This photograph shows Marilyn Maye, a jazz vocalist who was born in Wichita in 1928, onstage at a Topeka Jazz Workshop concert. She began singing on the WIBW radio station in Topeka when she was 9 years old, and performed for 11 years at the Colony in Kansas City, Missouri. She had appeared frequently on television--notably 76 times on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. In 1966, she received a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and in 2008, she received the Kansas Arts Commission's Distinguished Arts Award. The Kansas Native Sons and Daughters named her Kansan of the Year in 2012.
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
Marilyn Maye onstage at a Topeka Jazz Workshop concert