Born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 28, 1939, pianist and singer Andy Bey began his career with his two sisters Geraldine and Salome in the trio Andy Bey & the Bey Sisters. The group gained popularity with its three albums and the song "Scoubidou", immediately adapted by Sacha Distel. After the trio split up in 1967, the performer with his exceptional four-octave vocal range returned in 1974 with the album Experience and Judgement, and collaborations with Gary Bartz, Stanley Clarke and Horace Silver. In 1976, he appeared in Adrienne Kennedy's play A Rat's Mass, set to music by Cecil Taylor. His solo career resumed in the 1990s with a series of standards albums for the Jazzette(As Time Goes By) and Evidence(Ballads, Blues & Bey; Shades of Bey) labels. Nominated for "Best Jazz Vocal Album" at the Grammy Awards for American Song (2004), Andy Bey went on to record Ain't Necessarily So (2007) for 12th Street Records, followed by The World According to Andy Bey (2013) and Pages from an Ordinary Life (2016) for HighNote Records. One of the great jazz voices of his generation, with a baritone range and four octaves of amplitude, Andy Bey died in Englewood, New Jersey, on April 26, 2025, at the age of 85.
