As WBEZ later recounted, Chicago musicians were planning a Duke Ellington tribute on the South Side in 1974 when Geraldine Bey de Haas argued that the music belonged in Grant Park, open to the whole city. De Haas, the jazz singer who turned that conviction into decades of festivals, mentoring and public advocacy, died on July 28, 2026, at 91, according to a family announcement carried by 24-7 Press Release.

Born Geraldine Wideman in Newark, New Jersey, on January 16, 1935, she was the seventh of nine children. She remembered watching her family dance to Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, each person finding a distinct way into the music. After graduating from West Side High School, she joined her sister Salome and brother Andy in Andy and the Bey Sisters.

The trio's first major engagement came at Miami's Cotton Club in 1957. Managed by Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein, the siblings recorded three albums for RCA Victor and Prestige and spent 16 months touring Europe. Their Paris run included the Blue Note, and footage shot by filmmaker Roger Vadim later appeared in the Chet Baker documentary Let's Get Lost. The act disbanded in 1967.

De Haas married bassist Edgar de Haas and moved to Chicago with him in 1968. While raising their children, Aisha and Darius, she performed with Free Street Theater in productions that included Hair and To Be Young, Gifted and Black. She also earned a bachelor's degree in music education from Chicago State University in 1980.

Her work as an organizer gathered force after Ellington died in 1974. De Haas believed the memorial should not be confined to one part of a divided city. She persuaded musicians, then won over the Park District with support from Cook County Commissioner John Stroger. The Grant Park concert helped establish a path toward the Chicago Jazz Festival. Looking back, she joked that people had called her "the pit bull" because once she seized an idea, she did not let go until it happened.

Her next platform was the South Shore Cultural Center. De Haas founded Jazz Unites in 1981 and built a festival there that placed major artists, including Count Basie and Dianne Reeves, before South Side audiences. The organization offered workshops, master classes, concerts and annual Ellington tributes. She also directed performing arts and access programs for the Illinois Arts Council from 1983 through 1993.

A Chicago City Council resolution in 1998 honored de Haas and Jazz Unites and noted her receipt of the Kennedy Center's Mary Lou Williams Award. In 2010, the Jazz Journalists Association named her to its A Team of jazz advocates. Performers supplied another measure of her reach. Kurt Elling said she welcomed and encouraged him early in his career, and Tammy McCann credited de Haas with seeing promise in young artists and raising the level of their performances.

After 45 years in Chicago, de Haas and her husband moved to Lambertville, New Jersey, in 2013 to be closer to their children. She was survived by Darius, Aisha, her son-in-law Kyle Rudy, and numerous nieces and nephews. Edgar, Andy and Salome died before her.

De Haas's work persists in the Chicago Jazz Festival, in the South Shore audiences she insisted deserved world-class artists close to home, and in the singers she ushered onto stages. The recordings she made with Andy and Salome preserve the family blend that first carried her abroad. The festivals and programs she built brought that music back to Chicago's parks and placed it within reach of another generation.