WAYNE POWERS

Jazz vocalist/actor/comedian/broadcaster
Wayne Powers
is celebrating 50 years in show business.
Starting out as a nightclub singer in New York and
subsequently performing across the country, Powers
finally landed in Hollywood where he worked for Henry
Mancini.
Wayne launched a decades-long network television career
after being discovered in a live improv comedy show with
a then-unknown Robin Williams. Williams went on to
Mork & Mindy and movies, while Powers went on to Laverne & Shirley,
Elvis and Me, One Day at a Time, Murder She Wrote, Simon & Simon, Full
House, Alf, Doogie Howser, and many others, including starring for two
seasons in his own popular NBC sitcom, 13 East.
Equally at home on television, radio, theatre, club or concert stage, music has
always been his first love. Wayne has played some of the country’s top
music venues, cabarets and jazz festivals, consistently drawing large,
enthusiastic, star-studded crowds. And the critics agree:
“Like the jazz greats before him – Sinatra, Eckstine, Prysock, Hartman –
Powers has proven over the course of a long career, he’s the complete
package.” (JAZZIZ Magazine).
Powers’ most recent album, If Love Were All, is receiving international air
play and critical acclaim, with several tunes featured on Sirius XM’s Siriusly
Sinatra Channel, owned and programmed by the Sinatra family.
Tom Dreesen, the comedian who became Frank Sinatra’s close friend,
opening for Frank throughout his last 13 years and serving as one of the
pallbearers at Sinatra’s funeral, said it best:
“Frank Sinatra once told me, ‘I don’t care if my name lives on. I just pray
that the music lives on.’ Wayne Powers answers Frank’s prayer.”