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About relarion13833 I was born in Manhattan. My parents named me Billie Jane Lee Lorraine after godmother Billie Holiday, my mother Jane (formerly a big band singer), my mom's ex-roommate Peggy Lee, and the song "Sweet Lorraine." I am the daughter of the late jazz writer Leonard Feather.

My parents moved to LA when I was 12, but I returned in the late '60s to pursue an acting career. This led to a host of waitressing jobs at restaurants of every ethnicity, and a few acting jobs, including chorus and understudy work in "Jesus Christ, Superstar" on Broadway. I started singing as a way to make a little extra money, and wound up singing backup for Petula Clark and Grand Funk Railroad. Put my own act together, returned to LA, played some jazz clubs. Pop producer Richard Perry hired me for a vocal trio he put together to front a big band. The group was called Full Swing, was together eight years and recorded three albums. During this time I began writing lyrics, primarily to formerly instrumental big band pieces, and discovered that lyric-writing was my main talent.

When the group broke up I started working as a lyricist for television, first ballads for soap operas (not my forte), then lyrics for Disney, Hasbro and MGM Animation (much better at that). I was nominated , with my composer co-writers, for seven Emmys.

In the 1990s I started writing for myself,. In 1997 I released a mostly-electronic album called The Body Remembers. Between 2000 and the present I have released eight albums. Five of them focused on old jazz and stride music by Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and other classic jazz composers, with my added lyrics. My last three releases, Ages, Tales of the Unusual and Attachments (the last due out 8/13/13), were written with living jazz composers including Russell Ferrante of the group Yellowjackets, Eddie Arkin, Shelly Berg, and Dave Grusin. Ages received a Grammy nomination in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category, and Tales of the Unusual was nominated in the category of best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) for Shelly Berg's arrangement of Shelly's and my song "Out There," inspired by the relationship between Dana Scully and Fox Mulder in the Tv show The X-Files.

In early 2012 I completed a duo project with 26-year-old stride piano phenom Stephanie Trick www.stphanietrick.com. Our duo is called Nouveau Stride. Our live show involves multimedia composed of a piano-cam, projected lyrics, a "soundie" (soundies were short films created to promote jazz artists back in the day), and a stride cartoon I produced in '09, You're Outa Here http://www.lorrainefeather.com/YOH/film/.

My website is www.lorrainefeather.com