Tampa legend Kitty Daniels, who played with jazz's biggest stars, dies at 90

Yahoo

30-01-2025

TAMPA — It didn't matter whether you could hold a tune. When Kitty Daniels sat at the keys, she could make anyone sound good.
Known to friends as 'Miss Kitty,' the lounge singer and pianist was a constant fixture at Donatello Italian Restaurant in Tampa, where she'd charm guests late into the evening.
She didn't have to tell patrons about the time she filled in for Etta James' pianist, opened for Dizzy Gillespie or nearly married Ray Charles' drummer. You could hear the years of jazz history in her voice. And when someone started to croon along, she'd instantly slip into the right key to help them shine.
'She would love to make people feel good about themselves,' said her grandson, Michael Reed. 'She found that thing in them, even if they didn't believe that they were singers ... you see their eyes light up. Miss Kitty made them feel that way.'
She died Jan. 2 at age 90 due to complications from lung cancer. The Tampa she left behind is a more musical place because of her.
Miss Kitty was born and raised in Ybor City. The youngest of three children, she grew up in her parents' rooming house on Eighth Avenue, on land that now houses the Palm Avenue parking garage.
Though she was originally named Dorothy, everyone called her Kitty from a young age.
'When she was scared of something or everyone, or she got mad at someone, (her voice) went up really high, and it sounded like a cat,' said her daughter, Tammy Daniels.
Her musical origin story began, according to Kitty lore, when she was 8 months old. Kitty was sitting on her mother's lap, listening to the radio. She reached her tiny hands over to the keys of a nearby piano and started plunking out the theme song of the radio show.
Her parents enrolled her in piano lessons by age 6, said local singer and filmmaker Louise Krikorian. As a student at Tampa's Middleton High School, she started performing at local churches and schools.
When Miss Kitty was growing up, Tampa was part of the Chitlin' Circuit, a network of music venues where Black performers could play during Jim Crow segregation. As a teenage bartender at the Cotton Club on Central Avenue, she met many prominent blues and jazz stars of the time.
'She would hear the pianists playing the wrong chords so she would go over and say, 'Would you mind if I played the piano on the next song?'' Krikorian said.
After a stint studying music at Hunter College in New York, Miss Kitty returned to Tampa, where she joined a local band.
She once told the Tampa Bay Times that her favorite songs to play were the standards — especially 'things that tell a story.'
'Snapping her left fingers, playing with her right hand, tapping her bass pedals with her feet, and softly adjusting her rhythm box, she has a full sound,' wrote the Tampa Tribune in 1977.
'The tone and timbre of her voice sound like (Billie) Holiday's,' said a review of her in the Tribune that same year. 'The style is her own and is based, she says, on the influences of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Tormé.'
Belinda Womack, a local performer who befriended Miss Kitty in 1979, said that visiting musicians wanted to take Miss Kitty with them on the road when she left. She played with everyone from Sam Cooke to Jackie Wilson.
'She was just that good. She could play any kind of music in any key. Sheet music, forget that,' Womack said. 'She could read it better than people who wrote it, but she would just play whatever, and she was amazing at it.'
While playing around Florida, Miss Kitty discovered that discrimination in the local musicians' union was blocking Black players from high-paying gigs. According to Times archives, Miss Kitty wrote a letter demanding that the union reverse its policy.
They listened to her.
Beginning in the late 1990s, Kitty spent most of her evenings playing at Donatello. She was frequently joined by her romantic and musical partner of more than four decades, drummer Majid Shabazz.
'Of course, she was beautiful ... just a super human being,' Shabazz said. 'Kitty is jazz."
Gino Tiozzo, the owner of Donatello, remembers Miss Kitty as a constant presence behind the piano.
'Her music and voice and sound, it just became part of the air in the restaurant,' Tiozzo said. 'She had a somewhat raspy, sultry, intoxicating voice and the softest touch on the piano. There's few people left on this planet like her.'
Miss Kitty loved taking requests — and she always remembered them. It didn't matter if it had been six months since a patron visited the restaurant. When she saw your face, she'd start playing your tune.
'I saw it over and over again for 25 years,' Tiozzo said. 'She never forgot anybody's song. Ever.'
She passed the microphone to just about anyone: college students, jazz legends, tipsy diners. She especially loved mentoring young musicians, including Womack and Krikorian.
'She could tell if you were a singer just by looking at you,' Krikorian said.
Miss Kitty had several marriages and five children of her own. But her grandson, Reed, said she was a mother figure to many — himself included.
Every morning, despite her late nights as a lounge singer, Miss Kitty would awaken Reed for school. She served him the same breakfast daily: oatmeal with bananas, and Cuban bread with guava paste and cheese.
In the evenings, Miss Kitty would bring him to work. Reed remembers taking naps as a kid underneath the piano bench as she played.
'It was cool, but I didn't realize what I had at the time,' he said. 'I always knew she was a good musician and singer and entertainer. I didn't realize the icon part until much later.'
According to the Times archives, Miss Kitty also worked as a legal secretary, a teacher's aide and a salesperson in the linens department of Maas Brothers. As a result, Reed said, she owned several properties by the 1960s — a rare achievement for a woman, let alone a Black woman, to have back then.
Reed said everyone in the neighborhood would come to Miss Kitty's to eat and use her pool. She hosted cookouts and loaned money to help neighbors with their bills. During springtime and the holiday season, she would go to Metropolitan Ministries to play for staff and residents.
If people needed help, she'd explain to Reed, you should help them.
'She went out of her way to make sure that all the kids in the neighborhood were all right,' said Reed, who is raising funds to preserve the Ybor home Miss Kitty most recently lived in. 'She would try and see the best in people, even when they couldn't see it themselves.'
Miss Kitty confirmed the cancer in her lungs at the beginning of 2023. She still wanted to work, even if that eventually meant just playing on Sundays instead of four to six nights a week.
'She always said playing at Donatello kept her alive,' Reed said.
By then, several people had been working to document Miss Kitty's contributions. In 2018, Womack convinced then-Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn to make Aug. 27 the city's official Kitty Daniels Day.
In 2020, Krikorian produced the award-winning short film 'Kitty Daniels and Majid Shabazz, Jazz Legends.' Several scenes were included in a separate PBS segment starring Miss Kitty that outlined her collaborations with famous musicians on the Chitlin' Circuit and her efforts to create space for Black musicians in Florida.
Krikorian created a website, kittydaniels.com, to highlight Miss Kitty's live recordings and achievements. She also is working to create a permanent Kitty Daniels scholarship at the University of South Florida for music students. Soon, several interviews will be permanently archived in USF Library's Special Collections.
'She wasn't about stardom. She wasn't about traveling around the world and making as much money as she could,' Krikorian said. 'She was about staying home, staying in Tampa, being with her family, and enjoying seeing other people enjoy her music.'
Just two weeks after her last performance at Donatello, Miss Kitty died. The restaurant hosted a tribute jam night with local musicians who had played with her over the years. Tiozzo plans to make it an annual tradition.
'Everyone talks about her legacy, but the legacy is us,' Reed said. 'Who she touched and left behind.'
Information from the Times archive was used in this article.