WMildred Bailey was a Native American jazz singer during the 1930s, known as "The Queen of Swing", "The Rockin' Chair Lady" and "Mrs. Swing". Some of her best-known hits are "For Sentimental Reasons", "It's So Peaceful in the Country", "Doin' The Uptown Lowdown", "Trust in Me", "Where Are You?", "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart", "Small Fry", "Please Be Kind", "Darn That Dream", "Rockin' Chair", "Blame It on My Last Affair", and "Says My Heart". She had three singles that made number one on the popular charts.
WKlee Benally is the lead vocalist and guitarist of Navajo punk rock band Blackfire. Benally is also an activist, artist, silversmith, and filmmaker. He also performs traditional Navajo dances and is a champion fancy war dancer.
WEstelle Bennett was an American singer. Bennett was a member of the girl group The Ronettes, along with her sister Ronnie and cousin Nedra Talley.
WCharles "Chuck" Billy is an American singer and songwriter who is best known as the lead vocalist for thrash metal band Testament.
WRadmilla A. Cody born 1975 is an American Navajo model, award-winning singer, and anti-domestic violence activist who was the 46th Miss Navajo from 1997 to 1998.
WMarsha Hunt is an American actress, novelist, singer and former model, who has lived mostly in Britain and Ireland. She achieved national fame when she appeared in London as Dionne in the long-running rock musical Hair. She enjoyed close relationships with Marc Bolan and Mick Jagger, who is the father of her only child Karis.
WJayanthi Kyle is an American gospel and soul singer/songwriter based in Minneapolis, Minnesota who uses music, song, and storytelling to empower both youth and adults alike. Kyle has been active in more than 11 bands in her career, including Black Audience, Jayanthi Kyle and the Crybabies, Romantica, Gospel Machine, Davis Bain Band, Passed Presents, Give Get Sistet, Miss Pennie's Microphone, and The Blacker The Berry Arts Collective.
WJana Mashonee,, better known by her stage name, Jana, is an American singer, songwriter, actress, author and philanthropist. She is originally from Robeson County, North Carolina. Jana is a two-time Grammy nominee and nine-time Nammy winner. Her music is steeped in R&B and gospel roots, which introduced her to the mainstream. She has music available on iTunes and Amazon.
WTrixie Mattel is the drag persona of Brian Michael Firkus, an American drag queen, singer-songwriter, comedian, author, and television personality from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mattel is best known for being the winner of the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars and for placing sixth on the seventh season of RuPaul's Drag Race. In June 2019, a panel of judges from New York magazine placed her fourth on their list of "the most powerful drag queens in America", a ranking of 100 former Drag Race contestants. Mattel co-hosts the web series UNHhhh and previously co-hosted Viceland spin-off, The Trixie & Katya Show, alongside Katya Zamolodchikova. She also co-hosts a podcast “The Bald and the Beautiful” with Katya. Mattel's first studio album, Two Birds, was released in 2017, followed by her second album, One Stone, in 2018. Her third album, Barbara, was released in 2020. In 2020, her and Zamolodchikova became New York Times best-sellers after publishing “Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood.”
WClaudia McNeil was an American actress known for premiering the role of matriarch Lena Younger in both the stage and screen productions of A Raisin in the Sun.
WJim Pepper was a jazz saxophonist, composer and singer of Kaw and Muscogee Creek Native American heritage. He moved to New York City in 1964, where he came to prominence in the late 1960s as a member of The Free Spirits, an early jazz-rock fusion group that also featured Larry Coryell and Bob Moses. Pepper went on to have a lengthy career in jazz, recording almost a dozen albums as a bandleader and many more as featured soloist. Pepper and Joe Lovano held down the two tenor sax chairs in Paul Motian's band, recording three LPs in 1984, 1985 and 1987. Motian described Pepper's playing as "post-Coltrane." Don Cherry was among those who encouraged Pepper to bring more of his Native culture into his music and the two collaborated extensively. Pepper created a body of work that later inspired Gunther Schuller, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in recognition of his work in developing Third Stream Music, to arrange, conduct and record "Gunther Schuller's Witchi Tai To: The Music of Jim Pepper" in Cologne, Germany in 2000. He died of lymphoma aged 50.
WMartha Redbone is an American blues and soul singer of part Cherokee, Choctaw, European and African-American descent. She has won awards for her contemporary Native American music. Her music is a mix of rhythm and blues, and soul music influences, fused with elements of traditional Native American music.
WTsianina Redfeather Blackstone was a Creek/Cherokee singer and performer born in Eufaula, Oklahoma, then within the Muscogee Creek Nation. From 1908 she toured regularly with Charles Wakefield Cadman, a composer and pianist who gave lectures about Native American music that were accompanied by his compositions and her singing. He composed classically based works associated with the Indianist movement. They toured in the United States and Europe.
WKenneth Ray Rogers was an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, record producer, and entrepreneur. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Rogers was particularly popular with country audiences but also charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres, and topped the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone. He sold more than 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His fame and career spanned multiple genres: jazz, folk, pop, rock, and country. He remade his career, and was one of the most successful cross-over artists of all time.
WKatherine Neal Simmons Love was an American soprano singer of Choctaw ancestry. She often performed songs of Native American themes, wearing an evocative costume of beads and fringe.
WDorothy Jacqueline Keely, better known as Keely Smith, was an iconic American jazz and popular music singer, who performed and recorded extensively in the 1950s with then-husband Louis Prima, and throughout the 1960s as a solo artist.
WVeronica Yvette Spector is an American singer who fronted the girl group the Ronettes with her older sister Estelle Bennett and their cousin Nedra Talley. Together, they had a string of hits during the early to mid–1960s, such as "Be My Baby", "Baby, I Love You", and "The Best Part of Breakin' Up". Subsequently, Spector launched a solo career and has since released five studio albums and one extended play.
WScott Stapp is an American singer and songwriter. Stapp is best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Creed. He has also fronted the band Art of Anarchy and has released three solo albums: The Great Divide (2005), Proof of Life (2013), and The Space Between the Shadows (2019).
WCatherine Laverne Starks, known professionally as Kay Starr, was an American pop and jazz singer who enjoyed considerable success in the late 1940s and 1950s. She was of Iroquois and Irish heritage. Starr was successful in every field of music she tried, but her roots were in jazz.
WNedra Talley, now known as Nedra Talley-Ross, is an American singer best known as a former member of the girl group The Ronettes, in which she performed with her cousins Ronnie and Estelle Bennett. She is of African American, Native American and Puerto Rican descent. In 2007, the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
WCorey Todd Taylor is an American singer, musician, and songwriter. He is known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the bands Slipknot and Stone Sour.
WJoy Angela Villa is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and YouTuber. She is known for her outspoken support of U.S. President Donald Trump, and various conservative and right-wing political and social causes.
WChesley Goseyun Wilson is a maker and performer of the Apache fiddle, singer, dancer, medicine man, silversmith, former model, and actor. Wilson received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989.