Jackie & Roy

Born on May 22, 1928, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, vocalist Jackie Cain first collaborated with singer and pianist Roy Kral, born October 10, 1921, in Chicago, Illinois, during 1946. The duo observed their 50th anniversary as a vocal partnership in 1996. Their engagement with Charlie Ventura’s band from 1948 to 1949 earned them substantial visibility, most notably through an atypical vocal treatment of Lou Stein’s “East of Suez.” After exiting Ventura’s ensemble in June 1949, the pair married and maintained an unbroken professional alliance from that point forward. In the early 1950s Jackie & Roy hosted their own television program in Chicago, appeared in Las Vegas between 1957 and 1960, relocated permanently to New York in 1963, and lent their voices to assorted television commercials. Across subsequent decades they issued numerous lively jazz sessions for an array of labels and remained active as performers into the 2000s, continuing until Kral’s death in August 2002. Roy was the brother of singer Irene Kral.