Carmen McRae was 17 when Billie Holiday recorded her composition Dream of Life in 1939, yet stardom did not follow. Instead she spent her twenties as a chorus girl, a secretary and a working pianist in Harlem’s bebop laboratory at Minton’s Playhouse, married drummer Kenny Clarke, and then spent nearly four years playing solo piano and singing at Chicago’s Archway Lounge, a period she later called the most important schooling she ever had.

The episode follows her return to New York, her signing with Decca and the release of 12 albums in five years, her 1954 Downbeat vote as best new female vocalist, and the distinctive behind-the-beat phrasing that came from thinking like a pianist. It also traces her collaborations with Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr., Betty Carter and Cal Tjader, her tribute albums to Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and Sarah Vaughan, her appearance on Harry Connick Jr.’s debut, and her 1994 NEA Jazz Master honor.

• Growing up in 1920s Harlem with classical piano lessons and jazz royalty as the soundtrack
• How Teddy Wilson and Irene Kitchings got her song into Billie Holiday’s hands
• Why isolation in Chicago forced her to become a standalone storyteller
• How a pianist’s brain let her float over Brubeck’s odd meters without losing the groove
• Fifty years of touring, from Monterey and the North Sea Jazz Festival to Montreux