Jackie Cain

Jackie Cain (vocalist) was born in Milwaukee on May 22, 1928, as Jacqueline Ruth Cain. Her father was an office furniture salesman who also managed a community theater. As a child, she lived with her parents at 823 South Muskego Avenue in the Walker's Point neighborhood. When she was seven or eight, her parents divorced, and she and her mother moved in with her grandmother for a couple of years. After her mother found a job with a photo-imaging company, they moved to a rooming house overlooking Lake Michigan. Jackie sang in chorus in grade school and a capella choir in high school. She had a great ear and began singing at events around the city.

Around 1945, her father got her a job as a vocalist with a society band that had been playing for proms and parties. They had been hired to play for a few months at the Lakota, a popular cocktail bar and restaurant in the Mariner Building (now the Wisconsin Tower at 606 West Wisconsin Avenue) that featured jazz and R&B acts like Louis Jordan. Chicago bandleader Jay Burkhart was in the club one night and was so impressed with the 17-year-old's singing he asked her to move to Chicago to work with his big band. After initially refusing to let her go, Jackie's mother eventually agreed after it was arranged that Jackie would live with the Burkhart family, which included Jay's mother, sister, wife, and baby.

In Chicago, she met pianist Roy Kral, and they soon began performing together as "Jackie and Roy," a vocal duo with Roy accompanying on piano. Together, they joined Charlie Ventura's combo in 1948 and toured around the country. They became romantically involved during this time, and after leaving Ventura in April of 1949, they married just a couple of months later, on June 27. Jackie and Roy continued working with their own groups and even hosted a TV show in Chicago. In the late 1950s, they lived and performed in Las Vegas, but in the early 1960s moved to New York City. They were often featured on TV shows hosted by Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and Dinah Shore, and they recorded nearly forty albums for major record labels such as Columbia and Verve. According to Leonard Feather, Jackie was "best known for light, humorous, bop-influenced unison vocals with Kral…also a fine ballad singer." Jackie and Roy performed together for 53 years.

Roy died in 2002, and Jackie died at her home in Montclair, New Jersey, on September 15, 2014, at age 86, from complications of a stroke she suffered in 2010.

Listen to Jackie Cain sing "Lullaby in Rhythm" with Charlie Ventura and his Bop for the People, recorded in NYC on January 6, 1949. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruIy3t_jYTk