Cheryl Bentyne — Acting | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Cheryl Bentyne (born Cheryl Benthien; January 17, 1954) is a jazz singer who spent much of her career with The Manhattan Transfer.

Bentyne started singing at age 13 with her father's Dixieland and swing band. Following graduation from Mount Vernon High School, she enrolled at Skagit Valley College and studied music and theater. She moved to Seattle in the mid 1970s and sang with John Holte's New Deal Rhythm Band. The NDRB trombonist Gary McKaig gave her an album by the Manhattan Transfer. After four years in Seattle, she moved to Los Angeles.

In 1979, Bentyne became the permanent replacement for singer Laurel Massé, who left the group after being injured in an automobile accident. Her first appearance was on the album Extensions (1979), which won the group its first Grammy Award, Best Jazz Fusion Performance for a vocalese version of the song "Birdland" by Weather Report.

She won ten Grammy Awards with the Manhattan Transfer, including awards for her arrangement of "Another Night in Tunisia" with Bobby McFerrin and for writing the song "Sassy" for the album The Offbeat of Avenues.

Her debut solo album, Something Cool (Columbia, 1992), was produced by trumpeter Mark Isham and consisted of traditional pop and jazz standards. This was followed by Dreaming of Mister Porter (2000), a tribute to Cole Porter; Talk of the Town (2004) with Kenny Barron, David "Fathead" Newman, Chuck Mangione; and Let Me Off Uptown (2005), a tribute to Anita O'Day. While still a member of the Manhattan Transfer, she recorded the album Duets with bassist Rob Wasserman. In 1991, she collaborated with Mark Isham on a song for the soundtrack to the film Mortal Thoughts.

Bentyne left music in 2012 due to illness. Her spleen was removed and she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Margaret Dorn replaced her in the Manhattan Transfer. Within a year, a doctor told her she was free of cancer, and she returned to singing.

In 2013, she narrated an audiobook version of the best-selling book Little Girl Blue, a biography of singer Karen Carpenter. In 2014, she was a judge and mentor for the Songbook Academy, a summer program for high school students operated by the Great American Songbook Foundation founded by Michael Feinstein.

Source: Article "Cheryl Bentyne" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.