Ann Hampton Callaway was born in Chicago, the daughter of television journalist John Callaway and voice teacher/singer Shirley Callaway. She fell in love with music as a teenager while growing up listening to her father's extensive jazz record collection.
Callaway has emerged as one of today's superb interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Among her many accomplishments and accolades, Callaway was honored to be the first person to have been granted permission by Cole Porter's estate to write music for his previously unrecorded lyrics to "I Gaze In Your Eyes."
In addition to jazz, Callaway is equally at home in the worlds of pop, cabaret and Broadway. Callaway's performance in the musical Swing! earned her a Tony award for "Best Featured Actress in a Musical" in 2000. She also wrote and sang the theme song for the hit TV show, The Nanny. Her talents as a singer, composer and pianist have earned the respect of a range of artists, from Carly Simon to Wynton Marsalis to Barbra Streisand, who has recorded several of Callaway's songs.
Callaway has appeared on over 40 records as either a soloist or guest artist. Her most recent album, Blues in the Night, features a collection of standards from the American Songbook alongside Callaway's own original and witty tunes.
In 2006, Callaway made her big screen debut in Robert DeNiro's spy film The Good Shepherd, appearing as a ballroom singer and performing the tune, "Come Rain or Come Shine." Most recently, Callaway has found her way to the small screen, having just taped the pilot for a new public television series — Singer's Spotlight with Ann Hampton Callaway. Taped in Chicago for WTTI, Channel 11, the series is imagined, according to Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune, as "a cross between James Lipton's Inside the Actors Studio [on Bravo cable TV] and Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz."
Originally broadcast June 7, 2005. Originally recorded Oct. 12, 2004.
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