Betty O’Hara was an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and arranger born on May 24, 1925, in Earl Park, Indiana. She began playing trumpet at age nine and, after high school, toured with Freddie Shafer’s all-female USO band. In 1947, O’Hara joined Al Gentile’s Bigband in Connecticut as a brass player and arranger. She moved to Southern California in 1960, working as a studio musician for soundtracks including Hill Street Blues and Magnum, P.I.. In the late 1970s, she performed with the big band Maiden Voyage, including an appearance on The Tonight Show. O’Hara co-founded the jazz quintet The Jazzbirds in the early 1980s and appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Her discography includes the leader albums Horns a' Plenty (1985) and Woman's Intuition (1999). O’Hara suffered two strokes in 1998, which ended her career. She died on April 18, 2000, in Los Angeles.
