Carrie Smith, a jazz and blues singer who achieved stage fame as one of the stars of the Broadway musical revue Black and Blue, died

Ms. Smith had been a presence in the jazz scene for three decades when in 1989 she was cast as one of the singers in the bluesy revue Black and Blue, a show that featured music by such 1920s and '30s blues and jazz titans as Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. She sang the standards "Big Butter and Egg Man," "Am I Blue" and "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues." The show ran for 829 performances.

Jazz Blues singer Carrie Smith, who co-starred in the Tony Award-winning musical revue Black and Blue, died of cancer on May 20 at the Lillian Booth Actors Home of the Actors Fund in Englewood, New Jersey. She was 86.

The show, which co-starred Ruth Brown, Linda Hopkins and Savion Glover, opened in January 1989 and ran for approximately 800 performances. An extravagant song-and-dance revue, saluting the great early jazz singers, the show feature Smith singing such classic songs as "I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues" and "I Want a Big Butter and Egg Man."

During her long career, Smith sang at such prestigious venues as the Newport Jazz Festival, the Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall, and performed frequently in Europe

A blues belter in the classic tradition, Carrie Smith was born August 25, 1941, in Fort Gaines, GA. Despite making her debut at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival while a member of a New Jersey church choir, she did not truly emerge on the jazz circuit until the early '70s, in the company of Big "Tiny" Little. In November of 1974, Smith's riveting performance as Bessie Smith (no relation) in Dick Hyman's Carnegie Hall production of Satchmo Remembered brought her fame throughout the international musical community. Soon, she began touring as a solo act, and in a short time began recording as well; still, despite subsequent performances in conjunction with the New York Jazz Repertory Orchestra, Tyree Glenn, and the World's Greatest Jazz Band, Smith remained little more than a cult figure in the U.S., proving better received in Europe. While rooted firmly in the blues and gospel, she was a singer of considerable range and depth, as recordings like 1976's Do Your Duty and the following year's When You're Down and Out prove; despite never earning significant success, she remained an active figure both on-stage and in the studio through the 1990s.

R.I.P Carrie Smith