Salome Bey

Babs Gonzales and Salome Bey. Photo courtesy of the Fraser MacPherson estate

Salome Bey, CM is an American actress, singer-songwriter, and composer who has lived in Toronto, Ontario since 1966.

In 2005, she was made an honorary Member of the Order of Canada.

She formed a vocal group with her brother Andy Bey and sister Geraldine Bey (de Haas), known as Andy and the Bey Sisters, performing in local clubs and touring North America and Europe. She first came to Toronto in 1964 and played the jazz club circuit. She was known as Canada's First Lady of Blues. She appeared on Broadway in Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, for which she earned a Grammy Award nomination for work on the cast album. She put together a blues & jazz cabaret show on the history of black music, Indigo - which earned her the Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding performance. The show was later taped for TV networks.

She recorded two albums with Horace Silver, and made live albums of her performances with the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir and at the Montreux Jazz Festival. She received the Toronto Arts Award for her contributions to the performing arts in 1992, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for lifetime achievement from the Black Theatre Workshop of Montreal in 1996.

Family

She married Howard Berkeley Matthews on April 7, 1964; they have 3 children.

External links

• Salome Bey at The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Salome Bey at IMDb