Dorothy Donegan; Jazz Singer Also Known for ‘Visual Antics’

Dorothy Donegan, an eclectic and colorful jazz pianist and singer who also excelled at ragtime, boogie-woogie, gospel, blues and classical music, has died. She was 76.

Donegan, one of the nation’s most respected but little known jazz artists, died Tuesday in her Los Angeles home of colon cancer.

In 1992, she was elected to the American Jazz Masters Hall of Fame, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts to honor those who “helped write the history of jazz through their musical gifts and increased America’s understanding of this U.S.-born musical genre.”

It was an accolade long overdue. The late jazz authority Leonard Feather, who evaluated Donegan in The Times in 1992 as a consummate artist, often lamented in print that the accomplished Donegan appeared so seldom in jazz anthologies and recordings.

Feather and other critics attributed her lack of superstardom to what partially endeared Donegan to her fans--what he called her “visual antics.” Among them were her steady stream of wisecracks, flamboyant hand movements, eye-rolling and gimmicks such as playing piano with one hand while standing up.

Donegan attributed her lack of stellar fame to the fact that she was a woman trying to succeed in the male world of musical performance.

Although she had financially lean times, Donegan worked steadily across the United States and Canada as a soloist, and occasionally heading a trio, in clubs and jazz festivals. She was known for her amusing history of jazz and imitations of better-known singers Lena Horne, Billie Holiday and Della Reese.

“In a word, Donegan was delightful,” Times reviewer A. James Liska wrote of her performance at the Catalina Bar & Grill in 1988.

Born in Chicago, Donegan was encouraged by her mother to study classical piano. She turned to jazz in the early 1940s, and soon met Art Tatum, who became her mentor. Donegan began performing in Chicago clubs, mixing jazz, boogie-woogie and cocktail music.

In 1944, she came to Hollywood to appear with such entertainment greats as W.C. Fields, Cab Calloway and Sophie Tucker in the motion picture “Sensations of 1945.”

Donegan recorded throughout her long career, but that might not be evident in a record store. Memorable albums date mostly from 1959’s “Dorothy Donegan i,” to 1990’s “Live at the 1990 Floating Jazz Festival.”

Married and divorced three times, Donegan told The Times with characteristic humor in 1992: “I think artists should be by themselves. They have to practice. Being a wife. . . . She has to be submissive, cook, wash, iron and sew and bring the money home too.”

Donegan is survived by two sons.