It's fair to say that singing is in Jesse Palter’s blood. Her grandmother, Dorothea Raynor, was an opera prodigy in New York who continued singing throughout her life. In Jesse's Bloomfield Hills house growing up the sounds of Motown, show tunes, Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett were always playing. Jesse started singing publicly at age five and learning piano at six. She subsequently studied oboe and trumpet and attended a middle school where she starred in a number of theatrical productions. In fact, the first public indication that jazz lay in her future came during rehearsals for "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," when Jesse, playing the narrator, began "embellishing" the melodies; although the director admonished her, she also told Jesse's mother that Jesse had a natural inclination towards improvisational singing.