George Shearing, the ebullient jazz pianist who wrote the standard "Lullaby of Birdland" and had a string of hits both with and without his quintet, has died. He was 91.

Shearing, blind since birth, died early yesterday morning in Manhattan of congestive heart failure, his longtime manager Dale Sheets said.

Shearing had been a superstar of the jazz world since a couple of years after he arrived in the United States in 1947 from his native England, where he was already hugely popular. The George Shearing Quintet's first big hit came in 1949 with a version of songwriter Harry Warren's "September in the Rain." He remained active well into his 80s, releasing a CD called "Lullabies of Birdland" as well as a memoir, "Lullaby of Birdland," in early 2004. In March of that year he was hospitalized after suffering a fall at his home. It took him months to recover, and he largely retired from public appearances after that.

In a 1987 Associated Press interview, Shearing said the ingredients for a great performance were "a good audience, a good piano, and a good physical feeling, which is not available to every soul, every day of everyone's life.

"Your intent, then, is to speak to your audience in a language you know, to try to communicate in a way that will bring to them as good a feeling as you have yourself," he said.

In 2007, Shearing was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to music. When the honor was announced, he said it was "amazing to receive an honor for something I absolutely love doing."

Shearing's bebop-influenced sound became identified with a quintet - piano, vibes, guitar, bass and drums - which he put together in 1949. More recently, he played mostly solo or with only a bassist. He excelled in the "locked hands" technique, in which the pianist plays parallel melodies with the two hands, creating a distinct, full sound.

Shearing was born Aug. 13, 1919, to a working-class family and grew up in the Battersea district of London.

A prodigy despite his inability to see printed music, he studied classical music for several years before deciding to "test the water on my own" instead of pursuing additional studies at a university. He began his career at a London pub at age 16.

During World War II, the young pianist teamed with Stephane Grappelli, the French jazz violinist, who spent the war years in London. Grappelli recalled to writer Leonard Feather in 1976 that he and Shearing would "play during air raids."

After World War II, Shearing came to the U.S., where he was relatively unknown despite his great fame in England.

The original George Shearing Quintet, formed in 1949, was a then unique lineup musically, racially and in gender. They were John Levy on bass, Denzil Best on drums, Marjorie Hyams on vibraphone and Chuck Wayne on guitar, later replaced by Toots Thielemans. Levy gradually took on the role of manager, one of the first African-Americans to become a music manager.

The Quintet's sound was based on Shearing's trademark block chords. He arranged piano, vibraphone and guitars connected by octave.

In 1952, Shearing wrote his biggest hit: "Lullaby of Birdland," an ode to the famous New York jazz club. He acknowledged composing it in just 10 minutes. "But I always tell people, it took me 10 minutes and 35 years in the business," he told The Christian Science Monitor in 1980.

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