Jackie Paris, 79; Jazz Vocalist Began Long Career in Vaudeville

Jackie Paris, 79, a jazz vocalist for seven decades who toured with Charlie Parker and other luminaries but never achieved great fame, died Thursday in New York City of complications from bone cancer.

Born Carlo Jackie Paris in Nutley, N.J., he began his show business career in vaudeville as a child. In the late 1940s, after spending two years in the Army at the end of World War II, he worked as a singer and guitarist in the jazz clubs of 52nd Street.

Paris worked with Lionel Hampton and Charles Mingus, among others, and was the first to sing the lyrics of Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight.”

The vocalist, who taught master classes and gave private lessons, sang publicly in as recently as March, when he performed at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan. His most recent album was “The Intimate Jackie Paris” in 2001.