Sarah McLawler was raised in the church with gospel music, and studied organ at an Indiana Conservatory. Influenced heavily by the music of the big bands, McLawler used to sneak into clubs in Indianapolis to hear Lucky Millinder's big band, with whom she ended up going on the road. She later formed an all-woman band, the Syn-Co-Ettes. They spent some time as a house band at Chicago's Savoy Club.

After meeting Richard Otto, a classical violinist who also performed jazz, at a residency at a Brooklyn club, Sara married him and the two spent years touring and recording together. As fixtures on the New York jazz scene in the 1950s, they became close to with the likes of Milt Jackson, Errol Garner, Dinah Washington, Cab Calloway, Nat Cole, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr. and others. Washington was so taken with her playing, she once offered to be her manager.

During the 1950s, McLawler recorded singles for the King and Brunswick labels that are now collectors' items: "I Can't Stop Loving You" "Love, Sweet Love," as well as "Red Light" "Tipping In" "Let's Get the Party Rocking" and "Blue Room." Her recordings with her husband, violinist Richard Otto, include "Somehow," "Yesterday" "Body & Soul" for Brunswick, and "Babe in the Woods" "Relax, Miss Frisky" "Flamingo" "Canadian Sunset" and "At the Break of Day" for Vee-Jay.

McLawler continues to breathe life into jazz standards, performing major shows at the Newport Jazz Festivals and the Newark Jazz Festival. She's lived in Harlem for many years, and regularly performs at Chez Josephine restaurant in midtown Manhattan.

Jazz Museum in Harlem Harlem Speaks! continues in April with:
• Cobi Narita, Producer: April 13, 2006
• Delilah Jackson, Historian: April 27, 2006

A beacon of jazz for over 40 years in New York City, Cobi Narita joins the Harlem Speaks roster on April 13, 2006. She carved a unique position for herself in the jazz world by founding a nonprofit educational group, the Universal Jazz Coalition, in the late 1970s. The group's purpose was to help musicians manage their own business affairs when they lacked managers and bookers. This led to her becoming a concert promoter and producer. Narita even hired well-known musicians to teach workshops for newcomers. Soon she noticed that women were having even more difficulty than young, struggling men in jazz, so she founded a women's jazz festival in New York to give women a chance to play in public. The festival is housed at Cobi's Place in Manhattan at 158 West 48th Street, fourth floor, between Sam Ash and Manny's.

The April 27, 2006 guest, cultural historian Delilah Jackson, has worked with Cobi Norita to co-produce numerous tap concerts and film showings at Cobi's Place. She is founder and artistic director of the Black Patti Research Foundation (named after Sisseretta Jones who organized the most prestigious group of touring black troubadours at the turn of the century), and has amassed one of the most extensive collections of African American expressive culture anywhere-- more than 1000 rare slides, photos, and vintage films documenting the performances of musicians, singers, actors and dancers of Harlem during he 1920s and 1930s

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