new sustainer program on CBS with Walter Gross leading the orchestra, recording two songs on Vocalion with Gross backing her. Wynn made two musical shorts for Paramount in 1938 and a third in 1939. In February 1939, she opened at the Famous Door night club.

In early May 1939, Wynn joined the new CBS program Time to Shine, sponsored by Griffin shoe polish and featuring Hal Kemp’s orchestra. When Kemp’s female vocalist, Maxine Gray, left the band two weeks later, Wynn took her spot, touring and recording with Kemp over the next five months. She was not an employee of Kemp however. She and Kemp were both under contract to CBS and Griffin. When Griffin ended Time to Shine in October, Wynn and Kemp parted company. Her time with Kemp, however, proved popular with the public. She placed ninth in Billboard magazine’s 1940 poll for favourite female band vocalist.

After leaving Kemp, Wynn continued her solo career. In February 1940, she joined the Concert in Rhythm program, which featured Raymond Scott’s studio orchestra and Jack Leonard as male vocalist. She also toured the theatre circuit. In mid-1940, Scott, better known at the time for his eccentric compositions, decided to try his hand at leading a straight dance band. Since Wynn had been singing with Scott on radio for the past few months, CBS contracted her as his vocalist. She was guaranteed three songs on each broadcast and would record with the band as well. Known as Raymond Scott and his New Orchestra, the group debuted in July, hitting the theatre and hotel circuit. They attracted much publicity, but Wynn was unhappy, and she quit both Scott and the radio show in early September after the band’s engagement at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago, saying she would never work with a dance band ever again.

After leaving Scott, she moved to Hollywood where she became best known for dubbing Rita Hayworth's singing voice in several films, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941), My Gal Sal (1942), and You Were Never Lovelier (1942), where she introduced the Kern-Mercer standard I'm Old Fashioned. Wynn appeared often as a nightclub singer, in such films as Million Dollar Baby (1941), Pardon My Sarong (1942), Right Guy, (1943), Princess O'Rourke (1943), Is Everybody Happy? (1943), Jam Session (1944) and Intrigue (1947). She had a starring role opposite William Lundigan in the 1941 film A Shot in the Dark (1941). Wynn also appeared in Billy Rose's 1944 Broadway musical, The Seven Lively Arts and Finian's Rainbow in 1948. At the beginning of 1948, she made her first recordings since 1941, released by Decca. In May 1948, she opened at the Blue Angel in New York and then spent a brief time later that year starring as Sharon Lonergan in the Broadway production Finian’s Rainbow, replacing Dorothy Claire.

In  1949 Wynn appeared in an ABC radio series sponsored by the Army for recruiting purposes. The program featured pop singers performing theater songs. And then tragedy struck.In early 1949, Wynn was diagnosed with throat cancer. The subsequent operation to remove the tumour damaged her voice, and she retired from show business.  Wynn worked hard to regain her singing voice, and in 1955 she attempted a comeback, recording for RCA Victor. Her voice was different, and Victor used that in promotional material, taking out full-page ads calling it “the incredible come-back story, it’s the new voice, the new sound of Nan Wynn.” The recordings received favourable reviews, and in January 1956 she toured with other RCA Victor stars as part of the ten-day, eleven-city “Starliner” train tour to raise money for the March of Dimes. She failed to catch the public’s ear, however, and Wynn’s comeback attempt was over by early 1956. 

In the early 1960s, she made appearances at American Cancer Society state meetings, providing entertainment in the form of a musical program that highlighted her life story and told what the ACS had done for her. She also appeared on the CBS talk show PM with Mike Wallace in April 1962 discussing her story.

Wynn was married three times. Her first husband, from 1944 to 1947, was producer, writer, and director Cy Howard (ne Seymour Horowitz). In 1949, she married Dr. Thomas Baylek, with whom she had a daughter, Jane. Wynn married industrialist John Small in Mexico in April 1956. Small passed away in 1969. Wynn died of cancer on March 21, 1971, in Santa Monica, California, aged 55.

(Edited from BandChirps & Wikipedia)(*some sources state 1915 as birth year)

Jim Lowe born 7 May 1927

James Ellsworth Lowe (May 7, 1923 – December 12, 2016) was an American singer-songwriter, best known for his 1956 number-one hit song, "The Green Door". He also served as a disc jockey and radio host and personality and was Nicknamed Mr. Broadway for his encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music  and musical theatre trivia of the 1940s and 1950s.

