Diane Varga; Jazz Singer, Promoter

Diane Varga, a singer, dancer and impresario described by Times critic Leonard Feather as “one of the best friends Southland jazz ever had,” is dead.

Buddy Childers, a trumpeter and big band leader, said his fiancee was 53 when she died Wednesday of undetermined causes at a North Hollywood hospital. An autopsy is pending, he said.

Miss Varga was born Diane Hingley. Her grandfather was recording executive Andrae Nordskog. In 1922, he was the first to record a New Orleans black jazz band. She trained as a ballerina but moved into the pop field as a dancer and vocalist with various revues in Las Vegas.

Over the years she alternated performing with promoting. Among her best-known events were the long-running afternoon and early evening jazz concerts at the Grand Avenue Bar of the Biltmore Hotel.

She also produced big band and jazz concerts at such local clubs as Moonlight Tango, Lunaria, Chadney’s and Alphonse’s.

She booked musicians into the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel while appearing often with Childers’ band. Last year she was featured with Childers at the “Back to Balboa” celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Stan Kenton Orchestra.

A funeral service is scheduled for Monday at 1 p.m. at Inglewood Memorial Park with a celebration of her life that night at 7:30 at the Bahai Center, 5755 Rodeo Road at La Cienega Boulevard.