Vocals | b. 1942

Flora Purim sings like the voice is just another instrument in the band, which is exactly how Chick Corea heard her. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1942, she started out fronting bossa nova groups in Rio and São Paulo nightclubs through the 1960s, a world captured on her little-known 1964 debut "Flora É M.P.M.", before relocating to New York in 1968 with her husband, percussionist Airto Moreira. After-hours jam sessions with Stan Getz, Gil Evans and Duke Pearson pulled her toward a far more improvisational style, and when Corea was assembling a new band in 1971, she joined as vocalist and brought Moreira in on percussion, the two becoming founding members of Return to Forever. Her wordless, six-octave vocal lines on "Return to Forever" (ECM, 1972) and "Light as a Feather" (Polydor, 1972) helped define the sound of jazz fusion's early years. She launched a solo career on Milestone Records with "Butterfly Dreams" (1973) and "Stories to Tell" (1974), and despite an 18-month prison sentence for cocaine possession that interrupted her career in the mid 1970s, she went on to win DownBeat's Best Female Jazz Vocalist award four times and earn two Grammy nominations.