1. Diane Schuur won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations.
44 Facts About Diane Schuur
1. 2.
Diane 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.
3.
Diane Schuur was Johnny Carson's guest on NBC's The Tonight Show eleven times.
4.
Diane Schuur has been blind from birth due to retinopathy of prematurity.
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Diane Schuur has absolute pitch memory and a clear vocal tone.
6.
Diane Schuur was born on December 10,1953, in Tacoma, Washington, two months premature and weighing less than three pounds.
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Diane Schuur grew up in Auburn, Washington, a southern suburb of Seattle.
8.
Diane Schuur attended the Washington School for the Blind in Vancouver from age four to eleven.
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Diane Schuur later transferred to public school where teachers' aides helped her keep up in class.
10.
Diane Schuur started singing when she was about four years old.
11.
Diane Schuur's father, a police captain, was an amateur musician who often played piano with his daughter sitting by his side.
12.
Diane Schuur listened to the radio avidly in her youth; her early musical idols were Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington.
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Diane Schuur said that as a small child she would often retreat to a closet to sing.
14.
Diane Schuur 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.
15.
Diane Schuur performed locally a great deal in her late teens, and had started to develop a distinctive musical voice.
16.
Diane Schuur failed to impress bandleader Doc Severinsen, who turned her down when she auditioned for a guest spot on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.
17.
Diane Schuur recorded her first album, Pilot of my Destiny, in 1981 in Seattle on the independent label, Great American Records.
18.
Rosen and his business partner, musician Dave Grusin, set out to find Diane Schuur by contacting Stan Getz.
19.
Nancy Reagan invited Diane Schuur to perform at the White House a second time, for a "Ladies of the Senate" luncheon in 1987, where she performed as a vocalist with the Count Basie Orchestra.
20.
Diane Schuur returned to the White House a third time to perform for President Clinton in 1995.
21.
Diane Schuur was a guest at the Sinatras' home, then performed in a concert with him conducted by Quincy Jones.
22.
Years later, after his death, Diane Schuur made an album called I Remember You: Love to Stan and Frank, an homage to her then late friends Sinatra and Stan Getz.
23.
Diane Schuur continued making albums through the 1990s and into the 2000s, sometimes experimenting with essences of other genres.
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Diane Schuur Fire featured Caribbean Jazz Project musicians, with Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves.
25.
In 1996, Diane Schuur appeared as a guest performer on Sesame Street.
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Diane Schuur performed at Carnegie Hall in a tribute to Irving Berlin in 1988, and again in 1996 in a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald.
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Diane Schuur gave a performance in 1999 to honor Stevie Wonder at The Kennedy Center Honors.
28.
Diane Schuur sang "I Just Called to Say I Love You" arranged and accompanied by Herbie Hancock.
29.
Diane Schuur was awarded the Helen Keller Achievement Award by the American Foundation for the Blind in 2000.
30.
Late in 2003, Diane Schuur released Midnight, featuring original songs written by Barry Manilow for the album.
31.
Diane Schuur came to Nashville in 2011 for her first country album, The Gathering, produced by Steve Buckingham.
32.
Diane Schuur said that the album was prompted by thoughts of her father, who loved country music, and by the success of Ray Charles in the country genre.
33.
Allmusic reviewer Thom Jurek said about The Gathering that while Diane Schuur maintained her signature singing style, "she was interested in omitting the twang".
34.
Diane Schuur was Johnny Carson's guest on NBC's The Tonight Show eleven times.
35.
Diane Schuur maintains an active tour schedule, and, as of 2016 and 2017, has booked dates to perform in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Rome, Palermo, Guanajuato, and multiple cities across the United States.
36.
Diane Schuur revealed the reason as Meniere's disease, which was impacting her ability to perform.
37.
Diane Schuur received a financial settlement from her birth hospital for her loss of vision.
38.
Diane Schuur was called "Deedle-Babes", "Deeds" and other variations of this name by her mother, who died of cancer at age 31.
39.
In 1996, at age 43, Diane Schuur married Les Crockett, a retired space engineer whom she affectionately called "Rocket".
40.
Diane Schuur is an ardent fan of the American daytime television series The Young and the Restless, to the extent of personally visiting the set on at least three occasions.
41.
Diane Schuur had a drug and alcohol addiction in the late 1980s, and had attempted suicide in the past.
42.
Diane Schuur benefited from twelve-step programs and, as of 2016, had been sober for several decades.
43.
Diane Schuur has dedicated songs to the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in her shows.
44.
Diane Schuur stated that her life has grown much more spiritual as she has matured.