Born in Springfield, Missouri to Dr. Horace Arch Lowe, a surgeon, and the former Pearl Lines. He interrupted his studies at the University of Missouri to serve in the Army during World War II after which he graduated in 1948. He worked at radio stations in Springfield, Indianapolis and Chicago. Possessing a deep baritone on-air delivery, he could carry a tune as well and had little trouble getting a contract as a singer with Mercury Records in 1953 where he wrote and recorded country and western material. 

                                      

One of his songs was the original version of the self-penned "Gambler's Guitar." The flip side of "Gambler's Guitar" was a wonderful version of the old standard, "The Martins and the Coys," done in a delightful country style. Both received airplay in Chicago, but "Gambler's Guitar" was covered by established singer Rusty Draper, making #6 and relegating Lowe's original to a #26 showing. Cover records were one thing, but Draper was on Lowe's own label, Mercury! Furthermore in 1953 Lowe began in his role as the voice and persona of Big Tex the 52-foot-tall mechanical cowboy at the Texas state fair, and established many of the characteristic traits of the colossal animatronic. Lowe offered scripted comments telling visitors of coming attractions, slowing his voice to keep pace with Big Tex’s jaws.

In 1956 Lowe moved to New York to continue his radio career at WCBS, and switched to Dot Records in 1955. His first successful attempt with Dot was the novelty "Close the Door (They're Coming in the Windows)," a vaguely obnoxious tune if only because once heard, it absolutely could not be eradicated from the mind ("Those UH-uh-UH-uh, UH-uh- UH-uh, are everywhere!"). A few months later, he recorded another novelty, "Green Door," in a Greenwich Village apartment. This time, it was pure gold, rising to #1 in the Billboard Charts and #8 in the UK Singles Chart in November 1956. After a few more moderate hits for Dot, including, “Maybelline,” and “Four Walls", Lowe concentrated on his radio career.

His most notable run as a disc jockey was with WNEW AM in New York, from 1964. Lowe also worked at WNBC AM in New York where he was heard both locally and on the coast-to-coast NBC Radio weekend program Monitor. Lowe had a Saturday evening slot. The next year he switched stations and shifts, moving into the overnight “Milkman’s Matinee,” on WNEW. He also hosted “Jim Lowe’s New York,” noted for his command of Broadway and showbiz lore and trivia. There was another stint at “Monitor” from 1969 to 1973 and then a return to WNEW where Lowe remained until 1992. That’s when WNEW was sold and 1130 became Bloomberg News Radio. Lowe also departed from his Big Tex role from 1982 to 1989, then remained in the role until his retirement in 1998.

Jim Lowe with Big Tex

Even though his own records were closer to Elvis than Ella, Lowe remained devoted to the American songbook long after many radio stations abandoned it for other formats. Unfortunately, the largest, most important city in the country doesn’t have a station with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and Nat Cole and Sarah Vaughan,” he said in an interview with a Florida radio station in 2004. Lowe did his best to remedy the absence with his last radio show, “Jim Lowe and Friends,” recorded weekly at various New York jazz spaces and syndicated nationally. The show ended its run in 2004 when he retired in 2004 at the age of 81, and lived in Southampton, New York. For contributions to the music industry, Lowe was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6341 Hollywood Boulevard.

On December 12, 2016, after battling pancreatic cancer for a year, Jim Lowe died at his home in East Hampton, Long Island.

(Edited from Wikipedia, bsnpubs.com, & WNEW 1130 AM.com)

Blind Willie McTell born 5 May 1903

Blind Willie McTell (May 5, 1903 – August 19, 1959) was an American Piedmont blues and ragtime singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played in a fluid, syncopated finger picking guitar style common among many East Coast, Piedmont blues players.

Most sources give the date of his birth as 1898 but biographer Michael Gray and researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1903 as most likely on the basis of his entry in the 1910 census. He was born in the Happy Valley community outside Thomson, Georgia, yet few facts are known about his early life. Even his name is uncertain: his family name was either McTear or McTier, and his first name may have been Willie, Samuel, or Eddie. His tombstone reads “Eddie McTier.”  

He was born blind in one eye and lost his remaining vision by late childhood. He attended schools for the blind in Georgia, New York and Michigan and showed proficiency in music from an early age, learning to read and write music in braille by the early 1920s. This made him well-educated compared to most of his peers who sang the blues. He first started playing the harmonica and accordion before turning to the six-string guitar in his early teens. His family was rich in music; both of his parents and an uncle played the guitar and he and bluesman and gospel pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey were cousins.

