Dakota Staton, 76; jazz vocalist known for album ‘The Late, Late Show’

Dakota Staton, a highly regarded jazz vocalist known for her soulful interpretations and for her bluesy 1957 album “The Late, Late Show,” has died. She was 76.

Staton, who had been in declining health after suffering a triple aneurysm several years ago, died April 10 at Isabella Geriatric Center in her longtime home of New York City, said Sharynn Harper, a family spokeswoman.

Although she performed into her late 60s, Staton never duplicated the commercial success of “The Late, Late Show,” the title song of her first full-length album that also gave her two more hits, “My Funny Valentine” and “Broadway.”

“She belted. She swung. She caressed the ballads. She invented new ways to phrase old lyrics .... Like the greats, she made singing seem natural and easy,” critic Rob Mariani, recalling a late 1950s performance, wrote on the All About Jazz website.

Staton toured with such jazz luminaries as Benny Goodman, pianist George Shearing and the singer she regarded as a major influence, Dinah Washington. Staton also recorded more than two dozen albums.

She married trumpeter Talib Dawud in the late 1950s and briefly converted to Islam. The marriage ended in divorce.

Tiring of audiences expecting her to perform the “Late Show” songs, Staton moved to England in 1965. “That’s all anyone wanted to hear here,” Staton told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1999. “I wanted to go somewhere ... I could stretch out.... “

Returning home in the 1970s, Staton found a newly receptive American audience and recorded two soul-jazz and gospel-oriented albums.

“Staton’s sound is remarkably unchanged from those early days, still drenched in the blues, soul and jazz,” Michael J. Renner wrote in the Post-Dispatch in 1999.

“Like her contemporaries, Staton honed a particular delivery style based on horn-like phrasing and flawless scatting.”

She was born June 3, 1930, and began singing in her native Pittsburgh at 7. As a teenager, Staton took classical voice training and started touring on the national nightclub circuit.

A performance at a Harlem jam session led to her signing with Capitol Records in 1954.

That same year, she released a single that also became a signature, “What Do You Know About Love?”

“They call me a jazz singer, they call me an R&B; singer, but the blues has always been my bottom line,” Staton told the Boston Globe in 1991. “There’s nothing I sing that doesn’t have the blues in it somewhere.”

She is survived by her brother, saxophonist Fred Staton of New York City.

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valerie.nelson@latimes.com