You Don’t Know What Love Is

Tiny Irvin is a native Pittsburgher who is a quiet, private person, who loves people and always tries to be happy. Tiny has sung with Sammy Davis, Jr., Carmen McRae, Dean Martin, Sarah Vaughn, Dizzy Gillespie and Betty Bebop Carter.

Tiny left home in her late teens to sing for a year in the Dizzy Gillespie Band. She quit the road after a love affair sadly ended. She returned to Pittsburgh and continued singing, most often in the band of jazz pianist Carl Arter. Carl played gigs at many clubs and private affairs around Pittsburgh, In the late 1970s, Carl and Tiny played most weekends at Eileen’s Zebra Room, where Earwig Music Company CEO Michael Frank first heard them in 1978.

Tiny had impeccable tone and phrasing, with a lot of blues feeling and swing. She was a great scat singer too. Fans of Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughn will hear their influences in Tiny’s singing, but she was no copyist, she had a distinctive style of her own. Tiny made her only recording,  accompanied by the Carl Arter Trio, for Earwig Music Company in 1982. She retired from singing in the late 1980s.

Listening to her style of singing is stimulating yet soothing, and pleasing to the ear. When she was asked to describe her style, she said, “My style is like that of Billy Eckstine. I love the deep tonal qualities of his voice, I love Baritone sounds. I just love sounds, the hitting and missing of sounds.”