JAZZ singer Norma Winstone is highly respected in jazz circles but remains unknown to most people.

The 66-year-old, who was born in Bow, has just had her third nomination for best singer in the BBC Jazz Awards, a title she won in 2001.

Despite feeling “very honoured” to be chosen, and receiving an MBE last year, Winstone, 66, is still far from being a household name.

After releasing a new album in March, she is hoping to benefit a revival of interest in jazz which she puts down to the popularity of artists Jamie Cullan and Amy Winehouse, someone she says is classed as jazzy even though she is not.

But she is realistic about jazz’s place in the world.

“For jazz artists nothing much changes,” she says. “it’s always a struggle, it’s a minority interest music, a cult thing almost.”

So why choose it in the first place? Winstone comes from a musical family and could have gone in a completely different direction.

Her home life was arty, bohemian almost.

“When I was eight, my Dad met Fats Waller in the pub and took him home for a piano party,” she says “He woke me up so I could come downstairs and listen.

“But later I heard Ella Fitzgerald and she did scat singing and I thought that was fantastic. I tried to copy her. I heard Dave Brubeck and didn’t realise they were improvising. I just knew it was where I wanted to be.”

The young Winstone moved to Dagenham, where she went to the same school as Dudley Moore and “fell in love with him at first sight” when she was 11 and he was 18.

She began singing jazz standards and first came to attention in the late sixties when she shared the bill at Ronnie Scott's club with Roland Kirk.

Ms Winstone was nominated in Melody Maker’s Jazz Poll in 1970.

She joined groups led by Mike Westbrook, Michael Garrick and sang with John Surman, Kenny Wheeler, Michael Gibbs and John Taylor, and worked extensively with many of the major European names and visiting Americans.

In the late seventies she joined pianist John Taylor and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler to form AZIMUTH but now has her own band.

She has built her career on using her voice as an instrument, exchanging words for experimental sounds.

She said: “I always felt I wanted to be really involved in the music rather than being a singer who sings the melody but not many singers improvise.

“My ambition is to carry on singing as long as I can. I’m just loving what I’m doing especially with this new group that I’ve got, I hope to do much more work with them.”

For more information: normawinstone.com.