Shirley Horn, the Grammy-winning singer and pianist whose richly expressive vocal style made her one of the most popular performers in jazz, died Thursday night in her hometown of Washington. She was 71.

Horn died after a lengthy illness, the Verve Music Group, her record label, announced Friday.

Horn had been ill for some time. She lost her right foot to diabetes in 2001 and later much of her right leg. She had also battled breast cancer and arthritis over the last few years.

"We've lost the last of the great ones from that generation," composer Johnny Mandel, who arranged her albums "Here's to Life" and "You're My Thrill," told the Los Angeles Times on Friday. "I think she was the best singer there was."

Horn brought a richly layered, story-telling quality to everything she sang.

"She can swing, but slow songs are her specialty," Marian McPartland, the pianist and host of the National Public Radio program "Piano Jazz," told the Times some years ago. "She makes everything count, and has an uncanny use of musical space — she's not a busy player who has to fill every musical hole. She plays a single chord, and it becomes the basis for a spare, meditative quality. There's a sensuous, sexy quality to her music too."

Horn's grandmother had a pipe organ and a piano in the parlor of her Washington home. Years later, Horn recalled that she couldn't wait to get into that parlor.

After years of private lessons, Horn studied music at Howard University's School for Gifted Children. She was a devotee of Rachmaninoff and Debussy but also favored jazz greats Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson. She switched to jazz when she was 17 and won a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, but had to decline for financial reasons. She went instead to Howard.

At 21, she married Shepherd Deering, an employee of Washington's Metropolitan Transit Agency.

In 1954, Horn put together her first trio and recorded three albums. But to avoid the rigors of the road and be at home with her daughter, she generally confined her performances to the Washington and Baltimore area.

Her first album, "Embers and Ashes," recorded in 1961 on a small label called Stereo-Craft, caught the attention of the trumpeter Miles Davis, who insisted that she come to New York City and open for him at the Village Vanguard.

Quincy Jones, who caught one of the Vanguard shows, became an admirer of her music and produced two of her albums. After leaving Mercury, she recorded a number of albums for Steeplechase, a Danish label.

Horn was in her early 50s when her career took an upswing after signing with Verve in 1986."She was ... a better pianist than most people knew," Mandel said. "She would play her piano and I knew just what to do with an orchestra behind her. I knew exactly what she wanted and we had few conversations about music. We were soul mates ...."

Horn was nominated for eight Grammy Awards. In 1988, she won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for her tribute recording to Miles Davis, "I Remember Miles."

Other honors include a 2003 Jazz at Lincoln Center Award for Artistic Excellence and was named a 2005 NEA Jazz Master, the nation's highest honor for jazz composers and musicians. In 2004 she was honored at the Kennedy Center with an all-star concert.

"Jazz is feeling," Horn once told the Times. "It's fire and ice. I want the people in the audience to feel and see the picture I'm trying to paint. I want to be in touch with you and get inside of you."

Horn's husband Shepherd Deering and their daughter Rainy survive her as well as several grandchildren.