In his teenage years, after his mother’s death, he left home and toured in carnivals and medicine shows. In the 1920s and 1930s McTell travelled a circuit between Atlanta, Augusta, Savannah, and Macon. This region encompasses two major blues styles: Eastern Seaboard/Piedmont, with lighter, bouncier rhythms and a ragtime influence; and Deep South, with its greater emphasis on intense rhythms and short, repeated music phrases. McTell  also journeyed from Georgia to New York City. Along the way he entertained wherever he could find an audience: passenger train cars, hotel lobbies, college fraternity parties, school assemblies, proms, vaudeville theatres, and churches. As he followed the tobacco market from Georgia into North Carolina, he played for farmers, buyers, and merchants at warehouses, auctions, livery stables, and hotels.

                                       

By the mid-1920s McTell was already an accomplished musician in Atlanta, playing at house parties and fish fries. He had also traded in the standard six-string acoustic guitar for a twelve-string guitar, which was popular among Atlanta musicians because of the extra volume it provided for playing on city streets. By 1926 record companies had begun to take an interest in recording folk blues artists, mostly men playing solo with guitars—Blind Lemon Jefferson from Texas, Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson from Mississippi, and Peg Leg Howell from Georgia. Beginning with his first recording in 1927 for Victor Records and his 1928 recording session for Columbia, McTell produced such blues classics as “Statesboro Blues” (later made famous by the Allman Brothers Band and Taj Mahal), “Mama 'Tain’t Long 'for’ Day,” and “Georgia Rag.” In 1929 he recorded “Broke Down Engine Blues.”

Like other musicians at the time, he recorded on different labels under various nicknames to skirt contractual agreements. Thus he was Blind Willie for Vocalion, Georgia Bill for OKeh, Red Hot Willie Glaze for Bluebird, Blind Sammie for Columbia, Barrel House Sammy for Atlantic, and Pig 'n’ Whistle Red for Regal Records. The latter name came from a popular drive-in barbecue restaurant in Atlanta where he played for tips. McTell married Ruth Kate Williams, now better known as Kate McTell, in 1934. She accompanied him on stage and on several recordings before becoming a nurse in 1939. For most of their marriage, from 1942 until his death, they lived apart, she in Fort Gordon, near Augusta, and he working around Atlanta.

In 1940 folk-song collector John Lomax recorded the versatile musician for the Archive of Folk Culture of the Library of Congress. These recordings captured McTell's distinctive musical style which bridges the gap between the country blues of the early part of the 20th century and the more conventionally melodious, ragtime-influenced East Coast, Piedmont blues sound. The Lomaxes also elicited from him traditional songs (such as "The Boll Weevil" and "John Henry") and spirituals (such as "Amazing Grace"), which were not part of his usual repertoire.

McTell was the only bluesman to remain active in Atlanta until well after World War II (1941-45). With his long-time associate Curley Weaver, he played for tips on Atlanta’s Decatur Street, a popular hangout for local blues musicians. Ahmet Ertegun visited Atlanta in 1949 in search of blues artists for this new Atlantic Records label and after finding McTell playing on the street, arranged a recording session. Some of the songs were released on 78 rpm discs but sold poorly. McTell recorded for Regal Records in 1949 but these recordings also met with less commercial success than his previous works. He continued to perform around Atlanta but his career was cut short by ill health, mostly due to diabetes and alcoholism.

In 1956, an Atlanta record store owner, Edward Rhodes, discovered McTell playing in the street for quarters and convinced him to play 13 songs on a tape recorder. Prestige Records/Bluesville Records posthumously released as his Last Session in 1961 during the folk music revival. McTell had recorded around 120 songs throughout his life over 14 sessions. From 1957 to his death he was active as a preacher at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Atlanta. He died of a stroke at the Milledgeville State Hospital, Georgia, in 1959. He was buried at Jones Grove Church, near Thomson, Georgia.

In 1981 Blind Willie McTell was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame. Two years later, folksinger Bob Dylan paid homage to McTell in his song “Blind Willie McTell”. In 1990 McTell was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Each year, the city of Thomson hosts the Blind Willie McTell Blues Festival in honour of their hometown legend.

(Edited from Wikipedia and the New Georgia Encyclopaedia)

Lars Gullin born 4 May 1928

 Lars Gunnar Victor Gullin (4 May 1928 – 17 May 1976) was a Swedish jazz saxophonist.

Lars Gullin was born in Visby, Sweden. His great musicality showed itself early on and at the age of 13 he was accepted as a student at the 18 Music Corps in Visby, where he played bugle, then horn and clarinet, being his main instrument. By then, like many others of that generation, he had also learned to play the accordion. He moved to Stockholm in 1947 to study classical piano playing with the intention of becoming a concert pianist. He was already interested in folk music, but above all in National Romantic music, the branch of classical music that is often coloured by melodies reminiscent of folk songs. He planned on a classical career, studying privately with classical pianist Sven Brandel, before turning to jazz in the late 1940's.

