Rigmor Newman, Behind-the-Scenes Fixture of the Jazz World, Dies at 86
Rigmor Newman, who began her career in Sweden as a singer and beauty queen and went on to become a fixture in the U.S. jazz world as a concert and film producer as well as a talent manager, died on April 26 in the Bronx. She was 86.
Her daughter, Annie Newman, said she died in a hospital from complications of Parkinson's disease. Her death was not widely reported at the time.
Ms. Newman, who sang at the Nobel Prize banquet in Stockholm in 1957, arrived in New York in the early 1960s after marrying Joe Newman, a standout trumpeter in the Count Basie and Lionel Hampton orchestras.
She later managed the Nicholas Brothers, a gravity-defying dance duo that dazzled cinema audiences starting in the late 1930s, and became heroes to many Black Americans. Harold Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers became her second husband.
Among her many professional incarnations, Ms. Newman served as the executive director of Jazz Interactions, a nonprofit organization promoting jazz throughout the New York metropolitan area, which Joe Newman helped found in the early 1960s.
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