Gloria Lynne, Dakota Staton and other female jazz vocal balladeers

Oh yeah, they put the spotlight on xpost McCorkle too--some other artists eventually on here as well, but she gets a good amount of room, whole thing is 118 minutes:
https://indianapublicmedia.org/afterglow/susannah-mccorkle-haunted-heart.php

From Afterglow's wider-ranging sister show, Night Lights:

Dick and Kiz Harp were a husband-and-wife, piano-and-vocals duo who ran their own nightclub (converted from a warehouse and called "The 90th Floor," after a lesser-known Cole Porter song they performed) in Dallas, Texas at the end of the 1950s. They‘ve developed a cult following among jazz-vocal aficionados on the basis of two obscure LPs. The Harps, influenced by artists such as Sylvia Sims, Anita O‘Day, and Dick Marx‘s Chicago trio, came up with their own sound--a blend of cabaret, torch song, and Midwestern camp--riding strongly on Kiz Harp‘s magnetic stage presence and slightly hoarse, soulful voice (a listener described her as "Jeri Southern smoking two packs a day"). Their career ended suddenly and tragically in 1960. We‘ll hear music from both of their albums (available again at 90th Floor Records) and we‘ll talk with Bruce Collier, the founder and owner of 90th Floor Records, who recorded both Harp LPs.

From Night lights sister show, Afterglow:

This week, we’re highlighting some recordings that pianist Ellis Larkins had with various singers in the 1940s and 50s. Larkins would have turned 100 years old on May 15, 2023. He was the first African American to attend the prestigious music conservatory the Peabody Institute, and later went on to study at Juilliard. He became a fixture of the 1950s jazz scene in New York, and despite not recording with many singers over the course of his career, the few sessions he worked on are notable. Ahead, we’ll hear his work with Chris Connor, Mildred Bailey, Maxine Sullivan, and Ella Fitzgerald.

So it seems that John Hammond and Columbia did right by Aretha quality-wise, but inadvertently set her up to be clobbered by the resurgence and then some of kid pop-rock-r&b, in the wake of the Beatles and rise of Motown etc, with no mainstream label room for the older jazz vocal approach, until the 80s, say---reminding me of what happened to the somewhat prodgious Carol Sloane:

This week, we’re paying tribute to jazz singer and song stylist Carol Sloane, who passed away on January 23, 2023. Sloane was one of the last surviving singers from that golden age of the American Songbook in the mid 20th century. After recording a few albums for Columbia in the 1960s, Sloane remained out of the spotlight for several decades, before emerging as a mature and celebrated song interpreter in the 1980s. This hour, I’ll chronicle her career, from her early days to her late-career Renaissance, highlighting some notable recordings along the way.

https://indianapublicmedia.org/large-images/afterglow-images/carol-sloane-love-you-madly.jpg
The album "Love You Madly" was one of several albums Carol Sloane recorded for Contemporary Records in the late 1980s (Album Cover, Contemporary Records)

You think John Hammond and Columbia did right by Aretha quality-wise by limiting her to a traditional Jazz approach? I feel like she was better off quality wise when she left and joined Wexler and recorded at Muscle Shoals.

The Hammond-Columbia era Aretha tracks *that I've heard* sound good-faith to me, and rock etc was mostly trade winds in the early 60s, aside from the girl group trendette and a few others---Columbia geezers just didn't know what was around the corner, or at least that it would blow up so big, with lasting sea change impact.

Anyway, she sounds awesome on the Afterglow selection, and I must hear more.