Miriam Klein

Miriam Klein was born Miriam Brin on 27 March 1937 in Basel, Switzerland, into a Jewish family. She grew up in modest circumstances in the Gundeldingen quarter of Basel.

Her parents, Lilly and Isidor Brin, helped Jewish refugees during the Second World War. As she later recalled, refugees who had escaped across the German-Swiss border hidden under railway carriages were pulled out from under the trains and taken into the family home. Young Miriam had to hand over her clothes to them; her mother used to tell her that the refugees needed them more than she did. Her son David Klein wrote that these experiences left a lasting mark and gave her the independence and determination that later defined her career.

After her first professional steps in Paris in the 1950s, Klein completed musical training in Vienna. While in Vienna she also worked with the pianist Joe Zawinul, who later played with Cannonball Adderley and co-founded Weather Report. Details of her schooling in Basel have not been made public.

Klein first became known in Paris in the 1950s, singing, while not yet twenty, with the tenor saxophonist Don Byas, the bassist Pierre Michelot and the pianist Art Simmons. In 1957 the director Werner Düggelin cast her in a small role in the Swiss film Taxichauffeur Bänz, opposite the young Maximilian Schell.

Back in Switzerland she sang from 1963 with the bands of her husband, the trumpeter and guitarist Oscar Klein, recording albums such as Gemütlicher Cosy Jazz (1964) and Blues & Boogie (1969), and an album of Bessie Smith songs. In 1970 she recorded with the clarinettist Albert Nicholas.

Her international breakthrough came in 1973 with Lady Like, Miriam Klein Sings Billie Holiday on the MPS label, with Roy Eldridge on trumpet, Dexter Gordon on tenor saxophone and Slide Hampton on trombone. Leonard Feather wrote the liner notes. In 1974 she appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival and at the Newport Jazz Festival in New York.

She went on to record with Wild Bill Davison (1976) and the Fritz Pauer Trio (1977), and in 1978 made By Myself in New York with Sir Roland Hanna and George Mraz. In 1979 she was the subject of an episode of the Austrian ORF television series Bourbon Street. At the 1980 Frankfurt Jazz Festival she was accompanied by Hans Koller's International Brass Company, and in 1981 and 1982 she toured with Kenny Clarke, Hanna and Isla Eckinger. She also recorded with the orchestra of Swiss Radio DRS under Peter Jacques, in arrangements by Russ Garcia, and made the duo album Ballads for Loving Kindness (1994) with the pianist Kirk Lightsey.

In 2001 she returned to wide acclaim on My Marilyn, the album of her son David Klein, singing songs from Marilyn Monroe's films with Mulgrew Miller, Ira Coleman and Marcello Pellitteri. In her later years she performed with her partner, the pianist and composer Christian Gutfleisch.

Klein was married to the trumpeter and guitarist Oscar Klein, with whom she performed from the early 1960s; Oscar Klein died in 2006, and Swiss reports describe him as her former husband. The couple had four children, including the saxophonist and composer David Klein. While Oscar Klein toured with bands such as the Tremble Kids and the Dutch Swing College Band, she raised the children largely on her own and arranged her career around them, managing her own bookings from the family home on the Sonnenweg in Basel.

For more than 28 years her partner in life and on stage was the German jazz pianist Christian Gutfleisch.

Billie Holiday was Klein's central musical model, but she insisted on singing in the manner of Holiday rather than copying her. Her son described her singing as intuitive and unaffected: she avoided vocal acrobatics and staged effects, and relied on a deep understanding of the lyrics and the stories in her songs. He also wrote that she could not perform feelings she did not have, as an artist or as a person.

She was also determined to keep her family first. She would drive home after concerts so she could make breakfast and get the children to school, and she turned down long engagements away from home.

Swiss and German obituaries described Klein as a pioneer for women in European jazz, and as one of very few European singers to work so extensively with leading American jazz musicians and gain comparable international recognition. She did so in an industry dominated by men, without a manager or agency.

Lady Like remains her best-known record, and By Myself was reissued by Enja in 2012. Her son wrote that her recordings remain the testimony of an uncompromising and truthful artist whose work mattered far beyond Switzerland.

No formal awards are documented in the sources consulted. Her recognition came from peers and critics: Dexter Gordon's three-word verdict "She can sing!", Leonard Feather's liner notes for Lady Like, an invitation from George Wein to the 1974 Newport Jazz Festival, and JazzTimes' remark that she achieved an intimacy not quite like any other singer. Roy Eldridge, who had recorded with Billie Holiday, remarked that her voice would have suited the 1972 Holiday film Lady Sings the Blues better than that of its star.

• Gemütlicher Cosy Jazz, with Oscar Klein (1964, Amadeo)
• Blues & Boogie, with Oscar Klein (1969, Europa)
• Albert Nicholas Featuring Miriam Klein (1970, Europa)
• Lady Like, Miriam Klein Sings Billie Holiday (1973, MPS)
• By Myself, with Roland Hanna and George Mraz (1978, L+R; reissued by Enja 2012)
• Ballads for Loving Kindness, with Kirk Lightsey (1994, Divox)
• My Marilyn, David Klein (2001, Enja)
• Swiss Radio Days Jazz Live Concert Series, with Karin Krog and Enrico Rava (TCB Records)
• Film: Taxichauffeur Bänz (1957)
• Television: SRF Antenne, Musikalischer Ausklang mit Miriam Klein (1974); ORF Bourbon Street, episode 31 (1979)

Miriam Klein died on 2 October 2026 in her home city of Basel, aged 89, surrounded by her family. The news became public later in the month through an obituary by her son David Klein in the German JazzZeitung (27 October 2026), and was reported by Keystone-SDA and swissinfo.ch on 3 November 2026. The cause of death has not been made public.

The family invited friends and admirers to celebrate her life and music on Tuesday 1 December 2026 at 11.30 in Chapel 2 at the Hörnli cemetery in Riehen, near Basel. A final resting place has not been made public.