He played with the orchestras of Charles Redland (as a pianist. 1947-8), and Arthur and Seymore Osterwall's orchestras (1949-51), changing from alto to baritone saxophone, an instrument that he becomes one of the absolute best at. He next played with Arne Domnerus's orchestra (1951-3), the group mainly performed at Nalen, a leading dance spot in Stockholm. He then  worked freelance and began to work with visiting American musicians, recording with James Moody, Zoot Sims and Clifford Brown. Most importantly, he first performed with Lee Konitz in 1951, an association which was to be repeated several times in future years.

                                       

Gullin formed his own group in 1953, probably the only regular group he was to lead. It was short-lived, breaking up that November, after Gullin was responsible for causing the group to be involved in an automobile accident, although no one was seriously hurt. The next year, 1954, he won the best newcomer award in the American DownBeat magazine, after two March 1953 Swedish sessions were leased and issued by Contemporary Records as a 10” LP. Later Gullin albums were leased to Atlantic Records in the United States. Gullin toured several European countries with Chet Baker in October 1955, in a group which was marred by tragedy; it was Gullin who found the body of the group's pianist Dick Twardzik, victim of a heroin overdose, on 21 October, in a Paris hotel room.

Although at first influenced by the cool jazz of Miles Davis. Lee Konitz, and Stan Getz, he soon developed a highly personal, expressive style, both as a soloist and as a composer, and became one of the most highly regarded jazz musicians in Europe. In 1954 he became the first European performer to win a jazz poll in the USA (in Down Beat's "new star" category); the same year he began a series of successful European tours. The remainder of Gullin’s career was blighted by his own narcotics problems, and sometimes he survived on artists' grants from the Swedish government. He was restricted by illness for much of the later part of 1958. During most of 1959, Gullin, was active in Italy, he played with Chet Baker again and with the jazz alto saxophonist (and businessman) Flavio Ambrosetti, making radio broadcasts with him in Lausanne, Switzerland. In the 1960s, he continued to work occasionally with leading American players, including Archie Shepp, with whom he recorded in 1963.

From the mid-1960's Gullin devoted himself mainly to composition, showing a fine sense for scoring. His largest work is Jazz amour affair (1971) for symphony orchestra and jazz soloists. One of his last major statements was his Aeros aromatic atomica suite recorded in 1973. His last performance abroad was in Germany in 1976. Gullin died of a heart attack in Vissefjärda, Sweden on 17 May 1976, brought on by his long-term addiction to methadone. When he died at 48 years of age, he left a legacy of more than 120 compositions and 450 recorded melodies and, besides that, hundreds of hours of fabulous private and radio/TV recordings from all over Europe. The film Sven Klang's Combo (Sven Klangs kvintett, 1976) is a fictionalised version of the Swedish jazz scene of the 1950s, and the saxophonist Lars is based on Gullin.

His son, Peter Gullin, (12 April 1959, Milan, Italy – 7 October 2003, Uppsala, Sweden) was also a baritone saxophonist and composer. The elder Gullin’s composition "Peter of April" was dedicated to him. The tune "Danny's Dream" was dedicated to his first son Danny Gullin and "Gabriella" to his daughter, Gabriella Gullin (born 1961), a composer and conductor.

(Edited from New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Lars Gullin Society and Wikipedia)

Jane Morgan born 3 May 1924

 Florence Catherine Currier (May 3, 1924 – August 4, 2025), known professionally as Jane Morgan, was an American singer and recording artist of traditional pop. 

Morgan initially found success in France and the UK before achieving recognition in the US, receiving six gold records. She was a frequent nightclub and Broadway performer, and also appeared numerous times on American television, both as a singer and as a dramatic performer. Morgan performed for French President Charles de Gaulle, and for five U.S. Presidents: John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush. She toured with Jack Benny and John Raitt, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry; two of her RCA singles hit the Billboard country charts in 1970.

Morgan was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on May 3, 1924. She was one of five children born to musicians Olga (Brandenburg) and Bertram Currier. At five she began vocal lessons while continuing piano lessons. During the summers, she took on child roles and appeared in theatre productions at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine, which her brother, Robert Currier, had founded. In 1941, she was the Treasurer of the Kennebunkport Playhouse. After graduating from Seabreeze High School, she was accepted into New York's Juilliard School of Music. Intending to become an opera singer, she studied opera by day and performed whenever possible.

