By BEN RATLIFF

               Dorothy Donegan, a jazz pianist who brashly mixed swing, boogie-woogie, vaudeville, pop,
           ragtime and Bach -- sometimes within a span of 10 minutes -- and who was known for an
          outrageous sense of humor, died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 76.

          The cause was colon cancer, said The Associated Press.

          Ms. Donegan was better known as a performer than as a recording artist, and her flamboyance
          helped her find work in a field that was largely hostile to women. To a certain extent, it was also her
          downfall; her concerts were often criticized for having an excess of personality. She would act out
          songs, mocking their words; do devastating parodies of pianists and singers, especially if they were in
          the audience, or get up and shake her hips while keeping up a left-handed riff.

          She could push humor into brazenness and kept up a supply of off-color jokes. She told writers
          without hesitation that sexism caused her obscurity -- that, and her insistence on being paid at the
          same scale as her male colleagues.

          Born in Chicago, Ms. Donegan was encouraged from an early age by her mother to become a
          professional musician. She was a church organist as a girl, and at 14 she was playing for a dollar a
          night at the city's South Side bars. She was one of many notable jazz musicians inestimably helped by
          the tutelage of Walter Dyett, a music teacher at DuSable High School, whose other students included
          Dinah Washington, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons and Von Freeman.

          She played blues and boogie-woogie piano, even recording for the Bluebird label in 1942, but she
          aspired to be a classical concert pianist. She studied at the Chicago Conservatory and at the Chicago
          Musical College. In 1943, when she was 18, she gave a concert at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the
          first black performer to do so. Time magazine covered the concert, and word about a pianist with a
          wide repertory and blizzard-fast fingers reached the jazz piano virtuoso Art Tatum, who came to her
          house to hear her play. Tatum showed her some of his technique and remained the strongest influence
          on her playing.

          Hollywood soon came calling. Persuaded by her agent to turn down a five-year contract from
          MGM, she accepted a $3,000-a-week contract from United Artists for one picture, "Sensations of
          1945." She appears in a duet scene with another pianist, Gene Rodgers, and the band behind them
          was Cab Calloway's. That was the end of her film career.

          In the late 1950s she began a series of engagements at the Embers in Manhattan and the London
          House in Chicago. It was during this period that she developed her flamboyant performance style.

          By the 1970s she was more comfortable, making a living playing in festivals in America and Europe
          and attracting a fierce coterie of fans in New York. A resident of Los Angeles since the 1950s, she
          would return occasionally to the East Coast for nightclub performances or a jazz-festival or
          concert-hall event. After a Town Hall performance in 1971, John Wilson wrote in The New York
          Times that Ms. Donegan "showed a technical virtuosity that could be compared only to that of Art
          Tatum and a swinging drive that might be equaled by Mary Lou Williams."

          Ms. Donegan was married three times, and is survived by two sons, John and Donovan. Her last
          performances were in Monterey, Calif., last September, before diabetes and cancer rendered her too
          ill to play.
 

                                      Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

Dorothy Donegan: Age 76
b. 6 April 1924, Chicago, Illinois, d. May 19, 1998.
Encouraged by her mother to learn music, Donegan began studying classical piano but soon turned to jazz. A meeting with Art Tatum in the early '40s led to her becoming his protege. The following year she made her first record date and became a popular figure at Chicago clubs, playing a mixture of jazz, boogie woogie and cocktail music. She also made an appearance in the film SENSATIONS OF 1945 (1944). Having started her jazz career as a single, she formed a trio in 1945 and continued to work in that format. Later in her career she was inclined to work as a soloist again, after being unable to appoint suitable drummers. In subsequent interviews she indicated a clear desire to return to playing classical music, a form which she used for her daily practice. A powerful performer with dazzling technique, she plays with enormous swing and has a solid following. The audience at a 1980 appearance in New York's Sheraton Centre Hotel broke previous attendance records.

Music Central 96