Everlasting Legacy

During the late 1970s, Humes enjoyed some of the most successful years of her career. She continued to tour Europe and made frequent appearances at famed New York restaurant and music room The Cookery. In the final years of her life, Humes was nominated for three Grammy awards. She died of cancer in Santa Monica, California on September 13, 1981. 

“Los Angeles Times jazz critic Leonard Feather called her ‘one of the handful complete originals in the history of jazz singing,’ and said nobody else ‘matched her unique, high-pitched timbre.’ No other singer, he said, had ‘a comparable mastery of both ballads and blues.’”

– As reported in the obituary printed in the Courier-Journal after her death, September 14, 1981.