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Barbara Jean McNair was born on March 4, 1934 in Chicago, Illinois but grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. Studying music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, her big break came with a win on Arthur Godfrey’s TV show Talent Scouts, which led to bookings at San Francisco’s The Purple Onion and the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles.

She soon became one of the country’s most popular headliners and a guest on TV variety shows The Steve Allen Show, Hullabaloo, The Bell Telephone Hours and The Hollywood Palace. Recording for Coral, Signature, Motown and TEC Recording Studios labels, among her hits were “You’re Gonna Love My Baby” and “Bobby”. In the early 1960s, McNair made several musical shorts for Scopitone, a franchise of coin-operated machines that showed what were the forerunners of today’s music videos.

Translating her singing success to acting she appeared on such show as Dr. Kildare, The Eleventh Hour, I Spy, Mission: Impossible, Hogan’s Heroes and McMillan and Wife. He nude 1968 layout in Playboy produced an equally provocative sequence in the crime drama If He Hollers Let Him Go opposite Raymond St., Jacques. She followed this with a nun’s habit alongside Mary Tyler Moore for Change of Habit, and portrayed Sidney Poitiers wife in They Call Me Mr. Tibbs and The Organization.

McNair would also take on Broadway with The Body Beautiful in 1958, No Strings in 1962, and a revival of The Pajama Game in 1973. In 1969 she one of the first black women to host her own variety series The Barbara McNair Show, and for three seasons till 1972 spotlighted Tony Bennett, Sonny and Cher, The Righteous Brothers, Johnny Mathis, Freda Payne and many more.

With declining offers for acting, McNair continued her singing into her seventies touring occasionally until her passing on February 4, 2007 of throat cancer.

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