Myra Taylor (jazz singer)

Myra Taylor
Myra Taylor at her 94th birthday party, Knuckleheads Saloon
Background information
Birth name	Myra Jardine Render
Born	(1917-02-24)February 24, 1917 Bonner Springs, Kansas, U.S.
Died	December 9, 2011(2011-12-09) (aged 94) Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Genres	Vocal jazz
Occupation(s)	Singer
Years active	1940–2011
Associated acts	Wild Women of Kansas City, Harlan Leonard

Myra Taylor (February 24, 1917 – December 9, 2011) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. She began performing as a teenager and continued into her nineties.

Myra Jardine Render, later Taylor, was born in Bonner Springs, Kansas, but her family moved to Kansas City, Missouri's historic 18th and Vine area when she was a child. Working as a housekeeper at age 14, she began dancing at the Sunset and Reno clubs on 12th street. Being underage, she entered some clubs by sneaking in through a rear window and eventually attracted attention singing.

Taylor appeared as the character Pearl in three episodes of the US television program The Jeffersons - The Arrival (Part 1) and The Arrival (Part 2) in 1980 and Men of the Cloth in 1982

She was the lead in the 1979 women's professional basketball comedy Scoring, as well as supporting roles in Suspect,Crossing Delancey,Lasse Hallström's Once Around, and Ron Howard's The Paper.

In the 1930s, she toured the Midwest with Clarence Love's band. She moved to Chicago in 1937 and worked with Warren “Baby” Dodds, Lonnie Johnson, Roy Eldridge and Lil Hardin Armstrong. She returned to Kansas City in 1940 and Harlan Leonard hired Taylor as the featured singer for his new band Harlan Leonard and His Rockets. The band had a lengthy engagement at Harlem's Golden Gate Ballroom. The band recorded I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire on RCA's Bluebird Records label. Taylor wrote the song Dig It, and Leonard claimed co-writing credit, later omitting her name and denying her royalties.