20th-century American women singers

Irène Bordoni (16 January 1885 – 19 March 1953) was a Franco-American actress and singer.

Maxine Sullivan (May 13, 1911 – April 7, 1987), born Marietta Williams in Homestead, Pennsylvania, United States, was an American jazz vocalist and performer.
As a vocalist, Sullivan was active for half a century, from the mid-1930s to just before her death in 1987. She is best known for her 1937 recording of a swing version of the Scottish folk song "Loch Lomond". Throughout her career, Sullivan also appeared as a performer on film as well as on stage. A precursor to better-known later vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, Sullivan is considered one of the best jazz vocalists of the 1930s. Singer Peggy Lee named Sullivan as a key influence in several interviews.

Dorothy Dare (born Dorothy Herskind, August 6, 1911 – October 4, 1981) was an American actress and singer.

Tané M. McClure (born June 8, 1958), sometimes credited as Tahnee Cain and Tané Cain, is an American actress, singer, producer, writer, director and film editor.

Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance.
Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tail coat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience.
On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones.

Leah Ray Hubbard (February 16, 1915 – May 27, 1999) was an American singer and actress born in Norfolk, Virginia. She sang with major dance bands and acted in more than a dozen motion pictures.

Annette Richardson Dinwoodey (February 17, 1906 – January 21, 2007) was an American radio singer and centenarian. She sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from 1971 to 1973. She was a contralto.

Francesca McKnight Donatella Romana Gregorini di Savignano di Romagna (born August 7, 1968), known professionally as Francesca Gregorini, is an Italian-American screenwriter and film director.

Mary Louise Tobin (November 11, 1918 – November 26, 2022) was an American jazz singer and musician. She appeared with Benny Goodman, Bobby Hackett, Will Bradley, and Jack Jenney. Tobin introduced "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" with Goodman's band in 1939. Her biggest hit with Goodman was "There'll Be Some Changes Made", which was number two on Your Hit Parade in 1941 for 15 weeks. Tobin was the first wife of trumpeter and bandleader Harry James, with whom she had two sons.

Alice Lon Wyche (November 23, 1926 – April 24, 1981), known as Alice Lon, was an American singer and dancer on The Lawrence Welk Show during its early years on network television.