Originally from Detroit, Barbara Morrison’s twenty-year career as a performer and recording artist includes appearances worldwide with some of the greatest names in jazz: Ray Brown, Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Collette, Joe Williams, Gerald Wiggins, Jimmy Witherspoon, Hank Crawford, Eddie Harris, Nancy Wilson, David T. Walker, and Jimmy Smith.

She has performed in such highly regarded venues as Carnegie Hall, the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Bern Jazz Festival, and the Playboy Jazz Festival. Morrison also toured Europe with Ray Charles. Morrison seems equally at home in a broad range of idioms, from pop to R&B to the blues, but the blues is unquestionably her forte. Morrison has been compared to some of the greatest female jazz and blues singers. Her singing has been described as “soul stirring, sizzling,” her style, “graceful,” her pacing, “flawless.” The New York Times stated, “A joy, at Carnegie Hall, Barbara Morrison delivered one song a la Esther Phillips and another with Ella Fitzgerald’s blithe scat singing.”

Barbara Morrison is a professor of Global Jazz Studies at UCLA and is the founder and director of her own school of music in Inglewood, California, teaching beginning to advanced music, jazz/blues interpretation and history, acting, and concert performing techniques. She has also worked closely with the late Dr. Beverly Robinson of the UCLA Theater Department, on productions of “For Colored Girls” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” Morrison also toured Europe with Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Collette, Joe Williams, Gerald Wiggins, Jimmy Witherspoon, Hank Crawford, Eddie Harris, Nancy Wilson, David T. Walker, and Jimmy Smith. She has performed in such highly regarded venues as Carnegie Hall, the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Bern Jazz Festival, and the Playboy Jazz Festival. Morrison also toured Europe with Ray Charles.