Beegie Adair

Beegie Adair grew up in Cave City, Kentucky, where she began taking piano lessons at age five. She continued to study piano throughout college, earning a B.S. in Music Education at Western State University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. During and after college, she played in jazz bands, and spent three years teaching music to children before moving to Nashville, where she became a session musician, working at WSM-TV and on The Johnny Cash Show (1969-71). She and her husband also started a jingle company to write music for commercials. In 1982, she and saxophonist Denis Solee formed the Adair-Solee Quartet, which evolved into the Be-Bop Co-Op, a jazz sextet. She made her first album under her own name, Escape to New York, with a rhythm section consisting of Bob Cranshaw and Gregory Hutchinson. But her subsequent albums, The Frank Sinatra Collection, The Nat King Cole Collection, and Jazz Piano Christmas, were made with bassist Roger Spencer and drummer Chris Brown.