{"id":1948530,"date":"2025-08-08T04:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T04:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1948530"},"modified":"2025-08-08T04:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T04:44:12","slug":"portland-jazz-legend-nancy-king-dies-at-85-after-absolutely-magical-music-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/portland-jazz-legend-nancy-king-dies-at-85-after-absolutely-magical-music-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland jazz legend Nancy King dies at 85 after \u2018absolutely magical\u2019 music career"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">PORTLAND, Ore. (<strong><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.koin.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:KOIN;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">KOIN<\/a><\/strong>) \u2014 A Portland jazz legend has died at the age of 85.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Nancy King was known the world over, praised for her voice and her improvisational skills on stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Words like \u201ctreasure\u201d and \u201cunique talent\u201d are often spoken by those who knew King.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"link \" href=\"https:\/\/www.koin.com\/news\/oregon\/large-vegetation-fire-off-hwy-58-near-oakridge-prompts-level-3-go-now-evacuations\/?ipid=promo-link-block1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Vegetation fire on Hwy 58 prompts \u2018Go Now\u2019 evacs;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\"> Vegetation fire on Hwy 58 prompts \u2018Go Now\u2019 evacs <\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cNancy King, to many, was perhaps the best jazz vocalist to ever live. And she just so happened to live in Portland, Oregon,\u201d said Portland State University Jazz Professor Sherry Alves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Alves knew King well, having interviewed King many times for her doctoral dissertation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A Grammy nominee, King grew up outside Springfield, started her career at the University of Oregon and said she was asked to leave because of her civil rights activism in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">She was known for her ability to \u201cscat,\u201d an improvisational vocal style in bebop and jazz.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">She was also known for her signature rose-colored glasses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cShe was absolutely magical as a musician and a person. And it\u2019s kind of hard to describe a person who can move so many people in so many ways,\u201d Alves said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Alves said King could \u201csing circles around any song,\u201d including well-known standards that she would make her own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Over her career, she\u00a0performed with other jazz legends, including Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><i>Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.koin.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \"> For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com. <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) \u2014 A Portland jazz legend has died at the age of 85. Nancy King was known the world over, praised for her voice and her improvisational skills on stage. Words like \u201ctreasure\u201d and \u201cunique talent\u201d are often spoken by those who knew King. Vegetation fire on Hwy 58 prompts \u2018Go Now\u2019 evacs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1948531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[340400,340401,340399,329168],"class_list":["post-1948530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-improvisational-skills","tag-jazz-vocalist","tag-nancy-king","tag-portland-state-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Portland-jazz-legend-Nancy-King-dies-at-85-after-\u2018absolutely.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1948530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1948531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1948530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1948530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1948530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}