Morgan sang popular songs in nightclubs and small restaurants, and at bar mitzvahs and other private parties, to help pay her tuition expenses at Juilliard. Orchestra leader Art Mooney changed her name to Jane Morgan by taking the first name of one of his vocalists, Janie Ford, and the last name of another, Marian Morgan. In 1948, French impresario Bernard Hilda selected her to accompany him to Paris. Morgan became a sensation in Paris. Many French songwriters, including Charles Trenet, frequented the club, and they wrote several songs that became hit recordings for Morgan. Morgan and Hilda soon opened a new weekly hour-long television show and she began recording in 1949 on the French Polydor label as well as Parlophone, Philips, and others. 

                                       

She returned to Europe in 1954 to appear in a London West End review with comedian Vic Oliver, and later at the Savoy Theatre and London Palladium. Morgan left her agent and began singing at Lou Walters' Latin Quarter in New York. Walters kept Morgan at the Latin Quarter for a year, when she was noticed by Dave Kapp, who had recently founded a new recording label, Kapp Records. Kapp signed Morgan to a recording contract, and near that same period he signed pianist Roger Williams.

To counter her reputation as a French singer, Kapp had Morgan record "Baseball, Baseball", and her first album release was titled The American Girl from Paris. She recorded several additional albums and soon was paired with Williams, who had gained national acceptance with his recording of "Autumn Leaves". They recorded "Two Different Worlds", which gave Morgan her first significant airplay on US radio. In 1957 Kapp brought The Troubadors, a virtually unknown group of five musicians, to his studio. They had appeared in Love in the Afternoon. Kapp asked Morgan to join The Troubadors and sing "Fascination". 

Although written in 1904 by F. D. Marchetti as "Valse Tzigane", the song was modified in Paris at the Folies Bergère as a "strip" number. With English lyrics added by Dick Manning in 1932, it had been played throughout the 1957 movie (the French lyric had been created in 1942). Her recording was released in late 1957 and remained on the charts for 29 weeks. In 1958, Kapp released "The Day the Rains Came" (a French song by Gilbert Bécaud called "Le jour où la pluie viendra") with Morgan singing in English on one side and in French on the other. It reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in early 1959. She was featured on the 10 November 1959, jazz special, Timex-All-Star Jazz III.In 1960, she recorded the English-language version of an Italian song, Romantica.

Her early television credits include The Victor Borge Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, Cavalcade of Stars, The Jack Benny Program, The Jimmy Dean Show, The Jonathan Winters Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and The Hollywood Palace, as well as more than fifty appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Morgan performed in musicals on the stage and Broadway. She appeared in Can-Can, The King and I, Kiss Me, Kate, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bells Are Ringing, Anniversary Waltz, Affairs of State, Hello, Dolly and others. Morgan's agent died in 1959 and her new manager, Jerry Weintraub, was able to obtain bookings for her in many noted US venues. 

Morgan divorced Larry Stith in 1964 and married Weintraub, more than a decade her junior, in 1965; the couple later adopted three daughters. Morgan also had a stepson Michael from Weintraub's first marriage. After Morgan performed on Broadway, she said, "Being on Broadway was one of the most exciting things in my life because I had always dreamed of it". Morgan's two final albums were for RCA Records: her last LP, Jane Morgan in Nashville, yielded two moderate hits on the country music charts, including her answer to Johnny Cash's song, "A Boy Named Sue", titled "A Girl Named Johnny Cash" (written by comic Martin Mull). She performed the song on Cash's eponymous television series in early 1971.

The only other time Morgan had recorded without formal arrangements was on her hit single, "Fascination"; nevertheless, she was reportedly dubbed "The Countryest Girl in Nashville" by the crew. She retired from performing in 1973, but appeared occasionally over the years at special events and benefits. She worked as a production assistant to her husband (producer Jerry Weintraub) on films including the remake of Ocean's Eleven. On December 10, 2009, Morgan performed at the UNICEF Ball honouring her husband, Jerry Weintraub, held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, singing "Ten Cents a Dance" and "Big Spender". Known as Jane Weintraub, she divides her time between Malibu, California, Palm Springs, California and Kennebunkport, Maine. She owned Blueberry Hill Farm in Kennebunkport, Maine from 1958. On May 6, 2011, Morgan received the 2,439th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Morgan and Weintraub separated in the 1980s, but never divorced. Weintraub died in 2015.

Morgan's collection of her unique performance gowns spanning from the 1950s to the 1980s were exhibited to the public for the first time, premiering at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk, Maine, in February 2022. Morgan celebrated her 100th birthday on May 3, 2024. She died at her home in Naples, Florida, on August 4, 2025, at the age of 101.