Born
Marian Maud Runnells (she later changed the spelling of Marian to Marion) in
Natchez,
Mississippi, she began her career in
Atlanta working clubs, and then in
Chicago, where singer
Peggy Lee heard her on an audition tape and suggested she should be signed up by
Capitol Records, releasing three albums for them in the early and mid-1960s. During this early part of her career, she became Marian Montgomery, having previously gone by the nickname of Pepe. In 1963, she released the original version of the song "
That's Life", made famous after its 1966 release by Frank Sinatra. In 1965, she came to
Britain to play a season with
John Dankworth, and met and married English pianist and musical director
Laurie Holloway, thus beginning a long and productive association in which they both became well known to
British jazz, cabaret and television audiences. She numbered amongst her admirers
Nat King Cole,
Frank Sinatra and British chat show host
Michael Parkinson, on whose show she became resident singer in the 1970s. In 1976, she sang in a comedy musical sketch with
Morecambe & Wise. She also famously collaborated with composer and conductor
Richard Rodney Bennett for a series of concerts and albums in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, her recording of the song "Maybe the Morning" (contained on her 1972 album
Marion in the Morning) was used by
Radio Luxembourg each evening to close the station, and again as the final song to be heard on the station when it closed in 1992. Her final studio recording was
That Lady from Natchez, released in 1997. She continued to perform until just before her death, including a sell-out three week season at
London's "Pizza on the Park" in April 2002. ==Death==